Merced College's Creative Writing Continuing Education Class Explodes into Cyberspace

Enjoyed visiting yesterday with members of a local continuing education class from Merced College.

They represent a key part of the new ways journalism is being practiced today--including by the Sun-Star.

The class if offered free by the college's Continuing Education program, whose director is Janet Lyle. Ron Loewe, a retired teacher and former member of the class, usually runs the show, but yesterday he was out so veteran journalist and educator David Burke led the conversation.

Officially called "Creative Writing: Life Stories," the class meets in the Merced Senior Community Center; unlike most classes, it runs year-round. Yesterday about 20 folks showed up.

Each class begins with announcements, according to Burke, and get-well cards are often sent to missing classmates. "The group has shared grief over lost friends and the johy of seeing two fellow writers joined in marriage after meeting in class," David wrote. "Members share rides and often go to l unch together after class. Some members have traveled together , and many have met outside class tiem at each others' homes."

He calls the members "an extraordinary group--most are good writers, but they continue to gather more out of friendship than anything else."

I'd sure agree after spending time with them. Told 'em a little about my background and more about what the Sun-Star is doing with our coverage in both the printed edition and on the Web site. They were full of questions, comments and opinions:

RMP; A Woman's Place; poverty; brown-bag lunches at a local elementary school as a metaphor for parents trying to save money; whether there's an investment climate here that encourages or discourages businesses to settle in Merced. One man taught me a neat new acronym:

BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything.

Goes hand-in-hand with NIMBY: Not In My Backyard.

So how do they figure in the future of journalism (what David Burke called "a paradigm shift," although I've never been smart enough to figure out what that means)?

Because both he and I encouraged them to write their views, thoughts, reactions, tips and other good stuff on SunSpot, the Sun-Star Web site's forum for all you Mercedians out there. Aside from obscenity, profanity and a few other legally restricted forms of speech, anything goes there. And if you've read some of the postings, you already know that.

It is indeed a free marketplace of ideas.

Now, with the semi-pros from the creative writing class waiting to post their entries, the literary and logical level of the posts should rise. And they should stimulate even further conversation.

I told 'em that no longer were we journalists WAY UP HERE, looking down on audiences and telling you what the news is. Now we're on an even keel, we work for you all and you should be part of the deal.

We here at the Sun-Star will continue to publish stories based on a time-honored system and structure of checking for accuracy and fairness.

You all out there in Merced Land can, in the lasting words of "Born to Be Wild" by the '60s rock group Steppenwolf, "fire all of our guns at once and explode into space!"

Cyberspace.

So join us and the "Creative Writing: Life Stories" crowd from Merced College. And a lot of others.

This is gonna be fun.