- Core Courses
- Media Courses
- Arts & Culture Reporting
- Business & Economics Reporting
- Health & Science Reporting
- International Reporting
- Urban Reporting
- Entrepreneurial Journalism
Core Courses
Jour71000 Craft of Journalism 6 credits
The foundation course for all students. Teaches the essential skills of researching, reporting and writing. Students will be assigned a neighborhood in New York and concentrate their reporting there for the semester. Students devote two days a week. The first day is spent in seminar and drill. The second day is spent reporting throughout New York. Frequent writing exercises and stories.
Jour71001 Legal and Ethical Issues 3 credits
Through a rigorous examination of court cases and ethical controversies, students will learn to anticipate, recognize, and properly address ethical and legal concerns in journalism.
Jour71002 Fundamentals of Multimedia Storytelling: Radio & TV 3 credits
This course offers instruction in the basics of producing radio and television news stories for broadcast or webcast. Students will learn the best practices in visual and audio storytelling for use across platforms, how to write clearly and concisely for the ear and the eye, and how to use professional software such as Final Cut Pro and Reaper.
Jour71003 Fundamentals of Multimedia Storytelling: Interactive Journalism 3 credits
This course will introduce students to conceptualizing, reporting, writing, and producing stories across multiple platforms–from websites to mobile devices. Students will learn the best practices to present audio and video when accessed via the web and wireless networks. The course will also explore ways for journalists to build an audience using social media, interactivity, and other methods to engage viewers.
Jour72000 Craft of Journalism II 6 credits
Builds on the skills developed in Craft I. Stories will be longer and more analytic. Some will be features, profiles, or commentaries. Class meets for two full days. The first is in a small seminar: lectures, drills, critiques, and discussion. The second day is spent reporting in NY. Frequent writing exercises and story assignments.
Jour72001 Craft of Journalism II – Broadcast 6 credits
Broadcast students get practical experience through in-class exercises and field assignments using technology integral to broadcast news. Strong reporting, story telling, and production values are emphasized. Each student will produce spot, feature, and enterprise stories.
Media Courses
Jour72103 Feature Writing 3 credits
Students learn to report and write high-quality features for newspapers and magazines, emphasizing the art of story telling, human interest, and analysis. Assignments include profiles, criticism, and narrative writing in varying lengths from 1,000 to 2,500 words.
Jour73100 Editing 3 credits
Students learn the roles and skills of editors in print and online publications: selecting stories, shaping content, enforcing standards and promoting good writing. Classes use examples from the day’s news to develop stories, editing them for clarity, tone, fairness and space. Students take the perspective of editors who must understand the big picture – the look, contribution and impact of their publications – while sweating the details of layout and copyediting.
Jour73101 Narrative Journalism 3 credits
Students will explore the art and craft of long-form storytelling, writing their own 6,000-8,000-word pieces. They will study the techniques of nonfiction masters, enhance their skills of research and analysis, and write polished magazine articles based on character, plot, scene and dialogue. The lessons of this course also will translate into other major projects ranging from book proposals to multimedia presentations.
Jour73102 Investigative Reporting 3 credits
This is an intensive capstone course that explores the advanced reporting, writing, organizational, analytical, and critical reasoning skills that are the foundation of investigative journalism for print and broadcast journalists. Using New York City as a laboratory, each student is assigned an investigative project. Some projects will require a team of two or three students. Every week students submit a detailed memo of progress. The goal: by the end of the semester each student or team will produce a 2,500 word investigative article or a 15-minute broadcast.
Jour73103 Opinion Writing 3 credits
Our democracy needs committed journalists who believe what they write can help their readers take a stand. Students will read and discuss editorials and columns, from the civil rights movement to the present, to discover what makes opinion writing effective. This is a writing-intensive class. We will write in an effort to open minds or change them about local, state, national, and international issues.
Jour72306 National Political Reporting
Politics is the peaceful struggle for resources. The purpose of this class is to teach students how to investigate that struggle with an eye to explaining why some people win and others lose. The question we will return to again and again is: How do politicians make decisions? By the end of the semester, a student should be able to take a given act—say, a member of Congress’ vote on the health care reform bill—and offer a well-reported, sophisticated, elegant account of why and how it occurred.
