We were up before dawn on Thursday to meet one last time for a group critique of the final stories. The professor worked hard not to get verklempt, but that got exponentially more difficult when he was presented with this amazing poster (above), a gift from the class, designed by Carli Krueger.

It’s a graphic of our big round classroom table in room 301. I’m the gray dot at the center. The dots around the table are the 17 students in Jour494, represented by a color that might or might not have meaning or relate to something that student wrote about for this class — I’ve deciphered quite a few: Pretty in Pink, The O.C., Avatar, orange earplugs, black metal, etc. I will treasure this poster, and the semester we had together, forever. Thank you Carli (the pink dot) and everyone else (counter-clockwise): Allison Bye, Caitlyn Walsh, Dustin Askim, Heather Jurva, Patrick Record, Erik Anderson, Candace Rojo, Billie Loewen, Brooks Johnson, Eben Wragge-Keller, H. Neil Sauer, Cody Blum, Ashley Oppel, Tom Holm, Levi Hunt and Donelle Weston. I’ll miss you terribly.

This was a class about writing deeply and interestingly about the ways we live and absorb popular culture. Originally, the final paper was meant to be a deep narrative or profile, about 3,000-words long, of someone creating and/or consuming a kind of popular culture.

But, as time closed in, I had to reduce my expectations, and amend the assignment somewhat, which became an encore of the scene story assignment that would hopefully go a little farther and deeper. But not too far, too deep, and stay within 2,000-2,100 words. I guess if I had the Pollner professorship to do over, I would have pushed the final assignment harder, demanding pitches back in September and progress reports along the way — in addition to the other assignments. The present-day 44-year-old in me would in late August hear “major assignment is due first week of December” and start working on it then and there; but the 21-year-old me would never have planned that far ahead. I should have remembered that.

Nevertheless, I am not disappointed in this crop of stories. Mostly because this was not a longform narrative magazine-writing class. This was a class about thinking fast and smart; reporting the facts and writing with analysis; and, most of all, filing clean and often. Although we admired and discussed many articles by writers who had months and thousands of words to reach for perfection, I know for certain that the surest path to that kind of work comes from a mastery of the deadline grind. These stories all had the distinct flavor of the rush-job. None achieved greatness, but we do have some that were certainly headed there.

Here are excerpts from five of the best — and the reasons why I thought so. (These excerpts are reprinted as they were filed to me, with none of my editing marks.)

Brooks Johnson wanted to do a profile of a popular country-western cover band. Initially he wanted to explore the idea of popular mediocrity through the measured success of the Copper Mountain Band, and he also used the opportunity to write about Missoula’s only (!) country bar, the Sunrise Saloon. And, like a good reporter, he came away with a different set of impressions than the ones he had going in — especially when it came to the true artistry involved in giving the people what they want while managing your own dreams of stardom:

The band takes the stage on yet another Saturday at 9:30 p.m. and thanks the crowd at the Sunrise Saloon for at least the hundredth time. Izzi and Nate pick up their stringed moneymakers and play with their pedals while Jacque gives some hand-fluffed volume to her blonde hair. The cousins wear black cowboy hats and Nate’s plaid-covered arm occasionally covers his bass while he tunes it.

The Copper Mountain Band opens with the energy of a Budweiser cracked after an hour in a paint-shaker. All over the stage, the young family band never gets bored and neither does their spritely audience. They go through the modern hits and a few originals before the surprising “Take it Easy” cover comes on.

Izzi says country fans, while loyal, don’t just want to hear country. They especially don’t want to see some stranger up on stage. They want to see the hats, the boots and feel respected in how they live their own lives. They want to see their cowboy neighbors, but a lot of the time they want to hear rock.

“If you only like country music, you’re probably an idiot,” Izzi says. “Nobody, myself included, wants to go to a club and hear the same singer and the same type of songs for four hours. Nobody has that kind of patience unless they’re your mother or something.”

Nobody on the dance floor bats an eye between all the country songs, old rock hits and originals like “Beers and Beers Ago.” Heel-toe-heel-toe they go, the motion of old and young never slowing no matter the number of beers flowing.

“People in New York and Nashville aren’t really going to relate, but we really don’t care,” Jacque says. “They should like this because this is the real cowboy shit here in Montana. This is really what we do.”

• • •

Heather Jurva wrote about the weekly open-session Irish music night at Sean Kelly’s pub. What I wanted students to notice here was Heather’s sense of control. She knows her story is no great shakes, but she went deep into the very American allure of being and seeming and aping Irishness. The writing is everything here. One of the great lessons all journalists — especially feature writers — need to learn is how to weave gold from straw (boring stories, boring scenes) without contorting the facts. It’s all about tone and writing.

It’s an old-style Irish pub, and the lights are low. A dozen older musicians – mainly men – sit just below the stage in a half moon of metal patio-esque chairs, plucking fiddles and banjos and mandolins. They are wearing sweaters, mostly, and polo tees and floppy-topped golf hats in greys and greens.

One man tootles a tiny black flute, testing the notes, then launches into an undulating line of trills. Another man, across the circle from the first, pulls a hand drum from what looks like a hat box. He thumps it, then listens, thumps, listens, thumps again and turns a key which tightens the head of the drum. The tone changes slightly, bringing the drum into line with the rest of the group.

Two young men in basketball shorts walk in the door opposite the stage.

They instantly walk back out.

It’s Open Session night at Sean Kelly’s in Missoula, Montana, and it draws a very specific kind of crowd: pressed and tweedy professionals who cut loose with a pint and a lilting tune. Nothing here seems to draw the typical Missoula scenesters, trendy collegiates who drink only PBR and drop the bass. Even the bartenders look bored, clearly waiting for the real party to start.

[snip ...]

“Kevin is probably the most Irish among us. He’s even got an Irish name,” Steve says. “He’s got dual citizenship.”

One or two of the others claim Irish heritage. None of the others can trace their line back to the Old Country, and very few have set foot on Irish soil. But they all love the music, and for tonight that’s enough. Missoula loves the Irish. All of western Montana loves the Irish. The nation loves the Irish, despite the masses who have no direct bloodline or history of travel.

But it doesn’t even matter. For those who are in love with an idea, it has nothing to do with the genetic code or stamps in a passport book.

“A lot of us, we think in terms of DNA, ya know… The thing about culture though, it doesn’t come down to DNA. It comes down to soul. It functions, in a sense, like glue that holds people together.”

