M.S. Spring 2007 Curriculum Guide

Overview
Required courses for full-time students
Advanced Reporting and Writing Seminars
Workshops
Electives
Concentrations
Course Descriptions - Seminars, Workshops, and Electives
Skills Courses

M.S. Fall 2006 Curriculum Guide

TO: All M.S. Students
FROM: David A. Klatell, Vice Dean
RE: Spring Curriculum

Here is the program of instruction for the spring term. Full-time M.S. students are required to take a 6-credit Reporting and Writing Seminar, a 6-credit Media Workshop, the Master's Project and fulfill the requirement for a 3-credit journalism elective or an approved 3-credit graduate course outside the school. In addition, all full-time magazine concentrators must take the Delacorte Evening Lecture Series (one-half credit). Part-time students concentrating in magazine may elect to take the lecture series in spring 2007 or 2008.

Students should read this material thoroughly and, after discussing the options with their advisers and the various instructors, indicate their choices on the online ballot (available as of November 21, 10 p.m.).

Enrollment in classes may be subject to the consent of instructors and most course enrollments are necessarily limited. As a result, some students may be assigned to classes that may not be among their top three picks. This is done as fairly and equitably as possible. If circumstances warrant, it may be possible to add a second section for certain classes, with different instructors. However, we cannot guarantee that we will add sections to any course, no matter the demand. The curriculum reflects the best judgment of the faculty and administration, based on our many years of experience, and is not a popularity contest. We reserve the right to add, delete or move courses (though we try to keep this to a minimum) and sometimes have to change instructors if schedule conflicts become intractable. Students are required to rank their preferences for seminars, workshops, and electives.

Students should be aware that evaluations of courses by students in previous years are available for your perusal; they are available at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/journalism/evaluations/.

The on-line ballot will be activated at 10 p.m., November 21. Your completed ballot must be submitted on line no later than November 29, 10 p.m. All ballots received during this time will be considered equal – this is not a “first-come, first-served” process.

The School of Journalism's spring semester begins Tuesday, January 16, when the first draft of Master's Projects must be submitted to your adviser before 10 a.m. Students completing broadcast or new media projects should consult with their advisers regarding the format of the first draft. Deadlines for subsequent master's drafts have been set for February 20 and March 20, both days at 10 a.m. You will receive detailed instructions as those dates grow closer.

Please Note: Workshops begin Thursday, January 18, or Friday, January 19. Seminars begin either Monday the 22 or Tuesday the 23. Journalism School electives start Wednesday, January 24. Classes taught elsewhere in the University begin the week of January 16. Be sure to check with your instructors for exact dates and times.

Required courses for full-time students:

1. Advanced Reporting and Writing Seminars (J6002y), 6 credits
2. Media Workshops (J6011y), 6 credits
3. Master's Project II (J6041y), 3 credits
4. Spring term electives (J6010y), 3 credits

How a Week Looks in the Spring:
* Monday and Tuesday: Reporting and writing Seminars
* Wednesday: Most Electives and time for Master's Projects
* Thursday and Friday: Most Workshops
* Saturday and Sunday: Some Electives and Workshops

Note: Many courses require special class meetings (field trips, editorial meetings, etc.) in addition to the listed class time. All students, particularly those in the part-time program, should check with the faculty to ascertain if their course has such additional requirements. Many faculty members have posted these on the school web site, linked to their name on the faculty page or to the course description in this document.

Advanced Reporting and Writing Seminars

J6002y (6 credits)

The disciplines of reporting and writing are structured around specialized subject areas or style techniques. These seminars usually require two full days each week on Monday and Tuesday - you should carefully check the schedule of each course by consulting the faculty or their class schedules posted on the web site.

They are listed below with the instructors (see later pages for fuller course descriptions). Because accommodating all first choices is unlikely, students must indicate six choices. In filling out the ballots, students should list specific seminars in order of their preferences.

Note: Admission to some seminars requires the instructor's approval in advance (see course descriptions below). If you have been selected by Helen Benedict, Judith Crist, Sam Freedman, Ari Goldman, Victor Navasky, or Michael Shapiro you will be asked to indicate so on your ballot. These classes will be filled prior to the ballot, so if you have not been pre-selected by the professor, you should not submit a ballot asking to enroll.

All professors teaching seminars and workshops (and full-time faculty teaching electives) are accorded the courtesy of selecting up to 10 of students who ballot for their class as a first choice; the remaining seats are filled by the Dean of Students office in a manner that tends to equalize students’ success in getting at least some of their first-choice classes.

The Seminars (J6002y):
* Section 1: Book Writing – Sam Freedman
* Section 2: Business & Economics Reporting – Rob Norton
* Section 3: Covering Education – LynNell Hancock
* Section 4 Covering Religion – Ari Goldman
* Section 5 Cultural Affairs Reporting A – Diane Solway
* Section 6 The Deadline in Depth – Laura Muha
* Section 7 Human Rights Reporting – Bill Berkeley
* Section 8 Immigrant America – Mirta Ojito
* Section 9 International Affairs Reporting – Josh Friedman
* Section 10 The Investigative Project – Wayne Barrett
* Section 11 The Journalism of Tomorrow – Stephen Isaacs
* Section 12 National Affairs Reporting A – Tom Edsall
* Section 13 National Affairs Reporting B – John Martin
* Section 14 National Affairs Reporting C – Richard Wald
* Section 15 Personal & Professional Style A – Judith Crist
* Section 16 Personal & Professional Style B – Judith Crist
* Section 17 Science Reporting – Marguerite Holloway
* Section 18 Stabile Investigative Seminar – Sheila Coronel
* Section 19 Cultural Affairs Reporting B – David Hajdu

Cultural Affairs Reporting and Writing David Hajdu Monday, TBA

Workshops

Workshops (J6011y):
Media workshops include a number of options: broadcast (TV -- Nightly News, Documentary, Magazine Production, and Radio), newspaper (Bronx Beat, Columbia News Service), magazine (Producing a Magazine, Magazine Writing, Literary Journalism) and New Media. Students devote at least two days each week, usually Thursday and Friday, to the workshop. Note: schedules vary widely, so you should check with the faculty member for details or his/her posting on the web site.

Note: Admission to some workshops requires the instructor's approval in advance (see course descriptions below). If you have been selected by Helen Benedict, Judith Crist, Sam Freedman, Ari Goldman, Victor Navasky, or Michael Shapiro you will be asked to indicate so on your ballot. These classes will be filled prior to the ballot, so if you have not been pre-selected by the professor, you should not submit a ballot asking to enroll.