Jour73104 Journalism of Ideas 3 credits
We will examine how journalism covers the role ideas play in our society. We will study how both intellectual journals and mainstream media profile individuals, arguments, and events in ways that illuminate intellectual trends. Students will write short “ideas” pieces and longer profiles of people and events. Guests will include distinguished practitioners of the craft, whose work we will discuss in class.
Jour72307 Sports and Society
The sports world is a rich study in social contributions, environmental impact, labor relations – and the way it binds and entertains us. Through reading, research, reporting, and discussion, this class will look at the broad cultural impact of sport, and how aspiring journalists can look beyond the box scores to chronicle it.
Jour72304 Interactive Journalism II 3 credits
This course will emphasize individual and collaborative deadline reporting, writing and packaging for the Web. The course will also further examine the tools of new media. The classes will be structured to cover journalistic technique and issues, technology training and the review of students’ work.
Jour72308 Hyperlocal: The Local 3 credits
This class will prepare you to be a daily news blogger. The Local, a hyperlocal news blog that CUNY runs in collaboration with The New York Times, will serve as a platform for developing reporting, editing, and community engagement skills. You will report stories in two Brooklyn neighborhoods, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. Your work, which will be published on the blog, will include breaking news, features, and enterprise pieces. You’ll also work with community contributors to develop, refine, and edit stories; and collaborate with other members of the class as an editorial team to develop crowdsourcing projects and social media strategies.
Jour72311 Video Storytelling for the Web 3 credits
Students will learn to research, report, shoot, and edit short, focused video stories designed specifically for the web. This class will move students beyond the basic video concepts of first semester interactive and broadcast to more advanced techniques of visual storytelling. Because web viewers demand highly engaging material, with a fast start, sharp focus, short narrative, and natural voices, students will focus on capturing stories with strong visuals and ambient audio of people personally affected by issues. We will focus on the concept of subjects telling their stories in their own voices, without heavy narration or a reporter on camera.
Jour 73309 Interactive Project – Independent Study 3 credits
This course will give students an opportunity to create an in-depth, capstone-quality multimedia/interactive news feature over a single semester. Students can bring together all the elements and skills learned in various interactive courses and modules to produce – under close supervision – a carefully conceived and deeply reported news project. Students will meet individually with their lead adviser twice monthly, and in a seminar-style group each month. Prerequisite: one interactive course or module beyond the first semester.
Jour73310 Hyperlocal: Editing 3 credits
This class will replicate what it’s like to be the editor of a hyperlocal blog, or really any blog with a sizable audience. In this class students will serve as editor on The Local, a hyperlocal news blog that CUNY runs in collaboration with The New York Times. You’ll become a social media and crowdsourcing whiz and learn copy editing and story development skills that apply to any editorial environment. As an editor, you will learn to see where the story is in a convoluted pitch, how to work with community members and freelancers, and how to make the trains run on time — which is trickier, and more fun, than it might seem. It will also provide networking opportunities with established editors and bloggers, who will be frequent guest speakers.
Jour73311 Entrepreneurial Journalism 3 credits
This course has students plan and develop interactive media journalism projects. The purpose is to prepare them to launch their own news products and businesses or develop such products for a media company, as they take a leadership role in reinvigorating journalism. The news project may involve reporting by professionals or citizens; it may involve packaging and editing; it may involve interactivity. Students will research the market need and competition. They will develop a compelling product description, draw up a simple business plan, assemble a prototype and present it to a jury of professionals.
Jour72205 Radio News Writing and Reporting 3 credits
This course builds on the editorial and production knowledge learned in the first semester Fundamentals of Multimedia Journalism course. Students will strengthen their audio reporting, writing, and production skills through assignments that emphasize original reporting and enterprise stories.
Jour73200 Audio Podcasting 3 credits
This advanced level workshop focuses on creating and packaging news and information for broadcast and download via the internet. Students will rotate duties as producers, reporters, and editors on a professionally hosted and produced news magazine. Prerequisite: Audio News Writing & Reporting or permission of the instructor.
