{"id":2807,"date":"2019-09-18T19:55:39","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T23:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fm.hunter.cuny.edu\/journalism\/?p=2807"},"modified":"2019-09-26T07:59:41","modified_gmt":"2019-09-26T11:59:41","slug":"top-political-journalist-talks-tough-to-feature-writing-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fm.hunter.cuny.edu\/journalism\/index.php\/2019\/09\/18\/top-political-journalist-talks-tough-to-feature-writing-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Political Journalist Talks \u2018Tough\u2019 To Feature Writing Students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"Journalist,<\/a>
Journalist, filmmaker and bestselling author Jonathan Alter during a recent visit to Hunter College’s Journalism Program.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This semester\u2019s longform Feature Writing class features weekly visits from journalists (both print and television), bestselling authors, and award-winning filmmakers and photographers. This past week\u2019s guest was journalist, filmmaker and bestselling author Jonathan<\/a> Alter<\/a>.
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Now a contributing correspondent and political analyst for NBC and MSNBC, after being a featured columnist and editor at Newsweek for almost 30 years, Alter has long been considered one of the leading political observers and commentators. 
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Currently working on a biography of former President Jimmy Carter, Alter has written bestselling bios on Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Barack Obama. His most recent project is the highly acclaimed HBO documentary, \u201cBreslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists<\/a>,\u201d about the two legendary New York columnists, Jimmy Breslin and Pete Hamill.
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(A screening copy of Alter’s documentary is available to Hunter journalism and IMA\/MFA students; please send your requests to the Feature Writing class instructor, Douglas Alden, at douglas.alden@hunter.cuny.edu<\/a>.)
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Alter also has a weekly show on SiriusXM called, \u201cAlter Family Politics\u201d that features his wife Emily \u2014 a former co-executive producer on \u201cLate Night with Stephen Colbert,\u201d and now a special project producer on CBS \u201cSunday Morning\u201d \u2014 and their children, who have gone on to become journalists, novelists and screenwriters.
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Resilience and toughness required<\/strong>
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Alter spoke at length about his children\u2019s careers, talking about what he believes it takes for young people to succeed in the journalism, publishing and film production worlds.
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\u201cIt\u2019s about hard work. Realizing that every job is about learning. And it\u2019s about being resilient. I don\u2019t know one person in the media business who hasn\u2019t been fired, at least once.\u201d (At this point in the class, Professor Alden raised his hand and called out, \u201c2005 for me!\u201d) 
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‘You\u2019re looking for opportunities that will lead to other opportunities, but most of all opportunities where you can learn.’<\/strong><\/p>\u2014 VETERAN JOURNALIST JONATHAN ALTER<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“You\u2019ve just got to be tough and resilient. You\u2019re looking for opportunities that will lead to other opportunities, but most of all opportunities where you can learn,\u201d Alter added.
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During his 90-minutes with the class, Alter talked about his early jobs, and about learning from some tough, demanding bosses. \u201cEarly on I worked for someone who would look at my stuff and tell me \u2014 with a lot of curse words \u2014 if he thought something I wrote was terrible. I had to be tough. And he understood how to make me a better writer and a better journalist.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Advice on getting \u2018the real story\u2019
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One of the key themes of the \u201cBreslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists\u201d documentary is one of the main lessons for this year\u2019s feature writing class: 
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\u201cIt\u2019s like Jimmy Breslin says: You’ve got to do the reporting. You\u2019ve got to get up from your desk and do the reporting,\u201d Alter said. \u201cToo many young people think they can report sitting at their desk emailing and texting. No. Real reporting is about going up and out to talk to people. Not texting or emailing them. Getting them on the phone, in order to get them to meet with you, and talk to you \u2014 in person. Too many young journalists don\u2019t do that. But you need to get up and get out, in order to get a real story.\u201d
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Among the future guests for this semester\u2019s Feature Writing class are the New York Times columnist Ginia Bellafante<\/a>, New York Times feature writer and critic at large, Amanda Hess<\/a> and legendary photographer Neil Leifer<\/a>. 
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Leading political observer and commentator Jonathan Alter was guest speaker at the Feature Writing class Sept. 12. A journalist, filmmaker and bestselling author, and currently a contributing correspondent and political analyst for NBC and MSNBC, Alter gave students some tough advice about making it in journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":2949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,18],"tags":[117,116],"class_list":["post-2807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-homepage_news","category-journalism-program-news","tag-feature-writing","tag-guest-speakers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fm.hunter.cuny.edu\/journalism\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fm.hunter.cuny.edu\/journalism\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fm.hunter.cuny.edu\/journalism\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fm.hunter.cuny.edu\/journalism\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fm.hunter.cuny.edu\/journalism\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2807"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/fm.hunter.cuny.edu\/journalism\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2831,"href":"https:\/\/fm.hunter.cuny.edu\/journalism\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2807\/revisions\/2831"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fm.hunter.cuny.edu\/journalism\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fm.hunter.cuny.edu\/journalism\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fm.hunter.cuny.edu\/journalism\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fm.hunter.cuny.edu\/journalism\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}