What You Will Study. How You Will Learn.
Skills courses, such as Reporting Words, train students to use professional tactics. Students majoring in journalism enhance, train and sharpen skillsets designed for a versatile career in the field of new media.
Curriculum is a combination of skills courses, where students hone their craft and produce multi-platform content, and concept courses, where students dig into history, theory and issues critical to the profession and practice of journalism.
To learn more, please review the degree requirements or consult the degree catalog checklist.
Curriculum Overview
The Bachelor of Journalism degree comprises 120 credit hours, and 36 hours of major-specific coursework must be completed.
All students take 15 hours of fundamental skills and concept courses before branching into courses based on interests and career goals.
Even with the changing field of journalism, every student should know the fundamentals of the profession and gain the introductory knowledge and skills to either pursue a career as a daily beat reporter, or advance into any graduate program or company.
Sample courses include:
- Fundamental Issues in Journalism: Become a more critical consumer of news while understanding the unique history of the press, including its historical and ideological context
- Digital Storytelling Basics: Explore new ways to tell stories while getting hands-on practice in news judgment, interviewing, information gathering, fact checking, story conceptualization, reporting and writing
- Reporting Words: Emphasize journalistic news gathering and writing to become an effective reporter and communicator
- Reporting Images: Understand the elements of digital storytelling by producing short-and long-form videos
- Media Law: Introduces students to First Amendment doctrines and debates through applications of the law and journalistic work
Journalism students can choose from an array of courses meant to give them confidence to enter a dynamic and changing field. These courses combine the fundamentals of good journalism – reporting, curiosity and accuracy – with more specific content designed to hone individual interests and career goals.
Sample courses include:
- Reporting with Data: Gain skills to use data analysis and visualizations for news reporting
- Coding for Journalists: Introduce yourself to interface design, programming and software development
- Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Understand the role of innovation and entrepreneurship for journalism in the digital age. Study tools and methods to develop emerging media enterprises
- Social Media Journalism: Complete the course and be ready to run the social media efforts for any organization
All journalists, regardless of changes in technology or the industry, rely on the fundamentals of good journalism, and an understanding of journalism as a profession. These theory and concept courses provide context for what it means to work in the only constitutionally-protected profession, and what it means for journalism to support a democratic nation.
Sample courses include:
- Ethics in Journalism: Develop a moral and political philosophy that can guide career choices
- Gender and the News: Focus on women both as producers of journalism and as subjects of media portrayals
- Journalism and Religion: Learn about the world's major belief systems and how they influence elections, policy, education and culture
- PopCulture and the Press: Think critically about pop culture and the media in social conscience