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Journalism
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The journalism major includes specializations in Journalism and Creative Writing, and Business Journalism. Students learn traditional fundamentals, as well as all the tools of modern journalism, including Web work, video, audio, photography, blogging and the use of social networking such as Facebook and Twitter for both reporting and presentation of their work. Whether you’re interested in a career in journalism, communications, management, entertainment, business, public service or law, the journalism major will help advance your career. You will improve your writing ability while learning to find and evaluate information and data. You will develop interviewing skills. And you will learn to communicate effectively and publish accurate and responsible material, whether online, in print, or over the air waves.
Both specializations provide students with an understanding of journalism’s critical role in democratic society. The department also offers two minors, one in journalism and one in business writing, that enable students in other majors to improve dramatically their writing and research abilities.
Program Learning Goals
Upon completion of a major in Journalism, students will be able to:
Write clear and well-organized prose that includes grammatically correct sentences in a variety of styles and, where appropriate, employs narratives that show the reader what happened in contrast to telling the reader.
Employ journalistic concepts such as the lead (the opening paragraph), the “nut graph” (an explanatory paragraph that follows the lead), and background information, including quotes, that provides context.
Demonstrate journalistic reporting and research proficiency, including identifying quality sources and obtaining information from them through interviews, and locating and evaluating data, scholarly material and previously published material and verifying all source material.
(Business journalism major): analyze and incorporate into articles data from economic reports; track financial markets; evaluate corporate earnings.
(Creative writing major): develop a voice; become familiar with a range of writing forms; identify and employ symbolism, subtext, and selective omission.
Understand the value of independent journalism and the role of the press in a free society; recognize journalism-related legal risks in news-gathering; understand rights of access to government institutions; critically evaluate news accounts for credibility, quality, and accuracy.
Report on issues, institutions, ideas, and trends in society, and do so in a manner understandable to a lay readership.
Practice multimedia journalism including audio and video reporting; retain the essential values of accuracy and balance with the tools and priorities of new media.
Embrace the core ethical values of journalism, avoiding plagiarism and fabrication and understand why they are unaccepted.