The CUNY Graduate School of Journalism is proud to launch its online education initiative at DigitalJSchool.com, with five new courses representing a cross-section of our curriculum in reporting and writing, data, visual, and entrepreneurial journalism.
DigitalJSchool provides free online courses aimed at working reporters looking to brush up on news skills, current journalism students, or anyone somebody interested in the field.
Our courses are short and focused, geared to help you learn a specific skill, tool, or topic quickly enough to complete in an afternoon or a weekend. All our courses are self-directed and delivered on the web with nothing to download or install. We provide all the course materials including videos, readings, audio, self-assessment quizzes, and interactive exercises.
You can take the courses when you want, where you want, and at your own pace. Your progress will be tracked automatically so you can stop and pick up where you left off at anytime.
DigitalJSchool is not a degree-granting pathway or a replacement for our on-site Master’s programs at our school in New York City. There are no proctors or instructors, and we do not offer credit or certificates for completing the courses.
All our course authors are professors at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. They combine years of journalism practice with extensive teaching experience in the classroom to deliver skills, concepts, and tools for real-world reporting and storytelling.
Here is the initial lineup of courses:
The Art of Writing with Ta-Nehisi Coates: Ta-Nehisi Coates is the journalist in residence at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and an award- winning national correspondent at The Atlantic. In a conversation on May 1, 2014 with CUNY Journalism School Dean Sarah Bartlett, Ta-Nehisi candidly shares his views on writing, reporting, and race, and how he got to where he is today.
Working with Data: Spreadsheets for Journalists: Journalists today have access to more data than ever before. But exposing the stories buried in the numbers remains a challenge. This course teaches you how to find the important trends in data using spreadsheets effectively. Course by Russell Chun, director of online education and instructor in data visualization.
Working with Animated GIFs: Innovative visuals are an increasingly important part of building and retaining audience. Animated GIFs are a basic building block of creative visuals. This course guides you through the fundamentals of building animated GIFs. Course by John Smock, director of photojournalism.
Introduction to Entrepreneurial Journalism: Explore the growing universe of journalism startups, part of a new renaissance in digital journalism. The course begins with an overview of the state of journalism startups in a variety of spheres, then delves into the key steps involved in developing a viable journalism startup, drawing lessons from successful new journalism projects. Course by Jeremy Caplan, director of education for the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism.
Introduction to Web Scraping: Capturing Lists and Tables: Data scraping uses programming to grab information like data tables, texts, numbers, images, addresses, URLs, phone numbers and just about anything you can think of from the Internet and transfer that data into a structured format like a database or spreadsheet where it can be compared and analyzed. Course by Sandeep Junnarkar, director of interactive journalism.
More courses are coming. We hope you join us and help spread the word.