• • •

Levi Hunt went off to the Found Footage Festival at the Wilma Theater, a touring show that collects old VHS training tapes, educational programs and other VHS-only oddities, and repurposes them into an awkwardly hilarious compilation. Not only did Levi capture the flavor of the show and interview the two guys behind it, he went deep on the brief lifespan of VHS technology, how it affected those who are old enough to remember videotapes, and how it comes across to those who aren’t.

Levi also managed to do something that looks easy, but is rather difficult: explaining something on the screen and making it as funny as seeing it in person. Like this:

One of the first videos of the night shows a group of maybe six adults who sit in a circle of patio chairs, surrounding a woman writing on a large poster-sized sheet of paper for the room to see.

“What’s another name for a penis?” the woman on the grainy video asks.

“Prick”, one of the men on patio chairs responds.

She writes that word right under “penis” on the board. “Good, what else?”

“Peter.”

“Rod.”

“Dick!”

Now it’s not just the group on the video responding to her question but seemingly the entirety of the viewers who are assembled in the main theater at the Wilma.  It doesn’t matter that the Wilma’s theater goers are about thirty years too late to respond to the lady on the video’s questions, they decide to helpfully throw out more suggestions for her anyway.

“Meat!”

“Ding dong!”

“Weiner!”

(This goes on for awhile)

“Okay, that’s good thank you.”

The Wilma-goers raise their drinks and cheer.  Good job by them.

“All together now,” the teacher on the video says as she points back to the first word written down on the paper.

In unison those in the Wilma in 2012 and those people on the video, pre-recorded some thirty years ago, do as commanded.

“Pe-nis.”  “Prick.”  “Pe-ter”

(This too, goes on for awhile) …

• • •

Cody Blum rode along late into the night with one of the drivers who started UCallus, a Missoula cab service that only accepts donations instead of fares, thereby circumventing taxi regulations, but opening a world of possibilities (good, bad and weird) in terms of passengers, who pay whatever they feel like paying. (A few pennies? A $100 bill?) This story showed how important it is to invest time, sit still, and just observe:

The first guy we picked up was huddled under a street lamp on a dark street I’d never been on. He wore torn blue jeans, a black leather jacket, a black beanie, and a backpack that sagged from his pale, skinny frame. He had the kind of headphones that wrap around the back of your head and up over the ears, the popular design in the nineties. The man looked a little sketchy, but when Mike Grafft eased the Buick Roadmaster with a barely functional transmission up to the curb and greeted the man through the passenger window, there were no worries in sight. Grafft is the most established, most experienced cab driver in Missoula, and according to his calculations, he’s driven over 1,000,000 miles transporting drunks, early morning airline commuters, businessmen, and sketchy anomaly characters like this one through Missoula’s confusing streets in his 20 plus years of driving. He hasn’t scratched a car yet.

The guy wanted to go to the Thunderbird Motel.

“You got it, bud,” Grafft said cheerily as he eased the Roadmaster out of first gear with a disconcerting tremor. Then he made light-hearted small talk, and the man in black reciprocated willingly like he hadn’t been treated this well in ages.

Grafft was the longest running driver at Yellow Cab, and now he’s the longest running driver at UCallus, a relatively new non-profit service in Missoula.  They got started on Oct. 1 of last year, and their aim is simple: get drunken bar occupants home, safe. They don’t reference themselves as a cab operation, rather they’re a designated driving service. The whole thing runs on donations, which leaves every cab-ride open to the possibility that the rider will take it for free. At the end of the ride, it’s up to you how much to give the driver. If you don’t have money, the hope is you’ll make it up next time. It’s all based on trust.

“Free is the four letter F-word to me,” Kevin Sandberg said. He’s the founder of UCallus. “Somehow we got slammed into that ‘free way home category.”

• • •

Finally, Patrick Record, a photojournalism major, invested a lot of time looking into and thinking about the black-and-white framed portraits that hang in Charlie B’s, a popular working-class waterin’ hole in downtown Missoula. The portraits are the work of Lee Nye, who took them of the bar’s regulars decades ago. These are a much beloved part of Missoula’s vast drinking lore. The pictures and the bar are something everyone here knows a little about. Patrick went deeper and gave some nuance to what the pictures mean to Missoula. He interviewed Nye’s widow and the bar’s current owner. There’s a real sense of how the past is present, including the art of hanging out with the men and women who currently spend a great deal of time in the time and might have, in another time, merited a photo on the wall…

Belangie-Nye is currently working on putting a book together consisting of the collections. At her home in Lolo, Mont., stashed away in a corner of her office, she pulls out a DVD with two interviews of Nye. Sitting in a chair wearing a cowboy hat, Nye answers questions from Belangie-Nye about his collections.

When it came to taking the photographs there was a criteria that had to be met. They had to be a regular at Eddie’s, and have a good face. Belangie-Nye recalls Nye saying they had to have a “Montana face.” Basically meaning they had to be blue-collar workers: lumber jacks, railroaders and people of the like. Using a Roloflex two and a quarter camera, they were always done in the alley behind Charlie’s during the morning hours – “that’s when the light was the best,” Nye says. A gray corduroy backdrop was put up and it wasn’t uncommon for Nye to give his subjects his own red and black plaid jacket to wear for the picture. He did this for the contrast the red creates in black and white pictures.

Nye took great pride in his portraits, and truly believed his subjects really had to have the face to be photographed. He really felt strongly about this with the Native Americans. Nye believed the strong facial Native American features were being lost as generations grew bigger and bigger.

“I don’t think this face can be created again,” Nye says as he hold up the portrait of Joe Malatare, a Native American who is frozen in time while he lights a cigarette and smoke floats in front of his glassy eyes as they look to the sky.

Nye remembered things about each person he photographed, and recalls the memories as he goes through the photographs.

“This is Roy Davis, he played the accordion”

“Oh, this is ‘Honk.’ We called him that because of his cucumber on his head,” referring to the man’s big nose.

“Sylvester, he was a cowboy out of Wyoming. He was full of shit most of the time.”

He could have gone for hours.

*          *          *

It’s 9:43 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 20, and Charlie is wearing a tan shirt, jeans and black suspenders, standing behind the bar cleaning up and organizing a few things as his bartender serves drinks. Sitting at the bar there’s six older gentleman, each of them with a draught and a small stack of cash in front of them.