Students choose one section from the following workshop options:

* Section 1: Television Documentary – June Cross
* Section 2: Nightly News – Rhoda Lipton
* Section 3: Radio - John Dinges
* Section 4: Television News Magazines – Melvin McCray
* Section 5: Literary Journalism - Helen Benedict
* Section 6: Magazine Writing A - John Bennet
* Section 7: Magazine Writing B – Stephen Fried
* Section 8: Magazine Writing C – Cathleen McGuigan
* Section 9: Producing a Magazine A - Victor Navasky
* Section 10: Producing a Magazine B - Michael Shapiro
* Section 11: New Media – Duy Linh Tu and Jeff Gralnick
* Section 12: Bronx Beat – Pam Frederick
* Section 13: Columbia News Service – Bruce Porter

Master's Project II
J6041y (3 credits) -- a continuation of Journalism J6040x
Master's Project Deadlines:
* Jan. 16: First draft of all Master's Projects (for audio/video projects, the "work cut") will be handed in to your advisor by 10 a.m.
* Feb. 19: Second draft of all Projects (for video projects, a "rough cut") will be handed in to your advisor by 10 a.m.
* Mar. 19: Final versions of all Projects handed to the Academic Dean's office, in Room 701, by 10 a.m. No changes are allowed after this deadline. This copy is ultimately filed in the library.

Note: These deadlines are strict and must be met. Your adviser may require additional deadlines and drafts.

Delacorte Evening Lecture Series
J6050y (1/2 credit)
Thursday 7pm - 8:30 p.m.
Magazine concentrators are required to enroll in the Delacorte Magazine Lectures, to be offered Thursday evenings 7-8:30 p.m. from February 9 through April 20. All other students are invited to attend. Part-time students concentrating in magazine may elect to take the Lecture Series in spring 2006 or 2007.

Internship
J6099y (1/2 credit, optional)
Internships must be pre-approved by the Office of Career Services and the Dean of Students office. A student who undertakes an internship at a media organization can earn an additional academic one-half credit if the work consists of serious journalistic enterprise. At the conclusion of the internship, the student must submit a written description of what he or she has accomplished and learned in the internship, and an official of the media company must send a separate letter corroborating that and evaluating the student's performance.

Concentrations

The school offers five different concentrations - Broadcasting, Magazine, New Media, Newspaper, and Health, Science and Environment.

Broadcast
Coordinator: Ann Cooper
Students who concentrate in Broadcast take the radio or one of the television workshops in the spring.
Read more on this page...
Broadcast

Health, Science and Environment
Coordinator: Marguerite Holloway
Students take the Science Reporting seminar in the spring.

Magazine Journalism
Coordinator: Victor Navasky
Magazine journalism courses are offered through the George T. Delacorte Center for Magazine Journalism. Students who major in magazine journalism must take one of the magazine workshops offered in the spring.

Spring courses offered under the auspices of the Delacorte Center include Magazine Writing, Magazine Editing, Advanced Photojournalism, Literary Journalism, Producing a Magazine and Literary Journalism.
Read more on this page...
Magazine

New Media
Coordinator: Sreenath Sreenivasan
Students wishing to concentrate in new media take the workshop in New Media.
Read more on this page...
New Media

Newspaper
Coordinator: Bruce Porter
Students take a Newspaper Workshop, either Bronx Beat or Columbia News Service.
Read more on this page...
Newspaper

Electives

Electives (6014y)
All students are required to take an elective for at least three credits at the graduate level -- either inside or outside the school. Most Journalism electives meet once a week for lectures and/or seminar discussions, and require reading as well as written assignments. Outside electives must be approved by the Dean of Students office.
Read more on this page...
Electives

For "outside" courses, students should refer to http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/students/outside_courses.asp.

Students can ballot for the following options for spring electives offered by the Graduate School of Journalism:

* Section 1: Advanced Computer Assisted Reporting – Tom Torok
* Section 2: Advanced Photojournalism - Sara Barrett
* Section 3: Broadcast News Management - David McCormick and Lloyd Siegel
* Section 4: Feature Writing A - Alexandra Peers
* Section 5: Feature Writing B – Kristal Brent Zook
* Section 6: Graphics in the Newsroom - Hannah Fairfield Wallander
* Section 7: The International Newsroom – Ann Cooper
* Section 8: Magazine Editing - Joe Ferrer
* Section 9: Narrative Writing - Kevin Coyne
* Section 10: New Media Elective – Jennifer Johnson
* Section 11: News Editing – Nancy Sharkey
* Section 12: Opinion Writing – Gwenda Blair
* Section 13: Politics and the Press in America - Evan Cornog
* Section 14: Radio Documentary – Alex Blumberg
* Section 15: Sports Journalism – Sandy Padwe
* Section 16: Stabile Investigative Techniques - J. Robert Port

Course Descriptions

Following are descriptions of the reporting/writing Seminars, the media Workshops, and Elective courses in the school. You may request a syllabus from the professors, or consult those posted on the school web site. For outside courses, consult bulletins of the other schools.

If a course fails to attract a sufficient number of students, the Dean reserves the right to cancel it. All course changes are subject to the approval of the Vice Dean's office.

Advanced Reporting and Writing Seminars

J6002y (6 credits)

Please note: full-time students are expected to devote all day Monday and Tuesday to working on their Seminar. The times listed below indicate only the group meetings of these courses.

Book Writing
Sam Freedman
Monday, 9 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. (Note: Application class –deadline November 13)
This seminar teaches students to prepare a book proposal, including an overview essay and a sample chapter, both at least 4,000 words long. Each student must enter the class with either sufficient material from elsewhere or an idea that can be researched in the New York area. Students will not be permitted to use their Master's Project for this seminar. Coursework ranges from intensive study of literary non-fiction and journalistic fiction, with related writing assignments on a weekly basis, to instruction in the techniques of reporting and writing extended narrative, and of producing a book proposal. Guest speakers from the publishing industry appear frequently. Enrollment limited, with approval of instructor. *Fri, Nov. 10, 8:15 a.m., room 607B: Book Writing Seminar Preview & Application Instruction session with Prof. Sam Freedman

Business and Economic Reporting
Rob Norton
Monday, 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
An intensive course for students considering careers in business and economic journalism, this seminar emphasizes fundamental economic and financial concepts, the measurement of economic and corporate performance, and effective methods for conceiving, reporting, and writing stories about companies, markets and the economy. Topics include: economic growth; how markets work; how to read financial reports and evaluate economic statistics; trends in living standards, demographics and immigration; taxation; booms and busts; the banking and Federal Reserve systems; corporate performance and strategy; the stock and bond markets; exchange rates, and global economic development. Source material is both academic and journalistic, chosen for its relevance and practicality. There is a significant amount of reading, and ample time will be devoted to discussion and debate.

Weekly writing exercises will be assigned to hone skills in framing stories, identifying and cultivating sources, preparing for and conducting interviews, organizing reporting, making sound arguments, minimizing ideological and socioeconomic biases, avoiding common logical fallacies, and—above all—using data intelligently. Your work will be carefully critiqued and edited. There will be a wide range of guest speakers from major financial publications, as well as optional field trips to newsrooms and financial institutions. Although the course is print-o-centric, its content is applicable to all media.

