Course Listings | Fall 2013

Honors - Broadcast, Multimedia & Print Convergence

Instructor: Jason Samuels

Course ID: JOUR-UA 351.01

Days: Wed 10:00am-1:00pm

Room: 20 Cooper, 750

» Syllabus (PDF)

SENIORS ONLY

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry, The Beat

Honors is a year-long research, writing and reporting course for seniors in which students choose and develop a senior thesis subject of their own choosing in the first semester and complete the project in the second. Students take Honors Advanced Reporting, followed by Honors Senior Seminar. Honors students must have a 3.65 average.

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Honors - Print Long Form Bias

Instructor: Brooke Kroeger

Course ID: JOUR-UA 351.02

Days: Tues 3:30pm-6:00pm

Room: 20 Cooper, 750

» Syllabus (PDF)

CONTEXT AND MAIN OBJECTIVE

Our objective over the course of this year, I hope, is already clear: We are going to produce a piece of heavily reported, gorgeously crafted long-form journalism in the narrative, expository, or investigative style as the equivalent of an academic senior honors thesis. It’s as simple as that. If you were writing an honors thesis for your companion major in CAS, it would need to be something like 40 to 60 pages with full citations. In Journalism, we do this differently, with respect to common journalistic practice. We write for the sophisticated general reading public, not for academics, but we also want to present work that reflects a scholar’s knowledge and intent but that is produced to engage readers with our research and writing in the journalistic way.

You will find that this course is is likely not the same as other classes you have taken. It’s more of an organized tutorial in a group setting, sometimes with individual conferences, too. It is built to a large extent to address any lacks you feel. I will endeavor to fill those gaps as effectively as possible.

Earlier groups have reported devoting anywhere from 10 to 20 hours a week to this project. Most enjoyed the freedom of being able to choose their own subjects as they delighted and agonized about pursuing their stories maniacally for a solid year. Students have especially liked the challenge and freedom of writing at significant length. There is always joy and frenzy in producing the magazine and we will experience that, too.

EXPLOITING AND VERIFYING YOUR KNOWLEDGE

It is not a requirement, but I strongly encourage you to draw your subject however broadly from the learning you are doing in your companion major. We will talk more about that.

We will also produce a fact-checking research and citation list that shows the academic research we have done on the topic, the interviews we have conducted, the published work we will be referring to or citing, and the other writers and researches we have examined to inform our thinking.

INTEGRITY

It goes without saying that I expect the highest journalistic standard and that no form of plagiarism, falsification or fabrication of any kind will be tolerated.

SPECS

The expected length of this piece will be a minimum of 6,000 words and a maximum of 9,000 words. Your model? Long-form pieces in the Atlantic, Harper’s, The New Yorker, Esquire, and the like. In previous classes, student stories have been published as is, in excerpt, or re-fashioned into go-to blogs and reflective personal pieces.

Here’s our zine to help you know where we are headed and where your work will appear no matter what:
http://shoeleathermagazine.com.

If the prospects for publication are good, we will “password protect” to keep the work off search engines until you are ready to release it. Once released, we will re-post it on our site with a link to the other url.

MULTIMEDIA

You’ll note these pieces were illustrated with handsome slide shows and with a fashion video (Wu) in one case. You will need to produce and/or provide (with permission) multimedia elements to enhance your work, so you need to plan this as you go. For that reason, we will complete our final drafts by the end of March so that we have April to produce our multimedia accompaniments. And also for that reason, have a camera at the ready when you’re out reporting. If you don’t already have a good tape recorder with a USB connection, you’ll want one.