Charlie turns around and holds up a cardboard poster tube, still sealed with postage tape. He looks at two of his customers as if they were just ordinary old friends and tells them he’s supposed to hang the poster because it has the state’s laws for bartenders. After a small chuckle, he spins right back around and stands it on its end behind the television.

“Here come the glasses,” the bartender says as a UPS deliveryman wheels in four large boxes. Charlie gets up and leaves to show the deliveryman where they go.

Soon after a man walks in holding a credit card and asks the bartender if he can use the phone and she slides it over. The man dials a number and after several failed attempts asks the bartender if he needs to dial nine first.

The guy sitting at the bar with a draught interjects, “It has to be a local call.”

“It’s a 1-800 number” the man replies.

“No, Charlie has restrictions up the ying-yang with that,” he tells the man as if he’s had to explain this to someone once or twice before.

Just before noon in walks a gentleman with long gray hair. He sits down at the bar and the bartender already knows what he wants, a screwdriver.

Patrick Smith, now 56, was the youngest to be photographed by Nye for the Charlie’s collection.  It was 1974 and Smith was 23 with long blonde hair, and working construction. His picture is located behind the Fat Tire bicycle on top of the poker machines.

“I had just back from running the running the Grand Canyon. I talked him into it,” Smith recalls. “[Nye] sat you in there, made you look up or down and then you were done. It happened fairly quickly.”

• • •

So there we have it. I turned in Jour494′s final grades Friday afternoon. This week I’ll pack up my car and go. There was a great vibe on the ghostly, gray campus Friday, a feeling I had all but forgotten about: When you’re a student in college and finals are over but you haven’t left for home yet. The power naps, the extra cash in your pocket from selling back all those textbooks, the warmth of crowded bars. The feeling of having crashed ashore and survived.

I’ll be back this week with a FURTHER READING LIST and a farewell to Montana. It’s hard to go.

Wednesday was our last official class, which I set aside for just general gabbing and pre-goodbyes. Any questions? Any advice I can give? Anything?

I was prepared to just tell them what a real joy it’s been to be here in Montana and work with them, and, once that was done, let class out early — especially for those still sweating the 5 p.m. deadline for their final stories.

It turns out we had plenty to talk about for the whole 80 minutes.

But before I forget:

Our “final exam” is a group critique of the final stories. Reading copies are now available for pick-up at my office. The final critique is Thursday, Dec. 13, 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Unfortunately, the 8 a.m. part is not a typo, so set your alarms; I’ll bring frosted breakfast baked goodies for the class. You guys bring your own caffeine or whatever it takes to get the juices flowing. Come “loaded for bear,” as my father used to say: Mark up those stories and let your classmates hear what you truly thought. Enough of this “I really liked this, and, uhhhh, ermmm …” stuff. Get in there. We’ll all kiss and make up when it’s over.

The stories did come in — all but one made it before deadline. I’m diving in this weekend to begin grading. This assignment, which is sort of a hybrid between a long narrative and a scene story, counts for 30 percent of your writing grade; you do the math. (And rest assured, I’ll do the math too. I’m excited to turn in grades!)

Once again we’ve got a range of subjects, perhaps not as broad or original as I’d once dreamed they would be, but nevertheless: a flower shop, a holiday craft fair, a record store, a tanning salon, a free-ride cab service, a country cover band, bingo night, open-session night, a poetry group, the hot springs, the Old Post, Charlie B’s, a holiday tea party for little girls, an upcycling thrift shop, a “found footage” film fest, and people still nursing a Dance Dance Revolution jones. Either this all sounds exciting or it doesn’t. We shall see. I’ll post highlights and excerpts next week, once it’s all over.

So now what? What are you going to do with the rest of your lives? We talked some about that.

When it comes to the future of journalism (and actual jobs in the field), I’ve got no insight that is any more prescient or helpful than anybody else’s big picture. A lot of times, people my age and older tell today’s college students that there’s never been a more exciting time to be entering the field. We say that because we honestly do see some potential opportunities that we never had. Some of us recall how many times we heard that our journalism dreams were “at least 10 years of hard news experience” out of our reach, which is the last thing you want to hear as an eager 22-year-old.

To us (almost) old farts, the new media platforms are exciting, so long as you can set aside the small matter of a paycheck. So much bullshit has been done away with. It feels like opportunity.

But we’re also lying, too. It was never easy to get a job at a newspaper, but they were also pretty freakin’ great places to work. Back then (whenever — the ’70s, the ’80s, the ’90s; five years ago) was also an exciting time to be entering the field. We had a blast.

And you will too. It’s a different sort of blast. Life is long and so are careers. Stop waiting for the renaissance to work itself out — I’ve already told you that I don’t think that even our grandchildren will figure out the perfect business model for media. Shouldn’t it take at least a century for us to completely dismantle and reinvent six centuries of the printed word? So hang on and fight on.

Some good news:

I’m a lousy prophet, but I do predict that we will all live to see a resurgence in quality journalism that employers pay good money to produce and readers pay good money to read/view, only we’ll be working for smaller audiences who have been rediscovered by a whole new version of what we now call “advertisers.”

We’ll have to let go of some of our most beloved concepts and objects (“the morning newspaper,” e.g., or “the new issue of Vanity Fair,” and things like “layouts,” or “book jackets”). First we’ll see a resurgence in accountability and investigative journalism, and shortly behind it will come a discovery of good feature writing. This will be annoying to those of us old enough to remember “New Journalism” and the era that came after it; the prose aspects of tomorrow’s feature writing, presented to us as innovation, will seem very much like an act of reinventing the wheel. When it cycles back around, I hope you’ll remember all the great stuff we read in this class. You will recognize its characteristics and see how this sort of work — cultural analysis, narrative, longform, shortform, empathetic and funny — has evolved.

Come visit me in the nursing home and we’ll talk about it.

PS: I’ll update the Jour494 portion of this blog a couple times more before I leave Montana — including a “further reading” list of all the stories and books I wanted to discuss with you, that I hope you’ll have time to read someday. Maybe long after graduation, when you’re feeling nostalgic about room 301.

PS 2: One last thing. For the love of pete, stop putting two spaces after a period. You know who you are. Do this for the editors and web producers you’re going to work for in this, the 21st century. Farhad Manjoo is here to tell you why. Two spaces after a period has outlived its typewriter-era purpose. I don’t care what your English teachers said. (Mine said it too. So did my 9th-grade typing teacher. They were right then, but they’re wrong now.)

