Hit us with some champagne and push us in the water. This blog is ready to go.

Here's our first blogging assignment for the class. Comment at this blog on this question: How hard was it to find a suitable topic for your first story?

If you want to tell compelling stories, how important is spending enough time getting a real good subject? This is what Ira Glass has to say.

All you visitors. Here's the assignment:

January 23/Week One: Introduction to the course/Interviewing/Focusing your idea.

Assignment: A story of at least 500 words based on an interview with an immigrant or alien (preferably a refugee) who has been in the country no more than two years. Most of the story will reflect your interview with your subject, but I want two additional sources: a secondary written source and a brief comment from a USF professor or staff member who has expertise that is relevant to the experience of your immigrant. Such information is good preparation for asking the tough questions in an interview. Such supplementary information is particularly useful if you think you have been told something that is not true. Read Blundell, Chapter 1.