Covering Education
Prof. LynNell Hancock
Mondays: 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
Education is a primary beat in every American news outlet, from the small town paper to the local television station to the metropolitan news conglomerate. The federal No Child Left Behind Act has boosted this traditionally local issue into the national spotlight. It is a growing beat, desperate for writers and reporters with the skills and knowledge to tackle an increasingly complex landscape.

Covering Education is a new course designed to offer students a foundation for making sense of it all. One unique feature includes a partnership with a New York City public school complex housing five separate schools for pre-k through twelfth graders. Each student will intern in one these schools one day a week, learning about its every idiosyncrasy from boiler room to classroom. Seminar time will be devoted to providing the history of public education, examining a sampler of pressing issues confronting educators and children, and offering students basic tools required to assess the nation’s classrooms. Students should emerge at semester’s end able to cut through polemics and write compelling, clear stories on any topic in the area of urban affairs or social services. The course will link to resources at Teachers College Hechinger Institute on Media and Education, and will include intensive training in investigative, narrative, explanatory features, and journal writing.
The Julia Richman Education Complex, our partner school on Manhattan’s East Side: http://www.jrec.org/
Hechinger Institute on Media and Education, a professional development organization for education journalists: http://www.tc.columbia.edu/hechinger/

Covering Religion
Ari Goldman and Mannika Chopra
Tuesday, 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. (Note: Application class –deadline November 13)
A special requirement of the course is an early deadline for the Master's Project. Since the study tour to India occurs during Spring Break, Projects must be
submitted to the Dean's Office prior to our departure.( This requirement does not apply
to students in the part-time program.)
"Covering Religion" prepares journalists to write about religion for a secular audience. The course looks at major religions today through case studies of how religion is evolving in different parts of the world. This year the focus will be on India. During the first seven weeks of the course, the class will report on Hindus, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs as well as Jews, Christians and Muslims, all religions that are found both in New York and in India. Each student is required to become the class expert on a specific faith or denomination, writing articles and sharing what he or she has learned with the class. The class also includes mandatory field trips to mosques, temples and churches in New York. During the spring break, the class takes a 12-day study tour of northern India, beginning in New Delhi and including Mumbai, Amritsar and Varanasi. (There is no cost to students for the study tour, which is fully subsidized by a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation.) During the study tour, the class maintains a web site where regular news and features reports are posted (www.coveringreligion.org). Special Requirements: Full time students must complete and submit their Master’s Project before spring break commences. Admission to the class is by application. For details, see the DOS blog.
* Monday, Nov. 6, 6-7 p.m., Lecture Hall: Covering Religion Seminar Preview & Application Instructions.

Cultural Affairs Reporting and Writing
Diane Solway
Monday, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
This is a course designed for the aspiring arts and entertainment writer as well as for those who want to strengthen their skills in reporting on the arts. The class will address both content and technique. We will focus on how to generate, research and contextualize different kinds of stories with a view to producing informed and thoughtful writing on the arts. Students will be encouraged to sharpen their critical thinking and to find engaging ways of writing about culture—from the cutting edge to the mainstream. They will learn how to identify the distinctive qualities of the arts and artists they cover and to consider all of the elements involved in bringing a work of art to an audience. They will attend assigned exhibitions and performances and are expected to follow the major arts stories of the day.

We will discuss how to identify credible sources; the art of the interview; how to use quotes; how to provide context; and how to bring characters to life in a profile. Students will be introduced to some of the significant debates informing the arts today and will study the ideas and approaches of other writers and critics. We will read, discuss and debate. Each student will pitch story ideas in class as well as produce several assignments--one profile, two reviews and two features-- which may range from the impact of hip-hop on comedy to the first amendment controversies surrounding a museum exhibition. Guest speakers appear regularly throughout the term to provide behind-the-scenes perspectives on key issues shaping the cultural landscape and to offer rare glimpses into their own creative process. (Guests have included Philip Seymour Hoffman, Neil Labute and Sarah Jones.)

The Deadline in Depth
Laura Muha
Monday, 9:30 a.m.- 12 noon
Deadlines can be stressful even for seasoned journalists. But being able to write accurately and well on a short lead time is an essential skill for any reporter -- and one that provides a foundation for the more complex, time-intensive pieces that come later. This course teaches the ins and outs of deadline reporting by exposing students to the sorts of stories general assignment reporters cover on a daily basis: cops, courts, human interest features, breaking news. Often working side-by-side with their counterparts in the city press corps, students will learn how to get the information they need without going down time-wasting dead-ends, how to structure deadline stories, and how to write them compellingly - proving that graceful writing and tight deadlines don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Human Rights Reporting
Bill Berkeley
Monday, 4 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
A seminar on the challenges of reporting about human rights abuses, at home and overseas.

Summary executions, torture, detention without charge or trial, the suppression of free expression, wholesale genocide and state terror – these and other abuses have emerged over the last half century as paramount international concerns of our era. The attacks on September 11, 2001 and America’s response have brought some of these issues home to an unprecedented degree. How do journalists report on and write about human rights, and what are some of the practical and ethical challenges facing reporters who do?

In this seminar, we will examine the history of the human rights movement, study some particularly egregious instances of abuse, and learn about recent innovations in human rights law that seek to address bedrock problems of justice, accountability and deterrence. We will also focus on recent abuses associated with America’s counter-terrorism campaign, from prisoner abuse allegations in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to detention and deportation practices in our own country. We will read exemplary reporting and writing about human rights over the decades, and explore a range of strategies for investigating abuses, documenting their scale and conveying their horror.

New York City provides the field laboratory for the course, with resources and reporting opportunities including its huge community of immigrants from around the world; the major U.N. agencies and independent human rights advocacy groups; federal courts that hear human rights cases; and the home offices of transnational businesses that may bear responsibility for human rights abuses in the regions in which they operate. Students will report on both international rights abuses and problems in the New York region. The latter may include refugees seeking political asylum, migrants held indefinitely without trial on "secret evidence," police tactics, racial profiling, prison overcrowding, the death penalty, sweatshop labor, and treatment for recovery from atrocities.

Required Work: Five reported articles, at least one of which must focus on a domestic problem, and two rewrites.

There will be two guest speakers: Carroll Bogert, Director of Communications for Human Rights Watch and a former Newsweek correspondent in Russia and China, and Tina Rosenberg, editorial writer for the New York Times and author of “The Haunted Land – Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism.”

Immigrant America
Mirta Ojito
Tuesday, 2:30-5:00 p.m.
There is no greater issue impacting the U.S. today than immigration. Even the war against terrorism, which since 9/11 has become a national obsession, has been framed as an immigration challenge: who comes in; who stays out. The relentless flow of immigrants impacts the languages we speak (consider the debate over bilingual education and the quiet acceptance in major cities, such as New York, of the predominance of Spanish); the foods we eat (again, look around your neighborhood); the people we hire; the bosses we work for; and even the music we dance to. In a grander scale, immigrants impact foreign policy, the debate over homeland security, local and national politics, budget allocations, the job market, schools, and police work. No institution can ignore the role immigrants now play in shaping the daily life of Americans in almost every state of the union. Indeed, immigration is at the heart of this country’s narrative and sense of identity. And yet, we continue to be conflicted by it: armed vigilantes patrol the Rio Grande while undocumented workers find jobs every day watching over our children or, as is the case now, rebuilding New Orleans.

