In this lesson, students will read a comic about reporting on comics, and explore both the news literacy and the life lessons they find inside.
Lesson Overview
Featured Article: “Origin Story: How a Comics Reporter Uncovers Marvels”
George Gene Gustines is The New York Times’s comics-industry reporter, a job he does as a “side gig” when he’s finished with his full-time role as a Times operations manager. In this comic he explains how he comes up with his ideas, pitches them to editors, then researches, interviews, fact-checks and writes his articles.
In this lesson, you’ll learn about how he both juggles all the details of getting those stories right and makes them interesting even to non-comics fans. But you’ll also see how someone with a passion can make his own path — and you’ll practice coming up with ways to do that yourself.
Warm-Up
As the comic you’re about to read will make clear, Mr. Gustines is a lifelong comics fan who has managed to create his own comics beat by regularly convincing Times editors that the genre is worthy of coverage. Though he has over 800 Times bylines (that is, lines naming him the author of an article), most of them came about after he pitched an editor on an idea. (To “pitch” in this context means to try to persuade someone in charge of a Times section like Arts or Business that a story deserves to be in the paper.)
If you were as brave as Mr. Gustines — or as passionate about a subject — and decided to pitch someone an idea about a project you’d like to undertake, who and what would you pitch and why?
Your pitch can be about anything. It could be a plan you suggest to your parents about a vacation you think the family should take, or a pet you’d like to adopt. It could be a project you describe to a teacher, coach or boss about work you’d like to do, whether an independent study or a new role on a team or in a workplace. Or, it could be a longtime dream you want to persuade a friend to undertake with you, like starting a band or a business together.
As you think about your pitch, consider how you could make it appeal to your listener immediately. What would you need to say to get them excited and make them want to say yes?
Share your ideas with a partner or small group and feel free to borrow ideas from others. Later in this lesson you’ll have a chance to revisit this idea and, potentially, make it a reality.
Questions for Writing and Discussion
Read the comic, then answer the following questions:
1. First, what stands out to you about this piece? What did you notice about the interplay between the writing and the art? What details caught your eye? What did you learn?
2. How does Mr. Gustines get his ideas? He notes that when the idea comes from an editor, he gets to skip two steps and go right to reporting. Why would that be?
3. In Step 2, Mr. Gustines asks himself three questions. How do each of the articles he gives as examples respond to those questions?
4. What is happening in Step 3? How does the art help make that step vivid and clear?
5. What do you learn from Step 4 about how journalists report stories? Of the three activities featured, which do you think you would be best at if you were a journalist? Why?
6. What aspects of Step 6 can you relate to best? Which parts of Mr. Gustines’s writing process mirror your own?
7. What roles do editors play, according to Step 7? Has anyone ever edited your work? If so, was it helpful?
8. What examples does Step 7 give to show that a reporter has to both write for a general audience and keep passionate fans in mind at the same time?
9. Why is fact-checking such an important step?
10. In Step 9, Mr. Gustines celebrates “for 30 seconds,” then begins to worry. Why?
11. Mr. Gustines writes that it is his goal to have a comics article on Page 1 of the print New York Times. How realistic do you think that goal is? To help answer the question, check out Today’s Paper and scroll down to the window where you can look at today’s front page in print via a PDF (in either the New York, National or International editions). Can a light or “fun” article work on the front page? Why or why not? For example, here is the front page of the National edition for Jan. 26, 2022. Scroll down and read all the headlines, including those at the bottom. What do you notice about the mix?
Going Further
Option 1: Pitch your project.
In the warm-up, you came up with a project you’d like to pitch to someone. Now you’re actually going to do that. But first, come up with a plan to make it as tempting to your listener as possible. Consider: What’s in it for them? Why should they say yes? How can you appeal to their wants and needs as well as your own?
As you learned in this comic, editors are important, even at the idea stage. Come up with a pitch, but before you deliver it to your intended audience, run it by someone else first. Ask them, What in my pitch is most convincing? Where is my argument weak? What else could I say that I’m not thinking of?
Once your pitch is as compelling as you can make it, try it out. The worst that could happen is that your listener could say no — and even if this pitch doesn’t work, it might pave the way for a future one.
(And if you’d like more inspiration from The New York Times, you might read about the various ideas sportswriters recently pitched when given the chance to report on anything they liked as long as it was related to the theme of “freedom.”)
Option 2: Make a comic of your own illustrating a process you enjoy.
Take inspiration from the piece you just read, and write and illustrate your own comic that teaches a process, as this one does. Stick figures are fine — or, if you’d like to, you can work with an illustrator, as Mr. Gustines did.
Using his comic as a mentor, describe and illustrate your process step by step, offering insight into why each step matters. Whether you are illustrating the process of changing the oil in a car, knitting a potholder, doing a handstand, baking cookies, or anything else, engage your audience along the way. Why should they care? How can you get and keep their attention? What can you show that will help them succeed if they were to try to do this thing on their own?
Option 3: Make a comic to show what you learn about comics.
Scroll through Mr. Gustines’s reporting to find articles that interest you, whether on a new Black Panther series, Wonder Woman’s evolving look, a Walking Dead story, a Black Batman, the role of tech in comic books, or a new gay Superman.
What can you learn about the comics industry? Comics history? Your favorite characters and creators? How are comics evolving to respond to societal changes?
Choose an article to read, then create a one-pager that features an illustration, a notable quote from the piece, something interesting you learned, and a question you have about the topic.
And, if you’d like to learn more, Mr. Gustines has also participated in our “Annotated by the Author” series. Here he tells you how he made the writing choices he did in the June 2020 piece “10 Comic Books to Celebrate Pride.” And to learn about how a childhood love of comics led to a career, you might read this piece, about “how comics books turned a fan into a professional, and educated him along the way. ”
Want more Lessons of the Day? You can find them all here.
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