THE CLASS BLOG/BEATNOTES

We will blog every week for ourselves, privately, with an 8 pm deadline the night before class. We do this on my Basecamp site, http://bknyu.basecamphq.com, where I will enroll you. This is a variation on the time-honored journalistic tradition of producing weekly “beat notes.” Offering these to each other will also encourage you to exercise your writing voice while it keeps you focused on our long-term goal by picking away at the story week after week. Benign accountability. These beat notes should be well-crafted and engaging. They should reflect the week’s street reporting, interviewing, reading, scholarly conversations, and reflections – whatever gives flesh to your ideas and helps you focus in on the writing to come. For me and for your classmate, they have the important side benefit of keeping the rest of us current with your progress. It helps us know about the challenges you encounter and where we might have helpful suggestions. It helps me to see where there are common issues we can address in class. Being generous about the work of others enables others to be generous about yours, so we will devote time regularly to each other. You will find yourself called upon to do this throughout your professional careers, so we may as well start now. As to blogging publicly about your work, or creating a Tumblr or whatnot -- your choice. One student has done this in the past. Most choose to keep their findings under wraps until they publish. Likewise, I’ve not yet had a student who tweeted about his or her subject area during the year, but I’m open to that. All of this is your choice and we can discuss the pros and cons. We will also decide as a group how private or public we want our group effort as a class to be as it unfolds.

INSPIRATIONAL BUT CRITICAL READING

We will study the work of the greats for inspiration and for craft. Most classes will involve time spent studying the work of the great long-form narrative journalists, current and past. Sometimes I will invite you to invite your heroes in to talk with us, or I will ask you to interview them on our behalf and share what you learn with the rest of the group. I will suggest pieces for us to read (some great, some not-so) to help us set our own standards. We will analyze together what we admire and what we don’t, using a method called “Charting” to help you understand the critical importance of structure. It’s important to do the readings ahead of time, please. Sometimes I hope you will make suggestions growing out of your own research and reporting.

EXERCISES IN NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE

We will do exercises in narrative technique that will come weekly as part of your BeatNote assignment. I will be encouraging you in a variety of ways to work with a bagful of literary devices. The most common errors of your predecessors have been trite phrase and word choice, indiscriminate use of the passive voice, appositive pile-ups, and the squandering of the element of suspense. Think about these and try to self-edit them out before we see your weekly posts.

DURF PROPOSALS

We will apply for DURF grants to support our research. I will work with you closely on these. The deadline comes at a very convenient time of the year in helping us to hone our ideas and pinpoint exactly what we are going after.  This class traditionally has had a very good success rate with the DURF judges.

ONE FALL ARTICLE ASSIGNMENT

In addition to our blogs, we will do one major (minor compared to the thesis) reporting-writing assignment in the Fall term. Your query will be due the second week in November and your story will be due the day before Thanksgiving break, so that you can have a real break and I have time to edit the pieces, giving us time to discuss them in class and you time to rewrite them before the term ends. We call these “Element” pieces. They will emanate from your overall research and reporting and come in at 1200-1500 words. They will not be a capsule version of the Honors project, but only an element of it that you are ready to develop by the time we are working on it. It could be a profile of one of the protagonists or even one of the minor figures in your story. It could be a closer look at one of the institutions that show up in your reporting. It could be the development of a trend that works into your overall piece. The idea is to exercise your writing muscle in a structured form and to produce something that deepens your understanding of the overall subject matter and moves you along to the bigger goal. Many of these have ended up as a section of the big piece; others just provide background that helps you write with more fluidity and comprehension once we get to February. If you pick your subject right, it could be publishable on its own. That has happened.

TYPICAL CLASS SCHEDULE

Our class is 2 ½ hours long. Typically, I will go over the Beatnotes to point out issues I’m seeing that relate to everyone’s work generally. Often, we will dissect one or two of them for particular points that will hopefully be helpful to everyone. Everyone will get a chance over the course of the term to be in the hot seat. We will discuss the reading assignment, have a methods lab exercise (emanating from issues we see emerging) or a guest writer/editor/speaker to whom we can pitch our work. In the second term, we will have weeks where we are in private conference. This can only happen, of course, when the work is in solid draft.

I will post the readings and the timetable for the following week the evening prior to the following week’s class. The choices have to be built out of your needs as they emerge, so bear with me on this. There is method!

STORY QUERIES AND DRAFTS

For your story queries and drafts, when we get to that, I might ask you to use the “Writeboard” function of Basecamp, or, at times we will use Google Docs, which is great for collaborative editing. I will let you know which and will give you a tutorial so you can make maximum use of their wonders.

