Date of Award
Spring 2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
English
Program/Concentration
Creative Writing
Committee Director
A. J. Nolan
Committee Member
Luisa A. Igloria
Committee Member
Molly McCully Brown
Abstract
In 1989, MTV, Music Television, opened a series it titled “Unplugged,” having performers play live sets acoustically, rather than with amplifiers. The setting was casual and the show involved a lot of talking. Artists often told stories about the background of certain pieces, when or why certain songs were created, personal anecdotes, tales of being on the road. I loved these shows. I loved the concept.
What would happen, I wondered, if you ever unplugged a reporter, gave them a platform off the page or screen or radio, unfiltered them?
As a mainly feature-writing print journalist who had interviewed hundreds of people to tell their stories over the years, I adopted a version of the MTV “unplugged” model in 2014 and created a blog I called “Journalist Unplugged” with the intention of telling the stories of the stories, what journalists think about and talk about among themselves between the interviews.
While my ensuing battle with Complex PTSD made projects like the blog difficult, as covered in these pages, as an MFA graduate student, I found my way to a new conception of that idea through analyzing multiple creative nonfiction memoirs that mirrored my own experiences. I had written first-person columns for newspapers and magazines, but I had never written essays, never considered memoir, never thought about what contributed to who I am as a writer. “Journalist Unplugged” represents a transition from journalist to essayist. This is a personal memoir.
Rights
In Copyright. URI: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
DOI
10.25777/q310-pz68
ISBN
9798382770314
Recommended Citation
Fields, Venisa J..
"Journalist Unplugged"
(2024). Master of Fine Arts (MFA), Thesis, English, Old Dominion University, DOI: 10.25777/q310-pz68
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_etds/185
ORCID
0009-0002-6644-6366