Continuing my end-of-semester metaphor — this is what it’s like:

Today, however, we turned our attention to the criticism/reviews that students filed this semester. The TV recappers — Heather Jurva, Levi Hunt, Caitlyn Walsh — had to file five, 500-word recaps of consecutive episodes, and did so quite ably. Levi nitpicked “The Walking Dead,” even as he praised it; Caitlyn hilariously broke down this extra-loony season of “Dexter”; and Heather called “American Horror Story” on its own BS and took it to task for being such a mess this season.

We moved on to the reviews: Three “Lincoln” reviews, plus “Red Dawn,” “Looper,” “Trouble with the Curve,” “Rise of the Guardians” and “Life of Pi.”

Albums? Yes — Mumford & Sons, Taylor Swift, Philip Phillips, Lupe Fiasco and the Evens.

The rest? An art exhibit called “Evanescent”; a novel called “Storm Dancer”; the Pearl Jam concert to get votes for Montana Sen. Jon Tester; Bill O’Reilly’s “Killing Kennedy” and, last but not least, an energetic review of “Borderlands 2,” a video game, from Tom Holm.

That’s just a sampling of what was turned in on Oct. 3 and Nov. 26. The reviews were okay — and I gave full credit to students for turning them in — but only two or three truly stood out. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Writing reviews is hard, hard work. It’s one of those jobs that looks a whole lot easier than it is. Still, I encourage everyone to keep honing their critical skills. In one way or another, you’re going to need it — maybe not as a paid cultural critic, but certainly in this crazy-mixed-up world we live in, with its Yelp!-style consumer reviews, etc. Having an articulate, meaningful opinion is the currency in this culture, whether you’re in the pages of the New Yorker or trying to explain your reaction to a presentation in a business meeting. Abstractions (“it was good”; “that was awesome”) are more empty than ever. People get ahead now by being sharp and by keeping up.

For Wednesday, Dec. 5: Our last class. Bring Kleenex. But most of all, file your final assignment no later than 5 p.m.

Mayday! Jour494 is circling for a landing. And the pilot is losing consciousness. And the wing is on fire. No, wait, both wings are on fire! Which is to say that some people are still trying to find a story to write for their final assignment. The only good news is that there are no motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane.

I can’t look. Tell me what happens. All I know is: WE ARE CRASHING.

What else happened in Wednesday’s class? We talked about three of my own scene-like narrative Style stories of yore — each of them less than perfect, but all of them finished under one set of trying circumstances or another. There are links to them in the Nov. 26 recap. It probably wasn’t the most exciting conversation we’ve ever had, but at least I got some interesting feedback and maybe some of my reporting tips sunk in.

What’s happening on Monday, Dec. 3? It’s the penultimate class. We’ll be doing a group feedback/critique on the reviews that students wrote this semester. Neil, Dustin and Cody will critique the work of our three TV recappers. Heather, Levi and Caitlyn will critique three of their classmates’ movie reviews of “Lincoln” (plus one “Red Dawn”); Erik, Candace, Allison and Donelle have more movie reviews to critique; Ashley, Patrick, Tom and Carli are critiquing the album reviews; and Brooks, Eben and Billie have the “miscellaneous” category, including reviews of a video game, two books, an art exhibit and the Pearl Jam concert.

What makes a brilliant review? What should it have? Journey back to the Sept. 12 class recap and revisit Chris Klimek’s handy guidelines.

And everybody just hold on and breathe normally into the masks.

On Monday, we finished up critiquing the Nov. 7 scene stories. For my general diagnoses of these stories as a whole, please see the Nov. 19 recap. Meanwhile, here are excerpts from the three stories that I liked best, and why. (I haven’t fixed anything — the copy you’ll read here is exactly as it was filed to me.)

First up is Allison Bye’s report on the ol’ drag show at the Broadway Inn motel’s cocktail lounge. For those of you reading these blog posts far from Montana, there is little in the way of gay social/cultural life here, even in enlightened Missoula, which doesn’t even have a gay bar — at all. (Some other things I think Missoula needs, if anyone’s feeling entrepreneurial: a full-service car wash, a Sonic drive-in, and a Red Lobster — but I digress.)

Allison visited with the folks who oversee the royal court of Montana’s drag scene and did a great job of weaving their personal stories in with the live action on the stage. She balanced detail with character (and found a balance between drag personas and the men under the makeup) and kept the momentum and mood going in a tight structure. Here’s some:

“What kind of originally drew me to (drag) was the political aspect of it and the historical aspect,” Crismore said. “All of the things that it accomplished for the queer community in our history. The first people to really raise money for HIV research and to buy food for HIV-positive people, most of them were drag queens.” The International Court System was started in the ‘60s by Mama Jose, a drag queen in San Francisco, Crismore continued. During a time when sodomy laws were still enforced and it was illegal to be gay, she started doing shows and using the tips to bail out people who had been arrested that night under sodomy laws.

Dynamite Shagwell, dressed in a green halter-top dress and earrings, now takes the stage. Dynamite is in a wheelchair, but she still moves around the dance floor gracefully, and unlike her lip-synching counterparts, belts out Fun.’s “Some Nights” into a microphone. Dollar bills begin piling up on her lap.

“Thank you!” she yells into the microphone to the loudest cheers yet from the bar.

“I love that bitch!” Kiara Drake says as she walks her metallic platform boots out onto the floor again. Spritzer lounges in a suit behind the emcee table, a PBR in hand. At this time, Drake informs the audience it is time for an attitude check.

“Can I get an attitude check?” she yells, then points her microphone at the rest of the bar.

“Fuck you, bitch!” the bar roars back, which is, in fact, the correct response.

* * *

Tom Holm drove 90 miles west to spend a day in the life of the iconic 50,000 Silver Dollar, a tourist-tempting pit stop near the Idaho state line on I-90: it’s got gas, booze, and what we devoted Western road-trippers politely refer to as curios. What this story may lack in technical and structural finesse, it makes up for in vibe and a real sense of being there. If I was the editor on this piece, I’d be delighted to whup it into shape — all the good stuff is here, thanks to Tom. The tone of the piece matches the feel of the place — or, at least, I feel like it took me there. (I will know for sure in about 3-1/2 weeks, when I pack up the car and head west for the holidays and the looong way home via California, and stop to see the 50,000 Silver Dollar for myself.) Take it away, Tom:

Rex Lincoln the owner of the bar, motel, gas station combo that is the 50,000 Silver Dollar complex, hates it when you ask about the swords.

