Letters to a Young Journalist

Over the course of a thirty-year career, Samuel Freedman has excelled both at doing journalism and teaching it, and he passionately engages both of these endeavors in the pages of this book. As an author and journalist, Freedman has produced award-winning books, investigative series, opinion columns, and feature stories and has become a specialist in a wide variety of fields. As a teacher, he has shared his expertise and experience with hundreds of students, who have gone on to succeed in both print and broadcast media. In Letters to a Young Journalist, Freedman conducts an extended conversation with young journalists-from kids on the high school paper to graduates starting their first jobs. Whether he’s talking about radio documentaries or TV news shows, Internet blogs, or backwater beats, shoeleather research or elegant prose, his goal is to explore the habits of mind that make an excellent journalist. It is no secret that journalism’s mission is seriously imperiled these days, and Freedman’s provocative ideas and fascinating stories offer students and journalists at all levels of experience wise guidance and professional inspiration.

Samuel G. Freedman is a Professor of Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and the author of six books of nonfiction. He has worked as a reporter for the New York Times and contributor to Rolling Stone and Salon, among other publications, and has won numerous awards, including a Distinguished Teaching in Journalism Award, a National Jewish Book Award, and the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism. He lives in New York City.