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Methods and Practice: Visual Reporting

Instructor: Kathy Willens

Course ID: JOUR-UA 203, section 001

Days: Fri 10:00am - 1:40pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 655

» Syllabus (PDF)

This course will train you to think, see, and take photos visually and journalistically. Using a 35mm SLR digital or film camera, you’ll learn how professional photojournalists make story-telling photographs suitable for publication in newspapers, magazines or online. By practicing the same skills professional photojournalists use, you will learn to document daily life and special events and how to capture fleeting moments with a camera. By semester’s end, you should have a basic understanding of the history of photojournalism and the impact photographs have on society, legal and ethical concerns of photojournalists, digital production of photographs, and the importance of captions and text accompanying those photos. You should also have a variety of photojournalistic images suitable for an entry-level portfolio.

 You are expected to develop story ideas, cover events, edit your own photographs and produce your own digitally scanned images using Adobe Photoshop, and burn them onto CD’s or DVD’s for classroom viewing and critiques.

 This is NOT a darkroom or basic photography class. The emphasis is on taking and editing pictures. A basic understanding of camera operation and exposure is required. All film and print developing or digital processing, is to be done outside of class.

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Elective Reporting Topics: Data Journalism and Investigative Reporting

Instructor: Charles Seife

Course ID: JOUR-UA 204, section 001

Days: Wednesday 11:00a-1:30p

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 659

» Syllabus (PDF)

This four-point course will both survey what the emerging field of data journalism is about and plunge students into the practice of it.  Students will learn how to find useful documents and other sources of data, extract meaningful information from large data sets, prepare data for public use, and make it possible for consumers of the news to interact with the data. They will also learn how to use data to perform investigative journalism. Outstanding examples of data journalism from around the world will be studied -- and the techniques those pieces used will be added to students' arsenals. A final project will test students’ skills in using data to produce publishable-quality journalism.  

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Elective Reporting Topics: Sports Writing

Instructor: TBA

Course ID: JOUR-UA 204, section 003

Days: Mon 10:00am-1:40pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 750

» Syllabus (PDF)

This course will teach you to write about sports for newspapers, magazines and various internet platforms.  You also will read about sports to better understand the historic evolution of the craft and the wide variety of contemporary approaches.

Your assignments will include writing stories on deadline, some from live sports events.  There will be two long-term assignments.  One will be a feature story about a person, team or issue in sports. The other will be a profile of a professional person currently working in sports journalism.

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Production & Publication: TV Newscast

Instructor: TBA

Course ID: JOUR-UA 302, section 001

Days: Tues 1:00p-7:00p

Room: 20 Cooper Square, TV Studio (room 761)

» Syllabus (PDF)

Students in this class will be involved in every aspect of producing a television newscast. The weekly shows will be broadcast live on the NYU cable system and streamed online. Each student will take on a different role, from anchoring, line producing, directing, to running audio, prompter or EP’ing.  There will be strong emphasis on script writing, story selection and placement, as well as execution in the control room. The class assignments include both editorial and operational functions. Our class will act as a living newsroom where there is a tight deadline to get the show on the air. There will also be reporting assignments outside of the Tuesday class. “NYU Tonight” airs at 6pm every Tuesday for 30 minutes.  We will reconvene as a group from 630 to 7p for post-game discussion.

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Journalism Seminar: Undercover Reporting

Instructor: Ted Conover

Course ID: JOUR-UA 401, section 001

Days: Thur 11:00am-1:30pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 700

Undercover reporting is one of the most potent practices in journalism, and one of the most controversial. Here it will be considered on a continuum with kinds of participatory reporting that have aimed to produce not exposé but rather a deeper, insider quality of understanding. With exceptions, both methods involve immersion and the kinds of ethical stakes that come with one's subjects either forgetting, or never having known, that one intended to write about them. Using Brooke Kroeger's authoritative new history as a principal text (and her extensive online database as a resource), we will consider key works of the past 125 years of (mainly American) undercover and participatory reporting in their ethical and literary dimensions.