“You heard it from the old fuck,” he said.

He chain-smokes cigarettes, alternating between Marlboro reds and Marlboro lights on the West corner of the bar from about eight to nine-thirty.  Lincoln is a tall, lurching old man with Larry King suspenders and matching pointy shoulders.

“I own the place so I can smoke where I want,” he said.

And has done so for over 50 years.  Lincoln inherited the bar when the original proprietor and Rex’s father, Gerry Lincoln’s health began to fail.  Rex had recently graduated from Montana State University—the original name for the Missoula College—with a business degree and decided to take over.  He married his wife the same year and has seen both the successes and failures of owning the bar.

“We do not really get regular customers,” he said between spitting up a little blood into his hanky. “Regular is a yearly customer from Seattle or Missoula.”

* * *

Now, let me address one thing. You might notice that my three favorite stories have language in them (and scenes) that would give most editors carpal-tunnel from hitting the delete key so much, and certainly wouldn’t see print in a so-called “family” newspaper. I want to say that I didn’t favor these stories only because of their shock value and f-bombs. I liked them because they are the most effectively immersive. The writers took me there with their words and reporting. They didn’t blanch at the exotic or gross. Their details didn’t confuse me. They stepped back and gave the scene context. I’d be just as happy to read this kind of piece on a church service or a grade-school Thanksgiving play.

But it didn’t work out that way this time. We went for the naughty.

Eben Keller made one of my dreams for this class come true: He covered a raucous, blow-out party at someone’s house — some dude’s 24th birthday, but really just an excuse for everyone involved (except Eben!) to get shitfaced. I’ve been begging the class — someone, anyone, everyone — to do this story from day one: After all, what is more quintessentially college than the house party on the edge of a nervous breakdown? Although Eben is his own harshest critic, you can tell that he took down every detail — yes, even the name of the dog and the brand of the beer, as writing coaches everywhere have encouraged reporters to do. Behold, the piss mattress:

The ceiling tiles were stained and sagging, the furniture was nothing worth protecting, shoes were mandatory, and the bathroom was a mattress in the backyard. A “piss mattress,” which still got slept on from time to time.

Five stringed instruments— a banjo, a fiddle, two acoustic guitars and a mandolin— and a single snare drum, were tucked into the corner of the main room, and sat for no more than 15 minutes at a time before being played.

Each time an announcement would be made to the guests that it was time to gather around and enjoy the show.

“If you love music then get in here and shut the fuck up!” shouted a dyed-red haired, freshly tattooed patron from the top of a coffee table.

The band, a country folk punk rock group called “Bird’s Mile Home” played on more than three occasions during the night, separated by the lead singer, 25-year-old Phillip Lear, playing solo or with anybody in the house willing to pick up a guitar and sing along.

A dildo was thrown around and shoved in the face of unsuspecting party-goers. A girl put it in her pants and pulled it out through the zipper, and Neumayer promptly got on his knees and sucked it.

Fast-forwarding to the story’s end. Note how Eben chose to a morning-after epilogue and house lore as the final image…

You can drink until sunrise, drink until your sober, or drink until dialysis, but nothing will ever keep that party from coming to an end.

Those who survived the night woke up to the house in disarray. One of the house-mates woke up and continued drinking before heading to work at the supermarket two blocks away. The stale smell of cigarettes and spilled wine has soaked into every fiber of the already stained, clumpy carpet.

The home is starting to show it’s age after all these years. The water-soaked swollen ceiling in the living room collapsed two weeks after Neumayer’s birthday.

Living next door to the run-down remnant of 5 decades of wild parties, is a supposedly schizophrenic/bi-polar/manic neighbor, who has called the police to complain more times than anyone can count.

After one particularly long night of drinking and playing guitar on the porch, the cops were called again, which forced all porch related conversations indoors.

Once the cops left, however, the neighbor came out of her house and pinned a note on the front door, which still floats around the house to this day, and is responsible for how the house got its name.

“The things I hear coming from your porch are ugly and vulgar and make me sad,” read the note.

* * *

This story and another one from the class (about a karaoke night) got a discussion going:

When should a reporter on assignment — especially about nightlife — join in and have a drink? When should reporters imbibe with sources? Should they ever?

The typical j-school answer is: It depends. I’ve reported stories before where most everyone was drinking heavily and I’m glad that I was NOT. Partly because I want to do my best work. Partly because I don’t want the fact that “the reporter was drinking, too!” to become part of the criticism or complaints (if there are any) after the story runs. With booze (and anything stronger), I think it’s best to avoid it, even when the assignment is a party. Sometimes your subject will insist. Maybe you don’t drink. Maybe you’re in recovery. Maybe you just want to maintain that journalistic line that separates them from you. There are noble reasons not to — the best of which is that you want all your senses about you, sober and sharp. (I realize that j-schools and creative nonfiction departments have always been filled with young men who think they’re the next Hunter S. Thompson. Let me assure you that the world is not asking for it to be you.)

There are also good — sometimes great — reasons to take a (ONE!) drink. It’s almost always about mood and tone. Accepting the offer of a drink sends a subliminal signal of sharing. Most good journalism is on some level and act of sharing — information, details, opinions, secrets. Booze is a social lubricant.

Our friend Gene Weingarten set of a dither at a nonfiction writers’ conference a while back when he described one such situation, only it involved pot. You can read the ethical kerfuffle here.

I spent the first decade of my reporting career convinced that I should never, ever drink while reporting on the scene. (Or while reporting from the newsroom, but company policy made that clear.) There is a whole lot of misplaced nostalgia about journalists and drinking. It’s mostly bullshit.

What about food? Here I suddenly do a 180. I think reporters should always eat what’s offered to them, even if it might be poisoned. You are tasting for ingredient. You are breaking bread with people you don’t know. You are being polite. Food engenders conversation — and takes you into kitchens, where people are themselves. I realize the same argument can be made about bars, but you can get into a bar and do the job on strictly club sodas and cranberry juice. But if you refuse someone’s homemade lasagna, Christmas bizcochitos or backyard barbecue then you have TOTALLY BLOWN IT.

