Photo: Mitchell Trinka
- Introduction to Health Journalism
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. - Science Writing
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. - Investigative Health Reporting
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. - Urban Environmental Reporting
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.