Jour73201 Television News Magazine Production 3 credits
Students will work in teams to produce stories of approximately 10 minutes and create a monthly magazine-format show. They will develop their storytelling skills by identifying compelling central characters and their stories, connecting them to larger issues or common experiences. They will concentrate on in-depth reporting and interviewing techniques and be introduced to sophisticated writing and audio/visual approaches that sustain longer-form pieces. The finished product may qualify as a capstone project.
Jour73202 Documentary Video 3 credits
Students in this course begin the process of producing a documentary or documentary series for television or the web. The course will be part survey, part production. Students will view and analyze different styles of documentaries, from traditional news formats to innovative approaches now appearing on the web as well as television. Students will work in small groups of three or four to research, report, write, shoot, and edit the projects. By the end of the course, each team will develop a formal proposal for a 30-minute documentary or series including a rough cut, trailer, or video selects. The proposal also will include a fully realized web component.
Jour73203 Advanced Photography
This course will hone shooting skills, develop photo editing skills, and emphasize the essential ability to work collaboratively in a professional newsroom environment through weekly photo assignments and responsibilities as a working photo editor. The course will be taught in a workshop format using iSnapNY, the student photo blog, as a wire service to serve Voices of NY, The Local, NYCity News Service , Mott Haven Herald, Hunts Point Express, and internal school needs. Students will work with faculty and mentors from the New York Press Photographers Association and The New York Times on assignments.
Jour72312 Data-driven Interactive Journalism 3 credits
We swim in a world of data – from election results, budgets, and census reports, to Facebook updates and image uploads. Journalists need to know how to find stories in data and shape them in compelling ways. This course teaches students to gather, analyze, and visualize interactive data-driven stories. This emerging discipline touches on information and interactivity design, mapping, graphing, animation tools, and data analysis.
Jour72313 HTML & CSS for Journalists 1 credit
The first of three modules in a sequence that will teach the specialized coding required to create customized, interactive journalistic projects on the web.
Jour72314 JavaScript and JQuery for Journalists 1 credit
The second of three modules in a sequence that will teach the specialized coding required to create customized, interactive journalistic projects on the web. Prerequisite: HTML & CSS for Journalists or proven competency.
Jour72315 WordPress Customization 1 credit
The third of three modules in a sequence that will teach the specialized coding required to create customized, interactive journalistic projects on the web. Prerequisites: HTML & CSS for Journalists and JavaScript and JQuery for Journalists, or proven competency.
Jour72316 Advanced Social Media 1 credit
This five-week elective module will focus on using the burgeoning tools of social media to better report and research stories, better distribute one’s work and engage the public, and better build journalistic brand identity. The course will emphasize hands-on use of tools – both familiar and just emerging – as a means to help students grasp social media’s potential for journalistic purposes.
Jour72317 News Games & Quizzes 1 credit
This five-week module offers students an opportunity to break new ground by introducing audiences to news developments and complex policy stories using games and quizzes as a form of interactive storytelling. The course requires a mix of reporting, writing, and coding. Students will not come away as skilled game developers, but they will gain the editorial skills necessary to create news games and quizzes and have an understanding of what technical skills are required.
Jour72318 Presentation & Design 1 credit
This five-week module introduces students to the fundamentals of good presentation, layout, and multimedia design. The course will cover basic typography, color theory, page layout, navigation, and information architecture. Students will use a variety of online tools and services as well as Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and InDesign.
Jour 72319 Photography for Reporters 1 credit
This five-week module is designed to develop the photo skills required of today’s print journalists. It will emphasize capturing and presenting photographs as a complement to reported news coverage. The course will expand on material introduced in Interactive I and cover more advanced point-and-shoot and smart phone camera operations, related software and online tools, photo techniques, and editing/uploading.
Jour 72320 Video for Web 1 credit
This five-week module will concentrate on telling stories visually, both with powerful storytelling image sequences and the words of the subjects without narration. The course will explore the role of video storytelling in the age of the web, through a series of exercises needed to produce a short web video working in a team of two.