In this class you’ll become familiar with key concepts every reporter in the 21 century needs to master to successfully cover any beat in New York or elsewhere in the country, even abroad –from the definition of immigration terms to the way the country remains torn over who gets to claim a piece of the American pie and who doesn’t. You’ll learn to write about immigration with a wide perspective and a firm grasp of the issues. You’ll dissect the impact that immigrants have in the U.S.–at what point does the immigrant become an American and how does he/she contribute to our evolving idea of what America ought to be? You’ll begin to understand immigration as the constant and uniquely American movement of people -from their countries to the U.S., from one city to another, from one economic level to the next- leaving their imprint and moving on. You’ll come to see immigrants, not as passive recipients of policies and procedures but as principal actors in the weaving of the American quilt. You’ll look beyond the statistics to uncover not only the sometimes painful process of adaptation and the struggles to belong but also the joys and triumphs in the lives of immigrants. You’ll acquire greater skills in reporting and analyzing the issues that have defined America as a country of immigrants–more than any other in the world. And you’ll come to see immigration as a reporter should: with empathy but with open eyes.

International Affairs Reporting
Josh Friedman
Tuesday, 7:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.
This course explores the joys and difficulties of covering news in other countries and cultures. Each student covers and writes frequently about an immigrant community in New York--or larger issues from the perspective of the country or region from which those immigrants come. Students get semester-long UN press credentials to facilitate this. Class discussion and guests focus on cultural and political differences that reporters encounter overseas. The emphasis is on how to break out of the bubble that seals off foreign journalists from the people they are covering. This is not a course about covering only diplomacy or international relations. There is a heavy practical component to the course with emphasis on reporting techniques, staying safe, logistics, selling free-lance pieces and functioning in other cultures. While the class meets in the evening, students should be prepared for occasional daytime assignments.

The Investigative Project (non-Stabile)
Wayne Barrett
Tuesday, 5-8:00 p.m.
The mission, methods and history of investigative reporting, as seen in part through a semester-long project examining a single subject. The goal will be to break news exploring the underside of an overarching state or municipal issue and to expose in engaging detail "the effort required," as Lincoln Steffens put it, "to make the world go wrong." The class will include a mix of investigative lecturers--from reporters to law enforcement agents to private investigators--as well as government officials and other experts on the project theme.
The subjects of investigative stories will also discuss how reporters are handled at the receiving end. The purpose of the class will be to acquire investigative skills by using them in a team approach designed to have an impact on one of the city's great, under-explored, issues.

The Journalism of Tomorrow
Stephen Isaacs
Tuesdays, 6-9 p.m.
The only constant in journalism has become change. This seminar will examine in some depth how journalism and its practitioners are morphing into forms seemingly unrecognizable under historic definitions. From Day 1 of the seminar, students will “zero base” accepted thinking about journalism, such as whether it will exist in the future world.

Students will explore how new global forces and the speed of technological invention are affecting all aspects of societies, from politics to economics to cultures to ethics to morals and in reverse, and how those forces affect media and how media reflect them and affect them.

Each week, students will assess the current and likely impact of current and possible developments.

The first week will concentrate on the development of media by focusing on the origins of media by using Paul Starr’s provocative work, The Creation of the Media, as a touchstone. From there, week by week, the class will examine various political and social aspects of new and possible developments. One week, for example, students will focus on blogs, and whether blogging is a 10-second phenomenon, as many regard it, or the harbinger of a major political and journalistic revolution, using the book Blog by Hugh Hewitt as a starting place. Another week might concentrate on the whole subject of citizen involvement, taking off from Bowling Alone, the sociological staple Robert D. Putnam, and Dan Gillmor’s We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People. In yet another week, we will examine the social and political phenomenon of information overload, using Todd Gitlin’s Media Unlimited as a guide. In as many cases as possible, we will invite the authors of these works to join in our discussions.

Students will write an essay every other week on one of the two topics covered in that two-week period. The minimum length will be 1,500 words.

National Affairs Reporting A
Tom Edsall
Tuesday, 6:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.
This section of the National Affairs Reporting Class will focus on the coverage of controversial and often divisive issues that have become central in both policy-making and politics. Race, sex, gender-equity, immigration, the incorporation of religious values into government policy, and the culture war-political polarization broadly conceived will be examined in readings and in class discussions. For work assignments, students will have a choice between three moderate-length articles, two of medium length or one substantial piece. I will have some suggestions based on local events and controversies, and students can offer their own ideas. The issues explored in the course come up all the time at every level of state, federal and government; in school decisions; in community conflicts, etc. There will be no shortage of material for stories. One goal of the course will be to encourage students to look at these disputes in the context both of the larger, national debate and of the evolution of culture war and racial conflicts over the past 40 years.

Some of the readings will include all or parts of: Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families by J. Anthony Lukas; Southern Politics in State and Nation by V.O. Key; American Exceptionalism by Seymour Martin Lipset; Canarsie by Jonathan Reider; the Supreme Court briefs in recent affirmative action and sodomy cases; Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America by Morris P. Fiorina, Samuel J. Abrams, and Jeremy C. Pope. Other material will include significant academic and newspaper contributions to the exploration of these matters. Guest speakers will include elected officials, leaders of advocacy groups on the left and right and some academics, especially those who have examined the polarization phenomena. The class will meet Tuesday evenings from 6:30 to 9:30.

National Affairs Reporting B: America's Fault Lines
John Martin
Tuesday, 6:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.
This course is designed to enhance the reporter's ability to explore stories that touch on the fractures in American society between the educated and the unschooled, between the government and the citizen, and between the social and economic classes. It examines four areas: Technology, Workplace, Crime, and Warfare. It seeks to penetrate myths and report realities behind the following topics: The Digital Revolution: Divisive or Liberating? American Labor: Dead or Alive? Rise of the Prison State: Controlling the Dispossessed. And the National Security State: America's Wartime Atmosphere. Guest speakers will stimulate discussion and offer leads on sources and lines of inquiry. The course requires a report of 1,200 to 2,000 words on each topic (over 15 weeks) to demonstrate reporting results and story telling abilities.

National Affairs Reporting C
Richard Wald
Tuesday, 6:30 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.
The class will act as the New York Bureau of a national publication. We will explore what makes a report "national" through a three-hour meeting every Tuesday night, examination of major publications and discussions with invited reporters and editors who are in the business every day. There will be two field trips, one to Washington (a visit), one to Albany (you work). There will be regular writing assignments and in the final five sessions we will concentrate on secrecy in government and how it affects the press. We will be joined for these sessions by David Westin, president of ABC News, and specially invited guests. Reading: everything you can get your hands on. You have to know what is in the news, generate your own stories and be prepared to defend them. Won Ton soup served on last day of class.