Students will present texts and historical and critical contexts; participate in in-class debates over the merits of controversial projects such as the Chicago Sun-Times' Mirage Tavern investigation and John Howard Griffin's series for Sepia magazine that became Black Like Me; and develop case studies of less well-known reporting not on the syllabus that they evaluate independently in terms of ethics, efficacy, and literary value.

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Journalism & Society: Women and the Media

Instructor: Carol Sternhell

Course ID: JOUR-UA 503, section 001

Days: Tues 12:30pm-3:00pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 657

» Syllabus (PDF)

Women & the Media is a collaborative seminar designed to examine the complex relationship
(or different, contradictory relationships) between those humans we call “women” and those
forms of discourse we call “media.” We will consider women both as subjects and objects, as
artists and models, as creators of “media” in its many forms and as media’s creations. What
does our culture’s “media” tell us about its ideas of gender? What, if anything, does our gender
tell us about our readings of “media”? Student participation in this seminar is key: students are
expected to attend all sessions, to complete all the reading (there's lots of reading!), to
participate actively in discussion, and to lead one of the class sessions themselves. Leading a
class means opening the day’s conversation with a presentation, critiquing and elaborating on
the assigned reading, bringing in additional relevant material, and suggesting questions or
issues that seem particularly interesting or troublesome. The purpose of the course is to
develop our critical and self-critical faculties as journalists, media critics, consumers of media,
and women or men—to think clearly, challenge our pet assumptions, and have fun.
Along with attendance and informed class participation, students are required to conduct a miniresearch
project and present their findings to the class. I want you to pick a “women and media”
topic that really interests you and then report the hell out of it. If you’re interested in the effect of
music videos on teenage girls, for instance, you would first put together an extensive
bibliography of what has already been written on the subject. You would figure out what the key
questions in the field were: do media images affect teens’ behavior or not, and how can anyone
tell? You might interview some of the leading researchers in the area and tell us what they say.
You’ll certainly want to read the most important books/articles on your subject. A paper is not
required; instead, students will present their findings to the class during our last three sessions.

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Journalism as Literature: Learning from the Best to be the Best

Instructor: TBA

Course ID: JOUR-UA 504, section 001

Days: Tues 11:00a-1:30p

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 654

» Syllabus (PDF)

Learning from The Best To Be The Best is a survey of some of the most entertaining and well-written literary journalism of the last two centuries. We will read these articles and book excerpts carefully - "deep reading," it is called - to discover how good writers take basic journalism and enliven it with literary technique. We want to catalog as much of that technique and structure as we can so that we can "steal it," appropriate the devices for our own work. Students will work in teams; each week a team will "present" the readings and incite a discussion with the rest of the class. There will be some three to five formal academic papers in which students will be asked to demonstrate their understanding of the material, and there will be a number of "creative" assignments as well. The main text for the course is an excellent anthology of non-fiction: The Art of Fact by Kerrane and Yagoda..

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Internship

Instructor: Sylvan Solloway

Course ID: JOUR-UA 980

Days: Fri 1:00pm - 3:00pm

Room: TBA

DECLARED JOURNALISM MAJORS ONLY Hours Arranged

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry, The Beat

To enroll:
1) Students must be declared journalism majors who have been offered an internship. The Career Services director must approve the internship. All sophomores must consult the director before applying for a credit internship.
2) No credit will be given for internships in advertising, marketing, public relations or the fashion/accessory closet.
3) Students may take the course for 1, 2, 3 or 4 credits but can earn no more than 4 credits total while attending the institute. Only one internship for credit is allowed per semester.

For moew information go to the Career Services section.

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Advanced Individualized Study

Instructor: TBA

Course ID: JOUR-UA 997

Days: TBA

Room: TBA

To enroll in Advanced Individualized Study, an interested student must find a full-time faculty member to be a sponsor and then must develop and file a syllabus. The syllabus must be approved by the faculty member and the Journalism Director of Undergraduate Graduate Studies (DUGS). It must list, in week by week fashion, all readings and all writing assignments that the student will undertake for the Advanced Individualized Study. Once approved, this syllabus constitutes your "contract" on the project and the student's work will be judged and graded with that in mind.

