Fifty years ago, a call to 976-1212 would get you the weather; the only other way to get news on a phone then was to dial a friend and ask them to read you a newspaper aloud. In this course, students will explore life in New York City through vintage journalism, reading, listening, and watching stories from the past. We’ll go beyond the headlines—the city’s brush with bankruptcy, the serial killer known as the Son of Sam, Rupert Murdoch buying the New York Post, the Yankees winning the World Series—to explore the rise of the city’s downtown subcultures and the lives of those surviving at its margins. Along the way, students will develop research skills—navigating newspaper indices, microfilm, microfiche!—as well as hone their reporting skills, the analog “shoe-leather” way.