Personal and Professional Style A & B
Judith Crist
Monday, 1:30pm - 5pm, or Tuesday, 1:30pm - 5pm (Note: Application class –deadline November 13)
The nature and demands of this course make it necessary to limit the class size. It is offered to students who have mastered the basic mechanics and techniques of journalistic prose and are interested in developing and refining a personal literary style within a journalistic framework, appropriate to editorials, columns and reviews. There are basic assignments and free-choice exercises, with concentration on intra-group and self criticism, and good reporting. This class is not for the thin of skin. Students must submit one sample of their best writing and, in no more than 350 words, a statement of their interest in the course. These are to be emailed in the body of the message to Dean Huff, who must receive them by 9 am, Monday, November 13, 2006.

Science Reporting
Marguerite Holloway
Tuesday, 10am - 2pm
Covering science--including medicine and the environment--is an important part of any journalist's beat. This course will familiarize students with today's major science stories, as well as with the philosophical issues raised by scientific and medical research--including bioethics. Students in this course will learn how to find, report and write stories about science and medicine. They will develop the skills they need to write about any aspect of science they may be assigned to cover in the future, from astrophysics to zoology.

Stabile Investigative Seminar - for Stabile students only
Sheila Coronel
Monday, 6:30-9pm
Investigative journalism is becoming increasingly complex and sophisticated. No longer is it confined to reporting on corruption and uncovering scandal. The seminar will expose students to the variety of ways in which different subjects – ranging from politics to business, from the media to international affairs, from crime to race and social issues – can be investigated.

The class will study techniques for developing story ideas and pursuing investigations. It will examine the applicability of research methods from the social sciences to the work that investigative reporters do. The minefields that journalists encounter in the course of their research and reporting, including unreliable methods and sources, will also be discussed. Speakers, including investigative journalists, will be invited so share their experiences but so will experts and social scientists.

Students will dissect investigations conducted by both the print and broadcast media in the United States and elsewhere. During the term, the students will be divided into groups, each of which will undertake an investigative project. They will take turns critiquing and fact-checking each other’s work. Students’ projects will be mounted on the Web, so that they will learn how to present investigative reports in a multimedia format.

Media Workshops

Media Workshops J6011y Required (6 credits)
Journalism Workshops: Thursday and Friday
Please note: full-time students are expected to devote all day Thursday and Friday to their Workshops. The times listed below indicate only the group meeting time of the courses.

Admission to some workshops requires the instructor's approval in advance (see course descriptions below). If you have been selected by Helen Benedict, Judith Crist, Sam Freedman, Ari Goldman, Victor Navasky, or Michael Shapiro you will be asked to indicate so on your ballot. These classes will be filled prior to the ballot, so if you have not been pre-selected by the professor, you should not submit a ballot asking to enroll.

I. Broadcast

The broadcast faculty offers four workshops for students choosing to concentrate in television or radio. Each of the workshops specializes in one discipline: radio, nightly news, reporting and producing for television magazines, and documentary production.

Documentary
June Cross
Thursday, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m.
The Documentary Workshop presents an opportunity for a guided experience, supported by classmates and critiqued by professionals such as Sam Pollard ("When the Levees Broke"), Martin Smith (Frontline), and Judith Helfand ("Blue Vinyl"). Workshop members will learn the art of pitching to different networks and the craft of creating a scene; we will consider narrative structure and learn rudiments of running a documentary production company. We're working in the journalistic tradition, but the form may be traditional, personal, or experimental. THOSE ADMITTED TO THE CLASS MUST SUBMIT PITCHES BY JANUARY 5. Winning pitches will be announced by the first class; thereafter, you will work in teams of two. Pitches will be judged on demonstrated access to characters, feasibility, and social relevance. We encourage broadcast of the final product, and pitching to various broadcast outlets will be part of the class. Class will meet Thursday 6-9 but there will be additional sessions on various aspects of craft scheduled during some Saturdays. The class is open to print students who have taken broadcast skills. Those in the investigative program encouraged to join!

Nightly News
Rhoda Lipton and adjuncts
Thursday 9 a.m.-6 p.m.; Friday 8 a.m.-8 p.m.
Students will report, write, shoot and produce half-hour television news programs. Story lengths will vary from short hard news reports to in-depth "focus" stories, as well as series and profiles. All students will rotate through different jobs, which expose them to newsroom and studio operations. Editorial decision-making and production management are emphasized. Working under faculty supervision, students will design and implement program formats, write scripts, edit video, and anchor newscasts.

Radio
John Dinges; adjuncts will be Rick Karr and TBA
Thursday, 5 p.m. – 7 p.m., Friday 9 a.m.- 7 p.m.
Students will employ advanced radio writing and production techniques in a variety of radio formats. The course will emphasize fully reported, radio news and magazine reports such as those featured most commonly on NPR programs. In addition to reporting, the class will function as a program production team whose fundamental task is to produce a weekly radio news magazine, broadcast on the internet. Students will learn the full range of techniques of radio reporting, writing and on-air production, including newscasts, spot news, reports in the 3-4 minute range, and longer descriptive and narrative pieces using documentary methods. The course is intended to provide mastery of the most important skills needed in the news department of a good quality local radio station or national news organization. It is also designed to develop your writing skills (irrespective of media) by emphasizing descriptive writing, narrative and scene building techniques, and long-form documentary techniques. There are no technical or broadcast pre-requisites for this course and it is open to students from broadcast and print RW1 sections.

Television News Magazines
Melvin McCray
Thursday 7:30-10:00 p.m.
Students report and produce stories, ranging in length from five to ten minutes, designed for the wide range of magazine format programs which broadcast networks now produce. Feature stories, investigative reports and profiles are all encouraged, with the emphasis in each case on substance and compelling storytelling. Students work in small teams, serving as researchers, reporters, producers and editors.

II. Magazine

Literary Journalism
Helen Benedict
Thursday, 10am – 12:30pm (Note: Application class –deadline November 13)
This workshop combines long-form writing and reporting with the study of excellent stylists, both journalists who have reached beyond conventional news style to make their writing as compelling and graceful as that of the best novelists (such as Ryszard Kapusckinski, John McPhee, Jane Kramer, Joan Didion) and novelists whose work contains significant journalistic elements (such as Tolstoy, Upton Sinclair, Emile Zola, Charles Dickens). Students read and analyze these writers, then do a few short writing exercises and one long article attempting to emulate the best stylists in the field. The idea is to practice the long-form style of journalism used in books and magazine articles. *Fri, Nov. 10, 3 p.m., room 601B: Literary Journalism Preview & Application Instruction session with Prof. Helen Benedict

Magazine Writing A
John Bennet
Monday, 7 p.m. – 9 p.m.
Note: This is a Workshop, but it meets Monday evenings. Before signing up for this section, you must check to be certain there will be no schedule conflict with your Seminar. Your reporting days for this Workshop will be Thursday and Friday, with Monday and Tuesday reserved for working on your Seminar.
Why do so many journalists with secure jobs at daily newspapers secretly long for the supposed glamour, uncertainty, and financial precariousness of magazine work? Often, it's because they think they'll finally free themselves from the rigid conventions of newspaper syntax -- newspaperese -- and find their real voices as writers. What they usually discover is that magazine writing, too, has its conventions, and these can be, in their own way, just as restrictive and bewildering. In this course, we'll quickly examine various genres--women's magazines, men's magazines, entertainment magazines, niche magazines, ideological magazines? in a session or two and then move on to our real subject: writing for substantive general-interest publications like Harper's, The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Times Magazine. We'll discuss the types of proposals that appeal to editors, ways of getting in the door, and some useful frameworks for structuring longer magazine pieces. We'll work on developing or refining a more natural and conversational writing style. In addition to weekly assignments involving the study of individual magazines and assigned readings, the student will produce a suitable magazine article of 2,500 to 3,000 words.