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Methods and Practice: Radio Reporting

Instructor: Farai Chideya

Course ID: JOUR-UA 202, section 001

Days: Thur 10:30am-2:10pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square,652

» Syllabus (PDF)

The first step in producing radio is learning to listen to sound the way we attune ourselves to important conversations: carefully and critically. Both words and “nat sound” – birds chirping; the beep of garbage trucks backing up; gunfire – are necessary to tell complex audio stories.

This class will offer the chance to master short-form radio news production in public radio’s modes, and offer a contextual overview of other radio news forms (commerical newscasts; radio documentaries). The foundation of listening can be applied to production this way:

L -- Listen for sound, tone, and bites

I  -- Investigate the meaning, context, and veracity of your sound

S -- Script powerfully in your chosen form. You're seeking a full story.

T – Tape/locate additional elements (intros, voiceovers, music, sound effects).

E -- Edit and re-edit your elements until you've got the right piece.

N -- Next steps post-production include distribution and social media strategy.

To learn to LISTEN, you must listen. As such, you will be expected to become a regular consumer of audio news and features.

We will delve not only into terrestrial radio, but the business and production of audio for digital distribution. Audio is an important component of web-based storytelling, and under the right circumstances podcasts are financially viable as stand-alone series; parts of larger broadcasts; and parts of multimedia franchises. Some podcasts, of course, later become their own full-fledged shows.

You will be expected to use the school’s resources (Edirol recorders & Pro Tools) to work on your assignments outside of class, although we will use some class time for production.

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Journalism & Society: History of the News

Instructor: William Serrin

Course ID: JOUR-UA 503, section 003

Days: Tues 9:30am-12:00pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 655

How have people traditionally understood
“news”? What assumptions are
built into this form of communication?
How do changes in the medium
through which news is exchanged from
speech to writing, to print, to broadcasting
affect its content and perspective?
These questions are approached
through anthropological research, classical
literature, and historical texts, as
well as through the formal history of
journalism. Students are encouraged to
draw conclusions about the nature and
logic of news that can be applied to
modern news systems.

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Investigating Journalism (lecture)

Instructor: Mitchell Stephens

Course ID: JOUR-UA 501, Section 001

Days: Tues/Thur 11:00-12:15

Room: Silver 414

» Syllabus (PDF)

Journalism and Prospective Journalism Majors

JOUR-UA 501Investigating Journalism
(formerly  JOUR-UA 501 Foundations of Journalism)

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Journalism Ethics and First Amendment Law

Instructor: George Freeman

Course ID: JOUR-UA 502.001

Days: Monday 6:20pm-8:50pm

Room: 12 Waverly L120

» Syllabus (PDF)

SPRING SEMESTERS ONLY

Prerequisites: Foundations

This course is designed to acquaint students with the basic protections and restrictions of the law as they apply to the media, as well as the ethical problems and dilemmas journalists face. First Amendment rights and legal and ethical responsibilities and limitations will be examined and discussed. The course will look at these questions from five viewpoints: from (i) the practical view of a journalist doing his job with (ii) heavy consideration of ethical imperatives, and (iii) from a legal prospective, all the while (iv) considering the rules in a public policy context- are they fair and appropriate in our society? -- while (v) noting the historical context in which they arise. Significant court cases and fundamental legal rules as well as past ethical scandals and issues will be explored in the context of political and historical realities, and in terms of journalistic standards and practices; contemporary media law issues and ethical problems and guidelines will also be focused on. Among the basic First Amendment issues which will be examined are libel, invasion of privacy, prior restraints, newsgathering and newsgathering torts, and the reporter's privilege; some of the ethical issues to be explored include objectivity in reporting, bias and transparency, conflicts of interest, and fair dealings with subjects, sources and advertisers.