So, after basically saying “Don’t drink while reporting, kids,” I remembered the one Style assignment every year where I drank as much as I liked and came to depend on the hangover as inspiration for the story that I co-wrote the morning after: When Bill Booth (and later Amy Argetsinger) and I teamed up to cover Vanity Fair’s after-party on Oscar nights. To every rule, a glaring exception:

And this of course sends our class off on a celebrity tangent, wherein Gran’pa Hank talks about all the mooooovie stars he “met” back in the day. (The photo above is from VF’s 2009 party. It is the creepiest picture of me ever.)

Enough about me!

No, wait — MORE about me!

For Wednesday, Nov. 28: Your reading assignment is to read three stories, all by meeeeeeee. Like your final, they are mainly scene stories, but they have deeper characterizations and step-backs. One of them might be a profile. One of them might be about a place. They are basically hybrid feature stories with essay-like qualities.

I didn’t pick them because I want to go out on an ego trip. I picked them because they are (possibly) flawed or were filed in situations where I had to zig when I thought I might zag; or the deadline was too tight, or (in one case) not tight enough. Also, they are each within the target word-count zone of your final assignment (2,000 words). I’m using my own stuff this time so that we can hear from the author directly — what worked, what didn’t, why is this story written the way it is? etc. What I want you to do is mark them up and bring questions. Please read:

• “The 24-Karat Party,” a report from a “gold party” in the suburbs, just as the economy was falling apart. (The Washington Post, Sept. 30, 2008)

• “Pilgrims’ Pit Stop,” a story about Maryland House, a popular I-95 rest stop, written and filed on Thanksgiving eve. (The Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2002) This ancient story is behind an archive paywall. Students have printouts.

• “Host with the Most: The Cult of Bob Barker,” a scene piece/mini-profile of the legendary “Price is Right” host as he neared his retirement at 83. (The Washington Post, May 9, 2007)

We’ll spend half the class discussing technique. We’ll spend the other half talking about YOUR STORIES. Bring what you have — ideas, worries, plans, early drafts. You have eight days until it’s due.

Kaimin photo: Tim Goessman

On Monday we went around our beautiful circular wooden classroom table and began critiquing the scene stories that were filed Nov. 7.

Some of the stories have been published in the Kaimin once the writers filed to me first: Dustin Askim’s story on the campus Belegarth scene grew a little in word-count and became a Friday Kaimin cover story on Nov. 9, just when the editors needed it most.

Brooks Johnson wrote about a new go-kart/laser tag emporium in Missoula, which also ran in the Nov. 9 Kaimin. And Billie Loewen’s piece about the tailgating faithful — who remain resolute even if the Griz football season has been less than they hoped — ran on Nov. 16, in advance of the storied Montana/Montana State game. (Montana State won. The final insult.)

Overall, I think people did a fair job of finding and observing a slice of local pop-cultural life. Colorful details — check. Dialogue — check, mostly.

The hard part, as many in the class discovered, is how to make the details and vignettes cohere into a fully-realized feature story — something with a beginning, middle and an end, but also a section where we step back and suss out some theme or meaning: why do people participate in this scene? What does it tell us about ourselves, our culture, this moment? What does is feel like? What does it mean?

Many struggled with the literal beginning. We had a lot of stories start with the weather, or “the crowd’s not here yet,” in which the story (including the writer and the reader) just waits around. That strictly chronological structure is often a misstep. Instead, start with action; get right in there; use the second or third paragraph to tell us who/what/where/when/how. (And delay firing your big guns for the why, somewhere in the middle or near the end.)

A note on chronological structure: Novice feature writers are tempted to use exact time stamps in their stories as a structure or transition technique. (Example: “It’s 8:49 p.m. and …”) I call this the Jack Bauer effect. Unless the story follows the harvesting and transplanting of donated organs or a race against a bomb detonation — where seconds really do count — approximation is less distracting. “Early afternoon.” “Shortly before sunrise.” “After all the bars closed at 2  …”

Students also had to confront issues of, for lack of a better word, anti-climax. When you’re reporting a story, you have to play the cards you’re dealt; if the people and the scene aren’t so interesting, you have to report harder, interview deeper, find someone else to talk to or observe. Don’t feel obligated to keep hanging out with the owner or the person in charge of the event. Remember that an underwhelming crowd is still made up of people who cared enough to come check it out.

And even when something is eventful or exciting and you have lots of great notes, you still have to be the one who will entertain and inform the reader with the facts at hand. The answer is not to fill the story with bad jokes and snarky asides. The answer is usually found in feeling. Convey what it felt like to be there; what it meant to those who were there. While reporting, ask better questions. I’ve always believed that there is no problem that a full notebook can’t solve.

On Monday, Nov. 26, we’ll pick up the critiques where we left off — we have seven left. There are three stories in this batch that I really liked. I’ll share some more excerpts next week.

The second review is also due Monday, for those who haven’t filed it yet.

And we’ll be talking about the final assignment some more. Have you found your subject yet?

Meanwhile, no class on Wednesday, Nov. 21. Happy Thanksgiving!

We spent a fair amount of time Wednesday discussing Tom Junod’s 8,100-word profile of Mister Rogers. It ran 14 (!!) years ago in Esquire and it’s still one of those pieces that makes me tear up. It’s beautifully constructed. Its paragraphs are dense but many of its sentences are deliberately simple, mirroring Fred Rogers’s way of speaking to children. Yet the story is also very deeply felt and intellectually considered.

The access Junod got to Mister Rogers can only be admired and envied — the paragraph where Mister Rogers strips down at the health club to change for his daily swim is, I think, one of the best ever written, not only because it describes Mister Rogers naked, but it does so without a trace of snark or humor. It’s just so real and true. Which is what Fred Rogers was about.

Now. A word about Mister Rogers. I was born in 1968. One thing I’ve noticed is that people my age and younger have, for the most part, a deep and abiding respect for Fred Rogers. He was a real friend to us. We trusted him. This Esquire piece was the first time I’d seen Mister Rogers regarded with reverence and depth and no awkward humor. I think this article validated Mister Rogers’s elevation to pop-cultural sainthood during the last five years of his life. This story taught me a lot about tone.