Magazine Writing B
Stephen Fried
Thursday, 3 p.m.-6 p.m.
A magazine story is not just a longer newspaper story. It is an entirely different beast, requiring a unique approach to story selection, to reporting and interviewing, to writing and re-writing, and to maintaining one's journalistic mental health. This class will help you embrace those differences, giving you tools to dig deeper into stories than you ever have before--as a reporter and a narrative writer. It will also explore how magazines work, how magazine projects come to be, how magazine writers and editors (and sources) survive the longform process, and how the market for longform non-fiction is growing and mutating.

In each weekly session we examine one aspect of magazine writing from a variety of perspectives, and analyze one current issue of a magazine.

But our primary focus is on your work, to help you understand and explore magazine writing for yourself--in an intense workshop setting where pretty much every word you write is not only edited by me, but by at least three of your classmates. We aggressively workshop several magazine story ideas, then multiple drafts of an originally-reported (and endlessly re-reported) magazine piece of at least 3500 words. We finish the semester talking about how you might get the piece published--but, more important, how it might help you get a job where you can get paid to write even better pieces.

As my former students will tell you--and please contact them or look at their reviews of the workshop before enrolling--this is not a class for dabblers or tourists. Many have described it as tantamount to doing a second masters (some meant that as a compliment ... others, not so much.) The workshop is best suited for students who really plan to pursue magazine and alt-weekly writing (or editing) for a career directly after J-school.

Magazine Writing C
Cathleen McGuigan
Thursday, 1:00-3:00 p.m.
In this course, we will explore the magazine story and how it differs from a newspaper story, both in its richly-detailed reporting and in the style and structure of its writing. Starting with the basic elements of magazine stories, the class will explore the use of scenes, anecdotes and color and the development of a personal writer's voice. Through readings of both contemporary and classic magazine pieces, we will analyze various writers' techniques. In the first half of the term, students will produce several short pieces; the second half of the term will be devoted to a deeply reported 3000-word piece. In addition to the readings and writing assignments, we will examine a different type of magazine each week and discuss the practical aspects of breaking into magazines and getting stories published.

Producing a Magazine A
Victor Navasky
Thursday, 3 p.m. – 6 p.m. (Note: Application class –deadline November 13)
This workshop will produce an issue of the New York Review of Magazines (NYRM). The purpose of NYRM , past copies of which are available in the library and the 8th floor computer lab, is to describe, analyze, and evaluate the world of magazines -- the world many of you are about to enter (and some of you already inhabit.) Students will determine the theme, if any, of this issue.

Students will write, edit, fact-check and generally take part in all aspects of this publication. We will also publish a companion on-line version of NYRM. If you are interested in applying you should send a letter (no longer than a page and a half) setting forth at least three story ideas for the magazine, and also any special expertise or interest you have re: working online, working on the magazine, photography, copy-editing, production, working on a business plan, etc. Enrollment is limited to 16. A writing sample from the fall must be submitted to Professor Navasky by 9 a.m. on Nov. 13.
* Friday, Nov. 10: 11:30-12:15 p.m., room 607B: Producing a Magazine Preview with Professors Navasky and Shapiro.

Producing a Magazine B
Michael Shapiro
Thursday, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. (Note: Application class –deadline November 13)
The class will, over the course of the semester, produce a prototype magazine. Students will write, edit, copy-edit, fact-check, in short perform all the editorial functions of a magazine staff. They will work individually and in teams, devising departments, assigning stories, gathering art. Enrollment is limited to 16. A writing sample from the fall must be submitted to Professor Shapiro by 9 am on Nov. 13.
* Friday, Nov. 10: 11:30-12:15 p.m., room 607B: Producing a Magazine Preview with Professors Navasky and Shapiro.

III. New Media

New Media
Duy Linh Tu and Jeff Gralnick
Thursday, 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. and most Fridays 10 a.m. -5 p.m.
The New Media Workshop combines traditional reporting and writing skills with the best of online journalism. Students will learn to report and create stories using new media - including text, photography, audio and video (and will have a chance to work on their own advanced personal sites and blogs). In addition to learning software skills, students will learn to think and execute stories in true multimedia fashion and prepare for the converged newsroom. The focus of the class is the NYC24.org project -- a Web magazine read in more than 75 countries. Workshop students will expand NYC24 and report and produce several stories over the course of the semester. The class meets in formal training sessions on Thursday evenings from 6-9PM and, on many weeks, several hours on Friday. In addition, reporting will be required on a weekday or weekend day. Leading experts from the editorial and business sides of the media serve as guest speakers and provide feedback and direction for projects. Priority will be given to students who have taken New Media Issues and New Media Skills, but others with an interest in online journalism may also apply. Part-time students are welcome to apply. To see the work from past workshops, please visit http://www.nyc24.org

IV. Newspaper

These two-day workshops involve instruction and experience in editorial aspects of a newspaper operation: planning and editing, reporting and writing, and photography. All work is done under close supervision of faculty instructors.

The Bronx Beat
Pam Frederick
Thursday, Friday 9 a.m. – 6:00 p.m., Saturday (for editors) 8:00 a.m. -2:00 p.m.
The Bronx Beat is a student-written, student-run weekly newspaper covering the people, issues and happenings of the city’s northernmost borough. Assisted by a team of adjuncts from The New York Times, the New York Daily News and the Wall Street Journal, the staff produces 12 issues during the course of the spring semester covering topics from schools to sports to samba.

This is a class for self-starting journalists. Two students are chosen to serve as the co-editors-in-chief for two consecutive issues. Student writers pitch stories each week to these editors, who maintain a story budget, manage deadlines and steer the content of the paper.

Working in rotating teams with a professional editor, students copy edit and design the paper’s layout on deadline. The staff also works alongside photographers in the spring photojournalism workshop. Students produce as many as 10 stories in a semester, and have the opportunity to direct a story’s accompanying art and layout in each issue.

