WRITING FROM THE STREET

Tulsa Street Stories was inspired by the famous road that passes by the Tulsa University campus, Route 66. This road, known in Tulsa as 11th Street, stretches from Chicago to Santa Monica, California. It may be the most celebrated road in America, a road that the Dust Bowl refugees traveled in the 1930s as they traveled west in search of a better life. Near the TU campus, Route 66 is a colorful jumble of used car dealers, auto parts places, diners and fast food restaurants, mom-and-pop motels, a school or two, a bakery, even a tatoo place.

In short, Tulsa's Route 66 is a fairly typical American streetscape, encompassing a full range of urban life, commerical activity and growth, as well as decay and clutter. Route 66 is also filled with stories, the experiences, dreams, and aspirations of all kinds of people. That's what this site is about: Street Stories from people in and around Tulsa and its most storied patch of pavement, Route 66.

In the coming weeks, the site will publish reporting and personal journalism by members of the Fall 2006 News Gathering class at TU. These stories will provide glimspes into the lives of interesting people in and around Route 66 and give TU journalism students an opportunity to share their writing and reporting with others interested in this "grassroots" journalism project.

--John Coward, Faculty of Communication

John Coward teaches communication at Tulsa University. He is the author of "The Newspaper Indian," a study of Native American news coverage in the nineteenth-century press.