Jour72321 Mobile and Tablet Journalism 3 credits
This course will give students the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in 21st century newsrooms where mobile technology is an integral part of news gathering, delivery, and presentation. It will provide an overview of the technology needed to create and deliver news for mobile/tablet devices plus instruction on the use of specific tools.
Jour72322 Motion Graphics Storytelling 1 credit
This five-week module will provide the foundation for storytelling with motion graphics and animation in a journalistic context. We’ll pull back the curtain on how motion graphics storytelling works: from conception to completion, including planning, reporting, and using industry standard tools, such as Photoshop, After Effects, and Illustrator, to bring graphics and texts to life.
Jour72323 Art of the Interview 1 credit
This five-week module will focus on building students’ interviewing skills by blending journalistic instruction with takeaways from other fields to enable them to interview adeptly in diverse situations.
Jour72305 Photojournalism 3 credits
This course is designed to build on basic photo, audio, and visual storytelling skills introduced in Fundamentals of Multimedia Storytelling and other courses. It is a hands-on workshop in photojournalism and audio slideshow production. It will be taught using the School’s Canon RebelXTi dSLR cameras and Marantz 620/660 digital audio recorders. Students are responsible for several weekly assignments as well as two long-term projects.
Jour72002 Journalistic Judgment 3 credits
To be taught by Dean Stephen Shepard. Journalism is all about making judgments — what stories to do, how to do them, who to call, what to leave out, how to be fair, what ground rules to set with sources, and so on. This course will examine many of those judgment calls that determine how well stories are done. Students will use contemporary examples from current media. They will absorb the lessons of good journalism and discuss the problems of the bad.
Jour73099 News Service Workshop 3 credits
Students who have demonstrated strong skills may work at least one day a week on a web-based news service run by the Graduate School of Journalism. They will serve as a corps of reporters, writers, and web page designers working closely with the news service’s professional editors and faculty. Coverage will focus on NYC neighborhoods and will be made available for use by news organizations.
Jour72012 Internship 1 credit
For students who need academic credit for an optional part-time internship during their spring or final fall semester. The internship may take no more than eight hours a week, with some of those hours performed on a weekend if possible. The internship must consist of serious journalistic enterprise and must be pre-approved by the Director of Career Services. At the end of the term, students write a short report and their on-site supervisor evaluates their performance. Note: This is not an elective interchangeable with other classes, but rather an extra course for students whose employers require that they get academic credit to intern.
Jour72051 Independent Study 3 credits
This course will enable students to pursue independent study in a topic or medium not covered by the curriculum. Students can explore a subject in depth and produce one long journalistic piece or a series of shorter pieces, in any media they choose. Students work under the direction of a full-time faculty member and are selected with the approval of the Dean.
Jour75000 Summer Internship 3 credits
Students spend 8 to 10 weeks working at a media outlet in the New York City area, or elsewhere if they desire. Possibilities include online media, community and local newspapers, trade and consumer magazines, broadcast stations and networks, and CUNY TV and cable stations. Students write two progress reports and meet for regular group discussions with the internship program director and journalism guest speakers.
Capstone Project
To qualify for graduation, each student must successfully complete a capstone – a piece of professional-quality journalism suitable for today’s multimedia, interactive market. Each project must showcase the essential reporting and writing proficiencies of a journalist. And each must demonstrate a student’s competence in multimedia and/or interactive skills. The capstone project typically is completed as part of a third semester subject or skills course.
Subject Concentration Courses
Arts & Culture Reporting
Jour73011 Cultural Issues (Spring) 3 credits
This course will survey the major issues and controversies facing artists and arts organizations today, including how to treat intellectual property, the role of art in developing cities, branding, the influence of digital technology on art, the history and impact of celebrity, censorship, diversity, and transgression in/on the arts. Students choose a genre beat and cultivate sources for it throughout the semester, covering specific stories rooted in broader course topics.
Jour72010 Arts Criticism (Fall) 3 credits
This is a course in writing reviews, critical roundups, and critical essays for the popular press. We will study the dominant issues at play in arts criticism today as well as the publications in which they are being addressed, and the critics who are articulating them. We will deconstruct reviews, debate what makes a good review, and examine the way syntax, word play, tone, and allusion shape literary style in print and broadcast/audio reviews. And we will address ethical considerations reviewers face as well as major controversies they have inspired.