In addition to a circulation in the Bronx of 6,000, the Bronx Beat is also widely circulated to the editors of the city’s weeklies and dailies.
*Tues, Nov. 14, 8:15-8:45, room 601B: Bronx Beat Preview

Columbia News Service
Bruce Porter
Thursday 6-8:30 p.m.
Weekly editing sessions are held with adjuncts on either Thursday, Friday or Saturday. ENROLLMENT LIMITED TO 50.
The Columbia News Service operates as a feature syndicate whose stories are thought up, reported and written by students under the guidance of faculty members. The best ones are displayed on the school’s web site and also distributed by the New York Times News Service for publication in some 400 daily newspapers throughout the United States and Canada. Topics concern anything of general interest happening in and around New York City. Subject matter can deal with the arts, entertainment, science, technology, health/fitness, sports, publishing, economics, fashion, ideas, travel, politics, academia, business, government—anything that would intrigue and inform a national audience. To see examples of what students produced last year, take a look at the CNS stories listed under Student Work on the school’s website.
Along with receiving instruction and practice in how to report and write feature stories, students will learn how to develop ideas, present them to editors in acceptable fashion and deal professionally with editors as staff writers and freelancers. Students must turn out six stories of 750 to 1500 words each in the course of the semester, writing and rewriting them, working one-to-one with their own instructor, until their pieces reach publishable quality.

Electives

(J6010y) 3 credits

All courses below count for 3 academic credits. Students who wish to take a 6000-level-or-higher graduate elective offered elsewhere in the University that is given on a day other than Wednesdays may be able to work that in, but only with the prior agreement of the seminar and/or workshop instructor(s). Journalism students may audit courses or specific meetings of courses with the permission of the instructor(s).
Note: The school reserves the right to cancel any elective with fewer than 8 students enrolled.

Advanced Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR)
Tom Torok
Wednesday 5:00-7:00 p.m.
Advanced Computer-assisted Reporting. Students will learn advanced techniques to manage, integrate and analyze complex and dissimilar sets of electronic information to produce compelling journalistic projects. The class will focus on ways to reliably work with longitudinal data that change in structure and quality over time to examine a contemporary social issue. Students also will pursue a topic of choice. Past classes have concentrated on hate crimes in New York and on the effects of a Supreme Court decision on academic performance in public schools. Classes also have worked in conjunction with graphics classes to look at ways to help present complicated information in an easy-to-understand visual ways.

Students can expect to work two to three hours a week outside of class, although students may voluntarily spend more time while pursuing projects of their own. Because it is difficult to complete some journalistic projects within the span of a semester, emphasis will be on the project process rather than on a finished product.

Advanced Photojournalism
Sara Barrett
Wednesday 7:00- 9:30 p.m.
A course for aspiring photojournalists and for students who wish to include photography among their reportorial skills. Students will gain experience by shooting news and feature stories, and will develop individual photo essays. This class addresses both the technical aspects of photography and the practical and ethical issues faced by the working photojournalist. Visiting photographers and photo editors will show and critique work. Enrollment limited to students who have completed Skills/Photo or by permission of the instructor. Note: This course is open only to students who have completed "Photo Skills" or by permission on the instructor.

Broadcast News Management
David McCormick and Lloyd Siegel
Wednesday, 7p.m. - 9p.m.
This course will focus on the exciting challenges and opportunities facing broadcast managers in the digital age: multiple platforms, rapidly changing technology, and an increasingly fractionalized audience and advertising market. It will address issues of newsroom organization, content development, budgeting, and standards in terms of this new environment.

The objective is to develop a new model for television news, with revised procedures and policies to operate on the air, on cable, the Internet, and other digital platforms simultaneously in a creative and cost effective way. The course will include case studies, real world decision-making, and guest lecturers from broadcast and digital organizations.

Feature Writing A
Alexandra Peers
Wednesday, 3-5:00 p.m.
The class aims to acquaint the student with the fundamentals and challenges of feature writing and, beyond that, to serve as an intensely practical, modern look at the current climate for such writing. Students will work on developing a “voice,” will learn sourcing and interviewing strategies and will discuss current publishing industry issues with professionals working at newspapers and magazines. Particular attention will be paid to the specific stylistic elements that distinguish feature writing from news reporting, and to developing the characters, atmosphere and breadth of features.

Feature Writing B
Kristal Zook
Wednesday, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
“You have to be passionately interested in everything. You have to want to learn about frogs or cancer or assassins, everything there is to know. You have to know five times as much as you're ever going to use in the story."
--Cynthia Gorney, Washington Post

What is this elusive thing called good writing? What moves us, as readers? For students who feel shackled by the constraints of beat reporting this is your chance to cut loose and rediscover your narrative voice and creativity. This class will help you to become more conscious of the connection between what moves you as a reader, and how to get there as a writer. By dissecting classic feature stories, and using right-brain-inspired writing exercises, we will answer questions such as: What's the difference between a news story and a feature? Is my story idea feature-worthy? What initial reporting and research do I need to do to shape a successful pitch? What makes a good character? How do I know which sources to spend more time with, and to feature more prominently in my story? Which reporting details are important and which should be discarded? In the second half of the course, we will spend a great deal of time editing and rewriting the assignment of your choice, in order to focus on common errors such as how to avoid reporting holes, understanding and sharpening narrative structure, and making sure your story remains newsworthy.

Graphics in the Newsroom
Hannah Fairfield Wallander
Wednesday, 7:10 p.m. – 9:10 p.m.

Information graphics are now a vital part of newspaper and magazine reporting. Readers are more visually savvy than ever before, and newsrooms are responding. Election coverage, national and international affairs, science, sports, and business news all depend on infographics to attract and inform readers.

Reporters with experience in information graphics have an advantage when seeking jobs and pitching stories because they can offer story packages rather than words alone. A story with an excellent graphic will frequently edge out other stories for page one. This course will teach you, as reporters and editors, to approach a story as a visual journalist.

The International Newsroom: Ann Cooper
Wednesdays, 2-4 p.m.
When you join the foreign desk of Columbia Multimedia News, come prepared for weekly conferences analyzing the world’s top news stories and developing assignments for advancing those stories. Students will be assigned new roles each week: one week, you may be the foreign editor who leads the news conference discussion, the next you may be assigned to report one of the several story ideas that emerge from each weekly session. Stories can be written for print, broadcast, or Internet.

In addition to working on our own foreign news report, we will look at how news is reported around the world. Our guest speakers, including foreign editors and foreign correspondents, will help us compare how a single story is reported in different ways in different parts of the world. We’ll look at why these differences exist, and at how factors such as media ownership, geography, and government press policies affect news selection and news reporting. We will also examine some innovative approaches to international reporting, such as Swarthmore College’s War News Radio project and Yahoo’s In the Hot Zone site. And we will discuss the possibility of a final class multimedia project on a single global issue.

This course is designed to increase analytical and reporting skills in covering international news. It will also examine journalistic standards around the world and how they affect the presentation of
news.

Magazine Editing
Joe Ferrer
Wednesday, 3 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Many journalists want to write for magazines. Some consider becoming editors. Still others think about starting their own. For all these students, this course will analyze how magazines are made -- from the creation of an editorial vision to what an editor does day by day. Aspects of business and production will also be addressed. For a required final project, each student will choose a magazine to report on, applying the course contents to assess the publication's strengths and weaknesses.

