Courses

Last summer, we reported about the temporary move from New York to Los Angeles of New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean. A snappy Twitter exchange (or two) later, we are now happy to herald her participation in Mediabistro’s upcoming online Literary Festival & Workshops, running July 16 through August 1.

Orlean is one of several high-profile speakers set to provide literary wisdom and guidance:

Susan Orlean  Author Journalist, The New Yorker

Constance Hale  Author, Sin & Syntax

Opening Keynote

5 Secrets for Wicked Good Prose

Rebecca Skloot  Author, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Jason Boog  Publishing Editor GalleyCat, Mediabistro

Unconventional Publicity: How She Made Her Debut Science Book Into a Best-Seller

How to Build a Social Media Platform for Your Book

Sarah Fine  Author and Child Psychologist

Jason Allen Ashlock  Literary Agent and President Movable Type Management

Overcome Obstacles to Become the Writer You Want to Be

The Literary Agent’s Wishlist: Multimedia Ideas for Print, Digital, Film & TV

Read more

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

USC grad Randal Kleiser (Grease, The Blue Lagoon) continues to spread the word about the phenomenal instructional DVD he put together a few years ago about his late teacher Nina Foch. As well he should.

Underwritten by George Lucas, the DVD was culled from around 100 hours of footage shot by Kleiser during Foch’s USC course about acting and filmmaking. Following a recent speech at Athens’ Michael Cacoyannis Foundation that focused heavily on the DVD, Kleiser talked to greekreporter.com about the Oscar nominee for Executive Suite and Emmy nominee for Lou Grant:

“Nina Foch was the best teacher I ever had and I knew her teachings had to be recorded for future generations. Even as she continued acting in film and television, her passion for teaching lasted for over forty years.”

“Her course was immensely popular because she developed her own unique style drawing from her experiences studying with Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler and Uta Hagen, as well as, the directors, Vincente Minnelli, Stanley Kubrick, Cecil B. DeMille and Otto Preminger. She taught a generation of filmmakers including John McTiernan, Amy Heckerling, Ed Zwick, Ron Underwood and many others. Nina went from being my teacher, to my mentor, to my good friend.”

Read more

The beauty of online learning is of course that the wisdom can be sourced from anywhere. Recent graduates of mediabistro’s Social Media Marketing Boot Camp include Michelle Nadon, president and CEO of Toronto firm Media Intelligence, and Gregg Jaden, CEO of LA Web design specialists Broadwave Studios:

“I would recommend this program to anyone who wants an edge in social media,” suggests Jaden. “The varying perspectives of each speaker helps simplify key points to focus on for social strategies. Mediabistro and its representatives were awesome! Additionally, they provided essential back-end communication tools for a solid user experience.”

Read more

Mediabistro is offering a new class this spring: Writing for Reality Television.

How does one actually “write” for reality TV? As is now well known, unscripted TV relies heavily on writers and segment producers for everything from formatting and pitching to voice-overs and host intros.

Reality TV is a broad genre that includes totally scripted comedies, documentary style dramas, competitions and niche cultural curiosities. Knowing where the opportunities are and how you fit in is the first step to narrow down what you will write and who it is for.

Taught by Colleen Kluttz, who has worked in the story department for ABC’sThe Bachelor and Bravo’s Real Housewives of New Jersey, the March 13-April 24 track will cover:

• Structure and formatting for reality TV, from ½ hour to hour long shows
• The importance of casting and character development
• Editing reality and how to write storylines in post production
• How to write for the type of show you want to make
• How to turn your pitch into a sizzle reel

Read more

This weekend, Peter Fox (pictured) will be teaching another one of his two-day “Inside Track” screenwriting workshops at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey. The one-time Hollywood script reader and doctor has been in this sideline business for over a decade now, and though he has never taken a film through to the screen, he did help push along Air Force One.