But baby boomers? Anyone who was too old for Mister Rogers’s first demographic? For them it’s all pedophile jokes, all the time; morning-zoo crew gags and Eddie Murphy’s “Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood,” etc. (And my students, born around 1990? They’re a little “meh” on him. They knew him, they respect him. I sensed a little ambivalence.)

Back to the story: Does the resonant use of “once upon a time” work? Should Junod have led with Old Rabbit? (Should Old Rabbit have factored in at all? Is it necessary for Junod to weave in his own childhood?) Are there places to cut? Should there be more biographical information of Rogers? Should we learn more about his television show and how it’s made? Are the paragraphs too long?

I think you know my answers. (This story is perfect.)

Meanwhile …

Thanksgiving is upon us and it’s time talk turkey and face reality. We have five classes left. I’ve adjusted the remainder of our syllabus accordingly, and — the big news — I’ve changed the final assignment a bit. I just don’t think it’s possible to pull off a longform narrative in under three weeks. I was starting to get some signs about this from some of the students. All semester I’ve been suggesting that it was never too early to start the final project, but I should have been more emphatic. And even then I’m not sure that would have worked. So, in my ongoing effort to not be perceived as a pushover, I went ahead and pre-pushed myself over.

Not because I’m a wonderful guy. I’m just using an ancient editor Jedi mindtrick of re-budgeting. For the record, I think everyone in Jour494 is capable of doing an intimate, surprising, 3,000-word feature about someone’s relationship to making or consuming popular culture. I don’t doubt the ability; what worries me is time. And I just don’t want to read any half-assed efforts or last-minute Hail Mary drafts.

So, the new final assignment is still going to be a long(ish) story, but the target is now 2,000 words instead of 3,000. It’s to be more like the scene story you just did, with a little more intimacy and a broader use of scenes; it will also require a bigger “step-back” section, which will get at the real meaning of the story. It’s a hybrid feature story, blending aspects of the scene story and the reported essay. I’ve also pushed the due date as far as it can go, to Dec. 5.

We spent a lot of time Wednesday brainstorming and came up with some great ideas that can be turned around in 21 days. Now get to work.

• • •

For Monday, Nov. 19: We’ll be doing roundtable critiques of the Nov. 7 scene stories — please roll up your sleeves for a good scrubbing and mark up those copies with feedback, raves and criticism.

And take a moment just to admire the range of subjects your Jour494 colleagues have covered: a wild house party, a karaoke night, Belegarth players, Dead Hipsters, drag queens, a roadside tourist trap, a sports bar, tailgaters, a go-kart track, a mixed-martial arts competition, a weekly pub trivia night, the Day of the Dead parade, an estate sale, a spook house, a videogame smackdown, a charity ride, a psychic fair.

All that!

Sorry for the delay in recapping. You can tell that the semester has reached the frenzy point here at the School of Journalism. My crew in the Pollner seminar (aka this class) is spread so thin that you can hear the knives clanking in their mayonnaise jars; just being around them makes me vicariously exhausted. I remember this part of college quite well: all the term papers coming due at once, the looming finals, the registration (and graduation) deadlines for next semester, and the inescapable realization that the student newspaper still has to come out. A good number of my students went to Helena on Tuesday to cover election night for their advanced reporting classes, but managed to return, bleary-eyed, in time for our Wednesday Skype session with the multi-Pulitzered Gene Weingarten. (Depicted above, as he is every Sunday in the Washington Post Magazine, by illustrator Eric Shansby.)

On Monday (the 5th), we had discussed seven stories in Gene’s book, The Fiddler in the Subway, and once again, it turns out that a Weingarten story will start about 100 different discussions about 100 different things — some of them related to the topic, many of them tangential. That’s why his Washington Post online chat has evolved into a free-associative conversation among like-minded strangers/readers about the many ways that the human condition is both funny and horrifying.

I was happy to let the class conversation spin out too, so long as we kept noticing how damn entertaining (and gripping) Gene’s feature stories are. Remember: They all ran in a newspaper. Stories like this can and should run alongside the day’s news, in print and online. If you ghettoize (or elevate) great feature writing to some special twee place on the web or in heavy-paper-stock journals, a la McSweeney’s, you significantly lessen their power to surprise. You also reduce the potential audience.

Talking to Gene in person (or as close as we can get — Skype really is amazing, when the signal is strong) can give readers a whole new insight into why his stories are the way they are, and why they are so good.

Our one-hour conversation addressed some of the stories we read from The Fiddler in the Subway — especially “The Great Zucchini,” “The Armpit of America,” “Doonesbury’s War,” and “Tears for Audrey.” (Shockingly, we never even got to talk about “The Fiddler in the Subway,” probably Gene’s best-known piece, in which he installed master violinist Joshua Bell in the Washington, D.C., subway system as a busker, to see if anyone would notice greatness in their hectic midst.)

The real takeaway from Gene’s work — the lesson I’ve always taken away, anyhow, from reading him and knowing him — is the sense of adventure or quest that defines almost all of his stories, whether they are humorous or tragic. They’re all trying to answer a question, sometimes not always answerable, but always about the human condition in one way or another: Why does Washington’s most successful children’s entertainer-for-hire have such a disorganized personal life? Why did the Hardy Boys books seem so great to a 12-year-old Gene and yet so awful to a middle-aged Gene, and who wrote those books anyhow? What’s the “worst” town in America, subjectively speaking? What’s up with someone who never votes?

Many of the stories are written and structured as a quest, in such a way that you can see how the reporting went, how the facts were discovered, how the story is built. It’s like visiting a cathedral that is still surrounded by the scaffolding.

We talked to Gene about reporting and structure. I noticed — and tried to get him to explain — how easily people tend to let him in, even when he is upfront with them about the sarcasm and humor that may work against their best interests when the story is published. Such as when he calls up a non-voting Michigan man named Ted Prus and asks if he can profile him — a conversation recounted at the top of the story:

“Hi. This is The Washington Post. Are you registered to vote?”

“No.”

“Are you planning on voting?”

“No.”

“We’d like to write a long story about you. Would you be interested? It would make you famous.”

“You mean a famous idiot?”

“Actually, we’re not sure. There’s no guarantee one way or the other.”

“Sounds good.”

A similar exchange happens (and is recounted in the story) with Sharlene “Shar” Peterson of the Battle Mountain, Nev., Chamber of Commerce before Gene embarks on a 2001 story pronouncing the little town to be “the armpit of America”:

She told me a little about the town, and then I told her what I was proposing to do.