Narrative Writing
Kevin Coyne
Wednesday, 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.
All of the best stories in journalism, whether as short as a column or as long as a book, share the same basic narrative principles, and the aim of this course is to master those principles, to study them in the work of others, and to apply them to your own. The first few sessions are spent in an overview of the narrative form, discussing how to recognize, report, structure and write stories that move confidently through time, place and character. The remaining weeks proceed through a series of more specific technical issues using dialogue, choosing and depicting characters, compressing and expanding time, managing transitions, providing historical context, establishing a voice. Beyond the regular readings, the main requirement is to find one good story idea and then write it at three lengths (column, feature, magazine), gradually working your way deeper into the narrative form as the semester progresses.

New Media Elective
Jennifer Johnson
Wednesdays, 4 p.m. – 6 p.m.
The Web is quickly becoming the medium of choice for news and information.
As traditional media outlets increasingly turn to their online entities for breaking news and interactive projects, journalists who have exposure to storytelling on the Web have a tremendous advantage when looking for new jobs. The goal of this course is to provide a foundation of technical skills and storytelling techniques in an era when information can be presented using a variety of different media. Students will use stories they have already reported and reinvent them as engaging online presentations by identifying which parts of the story are best told in video, audio, text, photos or animation. The course will include a collaborative final project presented online. In addition, the course will provide an introduction to blogs, wikis and other online tools.

News Editing
Nancy Sharkey
Wednesday, 5-7:00 p.m.
Despite predictions of an Internet-wrought demise, newspaper editing survives. In fact, good editing prospers as information proliferates. Editors sort the fact from the fallacious. They shape the tone and choose the content of their publications. They collaborate with reporters to help reporters achieve their best work (or they should, anyway). This course will cover the art of editing, from shaping breaking news to gently handling features written with voice and style. It will look at relationships between reporters and editors. It will examine tough decisions of news judgment. And it will explore choices in organization and style. The course is intended not only for students considering a career in editing, but also for reporters who want to become better self-editors.

Opinion Writing
Gwenda Blair
Wednesday 4:00-6:00 p.m.
Despite the tidal wave of opinion available in print, on the Internet, and on talk radio, it often seems that rather than becoming more substantive and engaging, the public debate has simply become louder. In this course, we will combine a look at the role of opinion in contemporary society with a workshop in opinion journalism. Instead of turning up the volume to make a point, we’ll emphasize critical thinking and structured argument. We’ll also discuss practical tips for building and presenting a point of view and the pluses and minuses of first-person writing. In addition to reading and discussing work by guest critics and columnists, there will be 6 or 7 writing assignments drawn from social, political, and cultural events of the day. The instructor will critique all assignments, and we will read, edit, and discuss them in class. Revisions will be required.

Politics and the Press in America
Evan Cornog
Wednesday, 2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
This course examines the press's role in American politics from the eighteenth century to the present. Both "press" and "politics" are broadly defined. While parts of the course will look at newspaper coverage of political campaigns, the course will also consider the role of political pamphlets in bringing about the American Revolution, how reform groups (such as the abolitionists) have used the press to advance their agendas, and how efforts in various media--the cartoons of Thomas Nast, the radio broadcasts of F.D.R. and Father Coughlin, the Kennedy-Nixon TV debates--have altered American politics. Among the subjects the course will consider Thomas Jefferson and the press, muckraking, yellow journalism and the Spanish-American War, McCarthyism, Vietnam, and the modern political scandal from Watergate to the Starr Report.

Radio Documentary
Alex Blumberg
Wednesday, 7 p.m. – 10 p.m.
Alex Blumberg, a producer on the public radio program This American Life, teaches the art and techniques of documentary radio journalism - interviewing, ambient sound collection, scene-setting, and narrative. Frequent guest lectures and discussions will focus on stylistic and ethical issues. The goal of this course if for students to develop the skills and sensibility for documentary storytelling.

Students will produce three radio projects: a one-voice story (4 to 5 minutes) a multiple voice story (4 to 5 minutes) and a final documentary (8 - 12 minutes.) Through frequent rewrites and intensive editing, these documentaries should be well-crafted and professional enough for broadcast.

Sports Journalism
Sandy Padwe
Wednesday, 6:15 p.m. - 8:45 p.m.
Sports occupies a special place in American society. Television props up its financial investment by giving sporting events--professional, college and high school--staggering blocks of time every day; many newspapers keep readers by devoting huge percentages of their daily newsholes to local, national and international coverage. Sports talk radio and countless internet sites dissect every play, every individual and every move, often adding to the stifling pressure on athletes, coaches, owners and admininstrators. Sport has evolved into a complex part of American life that requires thinking, well-trained, well-read and fundamentally sound journalists.

A sports journalist must be able to quickly and clearly tell readers and viewers what is happening on the field, on the court or on the track, and the modern sports journalist must have a solid background on issues as diverse as labor, medicine, performance enhancing drugs, stadium financing, race, Title IX, gender, masculinity, hip hop culture, youth sports--and the daily police blotter. A sports journalist must understand the fascinating history of this world as well as all the emerging trends and must continue the tradition of adding to some of the best writing, reporting and commentary in journalism. This course will address all of these matters with coverage of local professional and college games; feature pieces; columns, as well as longer, issue-oriented takeouts and investigative stories dictated by the news.

Stabile Investigative Techniques
J. Robert Port
Monday, 10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
This course will be integrally connected to the work the Stabile Investigative Students are doing in the Investigative Seminar with Professor Coronel.

The methods of the investigative reporter are changing, requiring a mix of high tech records research, old-fashioned shoe leather and sharp instinct for recognizing corruption, conflict of interest or hypocrisy. This course will equip students with that mix of skills. They will learn how to find and describe the residence of any person from computer records, how to document business affiliations, pinpoint useful material in complex lawsuits and extract investigative leads or evidence from government data kept on such subjects as terrorism, industrial safety, child abuse, tax-exempt charities, campaign contributors, corporate executives and convicted felons. Using court records, developing sources and record-keeping will be discussed. Skepticism, factual accuracy and teamwork will be stressed. The instructor will guide students through three investigative exercises and one final investigative project to be published in a local newspaper.

Skills Courses

Skills (6102y) 1 credit
This spring we will be offering two, five-week sessions of computer assisted reporting and new media skills. The first session runs before spring break and is geared to M.A. students, who will be given preference in balloting. The second session runs after spring break and is geared to M.S. students, who will be given preference in balloting. Students are not guaranteed a spring skills class.

Computer Assisted Reporting
Section 1 – Tom Torok
Monday, 7-9:30 p.m.
January 22-February 19

Section 2 – Tom Torok
Monday, 7-9:30 p.m.
March 26-April 23

New Media
Section 1 – TBA
Saturday, 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
January 20-February 17

Section 2 – TBA
Saturday, 10 a.m.-12:30 pm
March 24-May 5