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Journalistic Inquiry

Instructor: TBA

Course ID: JOUR-UA 101, Section 001

Days: Tues/Thur 6:30pm-8:20pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 655

» Syllabus (PDF)

JOURNALISTIC INQUIRY

Prerequisites: Foundations

This is the first-level reporting, research and writing course, which emphasizes in-depth research and interviewing technique as it introduces a variety of journalistic forms, including the reported essay, the newspaper pyramid style, magazine and newspaper feature style and broadcast newswriting style. The course focuses heavily on the critical and impartial examination of issues through research and reporting. Research methodology is key, as are observation and interview preparation and techniques. Research and reporting projects will include interviews, off- and on-line research, including books, government and non-governmental documents, interviews and databases, scholarly journals and other sources. This course provides a strong foundation in basic journalistic forms, issues and responsibilities.

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Description
You are going to learn to think, act and write like a journalist.
This course will provide an introduction to the basic principles of research, reporting and writing the news. You will be introduced to a variety of ways in which we work in this fast paced, deadline driven business - from writing in the traditional newspaper pyramid style to opinion and feature writing to working for broadcast, and new media. You will do lots of writing because the only way to work on your skills is to practice it over and over.

To be a good reporter you have to be informed about what's happening in the world around you. For this class, you have to read The New York Times, New York Daily News and The New York Post every day. You must watch at least 15 minutes of television news or listen to news radio a day. You must also scan the free papers. (Metro & AM NEW YORK) Once a week you will have a brief news quiz on the big stories of the week and your score will count toward your final grade.

In each class one or two students will take turns leading "Newscheck," which is a discussion on a story of their choosing from the front pages of The New York Times. Everyone must participate in the discussion.
Working journalists will visit throughout the semester. You will be expected to ask well thought out questions and take notes because you will have to write a 600-word story on each newsroom visitor. These stories will be due the day after they are assigned.

We will start out with obits and profiles where you will learn the nuances of storytelling and build up to writing a 1,000-word final news story on an issue of your choosing. This story should be good enough to be published. You will cover news events. We will get into this city's diverse colorful neighborhoods and find stories and spend lots of time exploring and hunting down news in New York City.

If a big story breaks, prepare to cover it. On any given day in the newsroom you have no idea what is going to happen. Be flexible! I can guarantee you that things will change as we go through our semester.

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The Beat: Covering Gen Y aka Quarterlifers

Instructor: Mary W. Quigley

Course ID: JOUR-UA 201, Section 001

Days: Tues 2:00p-5:40p

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 655

» Syllabus (PDF)

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry

This course is designed to hone the student journalist's ability to research and report deeply and to be able to imagine and develop fresh ideas, test them with the strength of his or her reporting and resarch, and then to present them in story form. Students will be expected to keep weeky beat notes or blogs, exploring what is current in the topic and demonstrating week after week the shoeleather they have worn in pursuit of their subject matter. Out of this work will come four or five stories in narrative, explanatory or investigative style, depending on the instructor and the specific assignment. Syllabi differ by content of the course but all sections emphasize idea development, interview technique, reporting, background research and writing skills across genres. Broadcast sections vary only by medium.

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Relationships: transformed.  Professions: redefined. Technology: exploding. Privacy: what privacy? The future: a world where time-honored maps and models have become useless.

 Fascinating stuff to think and write about, and who better than you, to do it?  You are GenY, the 80 million people aged 18-30, the first generation with a completely digital take on living. 

“Emerging adults” have become a hot topic in both the media and academia:  Boomerang kids who move back home after graduation, quarter-life crises about careers—or lack thereof, postponing long-term relationships, sexual economics, wanting more time to play before “settling down,” looking for emotional as well as economic payoff from a career, and more.

 In "Covering Gen Y," we will examine such issues as romantic, family and community relationships, the world of work, religion and spirituality, the impact of technology, lifestyles,and... well, you decide. You will write for the class website http://genyu.net/ and your individual beat blog, and be guided in doing a multimedia final project.

Last time around several class pieces got published including one by a student who went on a “technology diet”  and another’s lament about her mother wanting to friend her on Facebook.

Prof. Mary Quigley writes and blogs about Gen Y issues.