She laughed, then didn’t say much of anything for a bit.

The Battle Mountain Chamber of Commerce was thinking.

Shar?

“Well, I mean, who wants to be called an armpit? But, you know …”

I sensed where she was going. I wanted to kiss her.

” … This could be an asset. We’re just a dying, ugly little mining town without a real identity. It could be an opportunity.”

Is this a great country or what?

“Listen,” Shar said, a trace of concern creeping into her voice. “I have to tell you we now have a Super 8 Motel and a McDonald’s. I hope that doesn’t knock us out of the running.”

How does Gene do this? He is upfront with people right away, perhaps more than most reporters are. Why do people still say okay to it? Many of us are already socially awkward about calling people up and asking for permission to hang out, take notes and publish intimate details. Gene says he is too, but that he’s pretty much always told all his subjects, right away, that if they let him write about them, three things will happen when the story is published and they first read it: 1., They will feel like it is fair. (If nothing else, it’s fair — people get their say and are quoted accurately and attempts have been made to depict the situations from all sides; complexities have not been sanded down into oversimplified descriptions, etc.)

2., They will end up liking about 3/4 of it.

And 3., They will be upset — possibly very upset — by 1/4 of it.

He tells them this at the beginning. He also follows up with them after the story runs to see what their reaction was; even if it they’re furious at him, he wants to know.

Gene and I both agree that your allegiance is to the truest possible story you can tell, even if it’s painful for the subject. I’m more of the Joan Didion “writers-are-always-selling-somebody-out” type. I do a lot of what Gene does at the end of the process, in my fact-checking and farewell phase, instead of the beginning; but I do agree that sources need to know what they’re getting into at the beginning, how deep things will get, and they also need to be reminded of the journalistic process while the reporting is going on.

The most important thing is that you have to sweat this out every time. You have to wake up at night and fret about the struggle between staying true to the story and potentially hurting some feelings. I think the balance we’re all looking for exists in those anxiety attacks.

Gene says he saves the hardest questions — the most sensitive, painful things — for last. Smart man.

• • •

There is NO CLASS on MONDAY, NOV. 12 (Veterans Day).

For Wednesday, Nov. 14: Our time is running short — only six classes left. We will continue brainstorming and nailing down ideas for the long(ish) narrative feature story, which is due Dec. 3. I’m going to ease up on the readings for the duration of the semester. (There are many fantastic pieces I’d assign if we had another semester to keep going, but I want us to get as much time as possible to discuss, troubleshoot and pre-edit the students’ features.) I have assigned one reading for Wednesday: “Can You Say Hero?” Tom Junod’s classic Esquire profile of (Mister) Fred Rogers in 1998. Read it, mark it up, and come ready to talk about it.

And don’t forget: Your second review (of a film, album, live performance, video game or book, etc.) is due by Nov. 26. That’s most of you. The last of the TV recappers are finishing up in the next week.

PS: Everyone successfully filed their scene stories — some later than others, but all got it in by late Wednesday night, so thanks very much. I’ll bring printouts for you on Nov. 14 and we’ll do our roundtable critique on the 19th.

Photo illustration: smellslikepop.com

Last Wednesday’s class was more of a had-to-be-there thing.

As we move into reading and talking about long (or sometimes just long-ish) narratives, our class sessions are becoming more and more like a book group. (Without wine and Trader Joe’s-style nosh, alas.) We wonder “how’d she get that?” and try to think of answers. We ask “what’s it about” followed by “what’s it really about?” on everything now. We read aloud sentences we really liked. We talk about what works, what doesn’t. I’m holding forth a little more on HOW to do it — how to get people to talk to you. How to hang out. How to arrive in a new and strange place and ask questions. I’m finding that I can’t take notes for a recap AND lead the discussion.

On Halloween, we talked about Stephanie Hayes’s excellent portrait (see Oct. 29 recap for link) of a Clearwater, Fla., costume shop and the woman who owns it. Look deeply at this story and notice how many details are crammed into it, so effortlessly, with just the right combination of explaining the place without over-explaining it. What’s it really about? Fantasy. Becoming something else. Death (the proprietor is downsizing, dealing with health issues; other costume shops are closing, she’s buying up some of their garb). Death is almost always a theme in a good narrative — that’s what Gene Weingarten would say.

And, of course, we talked about Susan Orlean’s New Yorker piece on the Shaggs, the worst (best?) rock band of all time. It’s pretty clear when you read it that that story is really about abuse. Or delusion. Also, as documented time and again whenever the story is about “outsider” art, that weird way that something beguiling and even beautiful emerges out of something dreadful.

To torture my students, we listened to “Philosophy of the World.” Just the song, not the whole album. I would have loved to play the whole album, but I’m not that mean.

For Monday, Nov. 5: We’re discussing the work of GENE WEINGARTEN. Here, then, is the master practitioner of “what is this story really about.” We’ll be discussing several pieces from “The Fiddler in the Subway.”

Read the introduction, “The Great Zucchini,” “The Ghost of the Hardy Boys,” “The Armpit of America” and “Tears for Audrey.” (For Nov. 7, read “Doonesbury’s War,” “None of the Above,” and “The Fiddler in the Subway.”) These are all fantastic stories, by one of the very best, if not the best. Enjoy.

More interesting-looking books have just come out, written by people I know and like. Act quick and you could get a copy for yourself. I’ve purchased TWO copies each of new books by David Von Drehle and Eric Deggans:

Deggans, the extremely sharp and prolific TV/media critic for the Tampa Bay Times, is out with Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation. This book is not a rant or harangue. This is smart, diligent inquiry and analysis about an issue that vexes social progress and fair media.

And Von Drehle, formerly the best writer at The Washington Post and now the best writer at Time, has at last finished his book about Lincoln, Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America’s Most Perilous Year. He has excellent timing, wouldn’t you say? I know what you’re thinking: Does the world need another book about Abe Lincoln? When it has David Von Drehle’s name on it, you bet.

How can you get either (not both, ya piggly-wigglies) of these for free? Click “contact” on the nav bar at hankstuever.com and send me an email telling me why you want the book you want. First-come, first-served. Mailed to you totally free, from me, in Montana.

Go for it!

UPDATE: Stop going for it. All four copies are now claimed. Thanks for the emails. This whole exercise is meant to encourage interest in the book. If you didn’t win one, buy one, or request it at your local library!