Ahead of the February 4-5 $279 event, Fox chatted with Gannett’s MyCentralJersey.com. Among other things, he recalled how the spark for his seminars practice turned out to be an LA event put on in the 1980s by the story structure field’s most celebrated name, Robert McKee:

“It was such a let down,” Fox said while calling from his Connecticut home. “McKee wouldn’t field any questions, and well, it just wasn’t a pleasant experience. But that experience made me realize that I could compete with this guy. I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to eat his lunch.’”

Read more

The line-up of speakers for mediabistro.com’s upcoming online workshop “Social Media Marketing Boot Camp” is once again full of recognizable names. Among those participating are Morin Oluwole, responsible for strategic partner development at Facebook, and Anthony DeRosa, social media editor at Reuters.

The video presentations made by these and other industry experts, with interactive Q&A, can be watched live each week and accessed anytime thereafter by course registrants. This virtual learning track runs February 16 through April 5, and costs $499. However, if you register by tomorrow, January 18, you’ll receive $100 off the course fee for a discounted total of $399. Members of mediabistro.com’s AvantGuild are entitled to the even lower early-bird rate of $374.

Read more

Following similar stints in 2010 and 2011 by, respectively, Leslie Wayne of the New York Times and CNN’s Susan Lisovicz, NBCLA producer-editor Sharon Bernstein has been named Arizona State University’s newest Donald W. Reynolds visiting professor in business journalism. She will teach at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in the spring.

Bernstein rejoined NBC (she started her career at St. Louis affiliate KSDK-TV) after the termination of a long and illustrious career at the LA Times, where she contributed to the paper’s Pulitzer prize-winning coverage of the 1998 North Hollywood bank shootout and 2004 California wildfires. From this week’s ASU announcement:

“We’re delighted to have an editor and reporter of Sharon’s caliber to share her knowledge of business journalism with our Cronkite students,” said Andrew Leckey, president of the Reynolds Center and the Reynolds Chair at Cronkite. “Throughout her career at the Los Angeles Times, she exhibited the professionalism and investigative curiosity so important in cutting through to today’s economic realities for the reader.”

Read more

Although the life story of Claudia Suzanne (pictured), which encompasses a stint as a rock’n'roll drummer, MS, and numerous west coast ups and downs, merits its own biography, she has instead made a living ghostwriting other people’s books. She also teaches a course titled Certified Ghostwriter Training.

Her next set of weekly remote classes begins August 29 and come with a price tag of $1210. That’s a lot of moula, but Suzanne’s credentials include a non-fiction bestseller, a couple of award-winning fiction tomes, and a number of satisfied student testimonials.

Read more

Billy Pittard, a well-known name in LA advertising and branding circles, graduated from Middle Tennesse State University in 1978 with a bachelor of science degree in mass communications. He went on to found mega-agency Pittard Sullivan, which thrived during the good old days, and has continued to wield a lot of influence in his fields of specialty.

Now, he’s ready to say goodbye to the bright lights of LA and impart his wisdom upon the students of his Alma Mater as the new chairman of the school’s Department of Electronic Media Communication. Degrees are currently offered in media journalism, media management, media production, photography, digital animation, and digital media.

Read more

For the past eight summers, Will Weinstein, a retired investment banker and teacher at San Francisco State University, has skipped across the Pacific Ocean to run a post-graduate summer course at the University of Hawaii, Mãnoa’s law school, titled “Ethics and Integrity in the Real World.”

This Thursday, he will close out an impressive 2011 roster of class speakers with none other than Sam Zell, for a conversation entitled “The Ethical Boundaries of Entrepreneurial Behavior.” Coming on the heels of last week’s LA Times cuts, Zell should be glad this talk is not happening at USC or UCLA. From the conversation series blurb:

Zell’s investments span industries and continents, and include interests in real estate, energy, logistics, transportation, media, and health care. He is recognized as a founding father of today’s public real estate industry after creating three of the largest real estate investment trusts (REITs) in history.

Read more