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The Beat: Reporting Downtown

Instructor: Frankie Edozien

Course ID: JOUR-UA 201, Section 003

Days: Wed 3:00pm-6:40pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 654

» Syllabus (PDF)

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry

This course is designed to hone the student journalist's ability to research and report deeply and to be able to imagine and develop fresh ideas, test them with the strength of his or her reporting and resarch, and then to present them in story form. Students will be expected to keep weeky beat notes or blogs, exploring what is current in the topic and demonstrating week after week the shoeleather they have worn in pursuit of their subject matter. Out of this work will come four or five stories in narrative, explanatory or investigative style, depending on the instructor and the specific assignment. Syllabi differ by content of the course but all sections emphasize idea development, interview technique, reporting, background research and writing skills across genres. Broadcast sections vary only by medium.

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All semester long we will cover New York City from Riverdale to Far Rockaway.  It’s government, its budgets, its elections its restaurants, courts, neighborhoods, healthcare, all are part of our portfolio.

From Day 1, we are metro reporters who will hone our craft covering the biggest and most vibrant municipality in the nation. You will learn to research report and write authoritatively on New York City and all its problems and issues.

This is not a lecture class per se, so you will be out covering stories all over the Big Apple and then bringing them back to write on deadline. I will stress the news feature which will require a good amount of reporting before a piece is turned in but don’t be surprised if you are asked to go cover something on our beat on deadline.

You will sharpen your interviewing techniques and learn to follow up breaking news with insightful analytical pieces to go to the heart of the issue.  You will develop a keen eye for detail and your copy must reflect the details of each piece so readers are transported to the scene through your writing.

To be an effective metro reporter you must be a local news junkie, so scouring the big dailies is a must for this class, hence the New York Times, New York Daily News and the New York Post are must-reads before class. In addition to the free papers like AM New York and Metro.

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The Beat: Food Writing

Instructor: TBA

Course ID: JOUR-UA 201, Section 004

Days: Mon 8:00am-11:40am

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 654

» Syllabus (PDF)

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry

This course is designed to hone the student journalist's ability to research and report deeply and to be able to imagine and develop fresh ideas, test them with the strength of his or her reporting and resarch, and then to present them in story form. Students will be expected to keep weeky beat notes or blogs, exploring what is current in the topic and demonstrating week after week the shoeleather they have worn in pursuit of their subject matter. Out of this work will come four or five stories in narrative, explanatory or investigative style, depending on the instructor and the specific assignment. Syllabi differ by content of the course but all sections emphasize idea development, interview technique, reporting, background research and writing skills across genres. Broadcast sections vary only by medium.

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As food writers, we will harvest the exciting bounty of New York City, foodie capitol of the world. Our approach to this adventure is totally New York, which means savoring the Big Apple in all its glamorous and gritty glory. So expect to cover a wide range of food features -- from restaurant reviews and dining trends, to the politics and economics of how and what we eat. Guest speakers and field trips are on the menu, along with assignments designed to build confidence in your reporting/writing. The course's workshop setting also provides a supportive environment for exploring your personal writing style and developing your voice.

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The Beat: Hyphenated New York

Instructor: Vivien Orbach-Smith

Course ID: JOUR-UA 201, Section 005

Days: Thur 2:30pm-6:10pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 653

» Syllabus (PDF)

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry

This course is designed to hone the student journalist's ability to research and report deeply and to be able to imagine and develop fresh ideas, test them with the strength of his or her reporting and resarch, and then to present them in story form. Students will be expected to keep weeky beat notes or blogs, exploring what is current in the topic and demonstrating week after week the shoeleather they have worn in pursuit of their subject matter. Out of this work will come four or five stories in narrative, explanatory or investigative style, depending on the instructor and the specific assignment. Syllabi differ by content of the course but all sections emphasize idea development, interview technique, reporting, background research and writing skills across genres. Broadcast sections vary only by medium.

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Many New Yorkers live in two worlds: the cultures that spawned them, and the international city they call home. In this intensive skills course, you will zero in on a neighborhood/community in which New Yorkers determinedly straddle and embrace dual identities, bringing vibrancy and diversity to this city. You may cover your chosen beat through a variety of lenses, such as:
• Zeroing in on individuals who have achieved success and others who struggle;
• Profiling local institutions and businesses;
• Examining a neighborhood's/community’s historical and political underpinnings;
• Focusing on a community's or individual’s cultural/professional contributions.