Jour73015 Arts Reporting (Fall) 3 credits
In this class students learn how specific arts are made, distributed, marketed, and covered. The class will be divided into 3-4-week modules devoted to specific genres (in this section, books film, fashion, fine art, and theater). We will study the business of cultural institutions–how they are structured, staffed, funded, and run, and talk with people behind the artists: curators, publishers, producers, and publicists. Students will leave this class with a deeper understanding of the specific genres they’ve chosen to pursue as arts journalists, and the skills to cover them in various media.
Jour73016 Entertainment Reporting (Fall) 3 credits
This is a variation on the above, offered as an alternate in the same semester, addressing popular music, food, film, television, and new forms (spanning video games and Youtube videos). The genres offered in each section of these complementary classes will be partly determined by the beats students choose in Cultural Issues.
Business & Economics Reporting
Jour72007 Covering The Economy 3 credits
Students learn the economic context of the business world they seek to cover, including business cycles, fiscal and monetary policy, and globalization. They interpret statistics, identify trends, explain policy, and analyze economic controversies. In-class writing exercises and assignments stress understanding and analysis of our economic system.
Jour73005 Covering Markets & Companies 6 credits
This six-hour class, split into two three-hour sessions, will examine markets and companies together since both involve mastery of stocks and bonds and similar concepts. The markets sessions will provide a mastery of markets, Wall Street, and investment theories and practice as well as financial tools such as options, futures, and derivatives. The company classes will provide a foundation for company accounting and strategies and the role of the corporation in both the business world and the workings of the U.S.
Health & Science Reporting
Jour72009 Introduction to Health Journalism 3 credits
This survey class introduces students to the variety of health journalism, focusing on a different topic each week. Topics include disease, wellness, mental health, women’s health, food and nutrition, fitness, alternative health, neuroscience, and psychology. Students learn to evaluate scientific claims, find story ideas in medical journals, and translate technical material into compelling prose, audio, and video.
Jour73007 Science Writing 3 credits
In the second course in the sequence, students choose a beat within science journalism, such as alternative energy, neuroscience, nutrition, cosmology, or biotechnology. This class will reinforce students’ emerging skills, such as how to find and vet expert sources, how to include substance in stories without boring your audience, and how to handle controversial material. Students will also be briefed on cutting-edge research taking place in many key scientific fields, including environmental health and technology.
Jour73008 Investigative Health Reporting 3 credits
Students gain the tools necessary to expose sub-standard patient care and financial irregularities. Each student will investigate a local nursing home that has scored poorly on official quality measures. In addition, the class will undertake a group reporting project, with the professor acting as editor, to learn how large investigative stories are developed from the ground up. Students in the Health & Science Reporting concentration must choose EITHER this course OR Urban Environmental Reporting.
Jour73009 Urban Environmental Reporting 3 credits
This course provides the fundamental background knowledge and skills that reporters need to cover the environment beat, which is certain to yield some of the most significant stories of the coming decades. The focus is on covering New York City’s environmental issues, such as air pollution, energy efficiency, urban farming, trash disposal, and the city’s preparations to manage the effects of climate change. Students in the Health & Science Reporting concentration must choose EITHER this course OR Investigative Health Reporting. Students in the Urban Reporting Program may also choose this as one of their subject concentration courses in the third semester.
International Reporting
Jour72013 Introduction to International Reporting 3 credits
This course will introduce students to the basic tenets of international reporting. How is it similar to and different from local or national reporting? Students will cover the United Nations; do stories about U.S. foreign policy, diplomacy, and global economic and health issues. They will also learn to report international issues from the bottom up, through coverage of immigrants and refugees here in New York. The course will review war coverage, coverage of the military, press censorship and repression worldwide, and the emergence of the web in international coverage.
Jour73000 Cross-Cultural Reporting 3 credits
This course will provide students with in-depth training in reporting across cultural lines, the essence of international reporting. Students will immerse themselves in one or more of the many ethnic and national groups in large numbers here in New York. Learning customs, communication styles, political attitudes, family life and history, the students will cover these communities from the vantage point of international correspondents. The course will make ties to news and developments in the countries of origin. Through conversations with visiting correspondents and those in the field, students will get tips on covering other cultures and nationalities. Analysis of successful coverage and readings from accounts of reporters overseas will also feature prominently in the course.
Jour72011 Topics in International Reporting 3 credits
This is a comprehensive, project-oriented course that will target one or more newsy regions overseas for coverage, either through a class project or with individual assignments. Students will be required to do extensive research and reporting to produce work that could constitute a capstone project.
Urban Reporting
Jour72008 Covering City Government and Politics 3 credits
This course gives students a thorough understanding of how to report on the way the city is governed – how power is wielded and policy decisions are reached. Using a variety of different media formats, students will learn how to produce news and feature reports on the vast New York City government bureaucracy, public authorities and unofficial but key players such as lobbyists, labor unions, business, advocacy groups and community organizations.
Jour73003 Covering New York City’s Economy and Business 3 credits
The goal of this course is to help students understand and report effectively on the key economic and business forces shaping New York City. With the aid of selected readings and guest speakers, students will learn about the city’s most important industries and employers, the role of small businesses and immigrant entrepreneurs, and the impact of real estate and economic development. After getting an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of New York City’s economy, students will focus on some of the cutting-edge economic issues the city faces.
Jour73004 Covering New York’s Social Issues 3 credits
This course teaches students how to produce fresh, compelling stories about critical social issues in New York City, such as education, housing, health, poverty, criminal justice, and race relations. Students learn about the public policies that attempt to address those social issues, different ways to measure the effectiveness of those policies, and how journalists can improve the public’s understanding of these issues.
Jour73012 Urban-Investigative 3 credits
This course will give students in the urban concentration the opportunity to do investigative reporting on behalf of local city and ethnic media looking for in-depth coverage of unsolved problems in their communities. Depending on the specific project(s) chosen by the class, students will learn freedom of information request techniques, analyze data, and conduct on-site interviews and research at courthouses, government agencies, businesses, and organizations.
Jour73009 Urban Environmental Reporting 3 credits
This course provides the fundamental background knowledge and skills that reporters need to cover the environment beat, which is certain to yield some of the most significant stories of the coming decades. The focus is on covering New York City’s environmental issues, such as air pollution, energy efficiency, urban farming, trash disposal, and the city’s preparations to manage the effects of climate change. Students in the Health & Science Reporting concentration must choose EITHER this course OR Investigative Health Reporting. Students in the Urban Reporting Program may also choose this as one of their subject concentration courses in the third semester.
Entrepreneurial Journalism Courses
Jour74001 Fundamentals of Business for Entrepreneurial Journalists 3 credits
This course provides students with grounding in core principles of finance, strategy, marketing, and other areas that comprise contemporary business fundamentals. Unlike traditional graduate-level business programs, this course orients the subject matter toward journalists, with particular emphasis on applying key concepts to journalism businesses.
Jour74002 New Business Models for News 3 credits
This course gives students a firm grounding in the dynamics—the pressures and opportunities—of the news industry now and in the future. Leading executives from the media industry—national, local, digital, newspaper, magazine, broadcast—will instruct the class in how their businesses work today in the context of digital disruption.
Jour74003 Entrepreneurial Incubator 3 credits
Students identify business models and create business plans—and in some cases prototypes and even products. They incubate those businesses in this course, which consists of a weekly class gathering as well as an equal amount of one-on-one work with faculty and guest advisers. Such experts will help address, among other subjects, technology, law, marketing, advertising, and other related topics.
Jour74004 Technology Immersion 1.5 credits
Students study the media and business context and journalistic opportunities presented by new and emerging technologies and trends. The technologies we cover will change each year and we will refresh the adjunct experts brought in to guide students through these technologies.
Jour74005 New Media Apprenticeship 1.5 credits
Students spend up to ten days working on a project at a New York startup to learn from the inside about the culture, dynamics, and business realities faced by emerging enterprises. In some instances, that time may be spread out over the course of the term, depending on the specific constraints and opportunities presented by the participating businesses.