Your beat may be a community defined by its residents' lands of origin (the Russians of Brighton Beach, Koreans of "Koreatown" [Manhattan], Albanians of Arthur Avenue], Indians of "Curry Row" [Manhattan], Irish of Woodlawn [Queens]), or by their race, religion, ethnicity or identity (Harlem USA, Chassidic Crown Heights, Downtown LGBT). Whether your story is about a place or an individual, an organization or an event, your writing must always capture the human side of the news- the heart of feature journalism.
You will be guided in coming up with and pursuing great, fresh story ideas within your beat, in writing four graded pieces (three shorter ones and one more in-depth final), and in finding appropriate venues to pitch them. (Getting clips – not just grades - is one of the aims of this course.) The goal here is learning how to craft strong, captivating stories featuring memorable characters and settings - with much emphasis upon resourceful newsgathering and responsible presentation of facts and events, vivid color and detail, coherent and graceful structure, and impeccable mechanics (spelling, grammar, punctuation). A key focus of your reporting and writing will be to broaden your readers’ perspective (and your own) on the cultural/ethnic/socioeconomic milieu of your subjects.
This class will provide you with opportunities to write stories that are genuinely publishable, on subjects that genuinely interest you. You will be encouraged to write creatively and gorgeously, and even to try to change the world…but your product must retain the clarity, concision and precision that were drummed into you in your basic reporting classes, stopping far short of “fan-like,” gushy prose, blinding passions, or
fictional license.

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The Beat: TV-NY

Instructor: Jason Maloney

Course ID: JOUR-UA 201, Section 007

Days: Thur 2:30p - 6:10p

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 750

» Syllabus (PDF)

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry. 

This course is designed to hone the student journalist's ability to research and report deeply and to be able to imagine and develop fresh ideas, test them with the strength of his or her reporting and resarch, and then to present them in story form. Students will be expected to keep weeky beat notes or blogs, exploring what is current in the topic and demonstrating week after week the shoeleather they have worn in pursuit of their subject matter. Out of this work will come four or five stories in narrative, explanatory or investigative style, depending on the instructor and the specific assignment. Syllabi differ by content of the course but all sections emphasize idea development, interview technique, reporting, background research and writing skills across genres. Broadcast sections vary only by medium.

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The Beat: TV-NY

Instructor: Adrian Mihai

Course ID: JOUR-UA 201, Section 008

Days: Mon 6:20p - 10:00p

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 750

» Syllabus (PDF)

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry. 

This course is designed to hone the student journalist's ability to research and report deeply and to be able to imagine and develop fresh ideas, test them with the strength of his or her reporting and resarch, and then to present them in story form. Students will be expected to keep weeky beat notes or blogs, exploring what is current in the topic and demonstrating week after week the shoeleather they have worn in pursuit of their subject matter. Out of this work will come four or five stories in narrative, explanatory or investigative style, depending on the instructor and the specific assignment. Syllabi differ by content of the course but all sections emphasize idea development, interview technique, reporting, background research and writing skills across genres. Broadcast sections vary only by medium.

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Advanced Reporting: Writing About Home

Instructor: Frank Flaherty

Course ID: JOUR-UA 301, Section 003

Days: Fri 10:00am-1:40pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 750

» Syllabus (PDF)

Prerequisites: Foundations, The Beat

This is the Capstone course. Subject matter varies from section to section, but the basic skeleton of the course is the same across sections: the emphasis is on development of the ability to produce writing and reporting within a sophisticated longform story structure. The course involves query writing, topic research and reading, interviewing, and repeated drafts and rewrites, leading to a full-length piece of writing aimed at a publishable level and the ability of the student to present the reporting orally.

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The topic of this Capstone course is home, in all its guises. Home is a rich journalistic topic because it sits at the convergence of so many important things -- shelter, aspiration, self-expression, family, love, hate, childhood, adulthood. Home is where the hearth is, but also where the heart is.

In this course, a student might write about a lighthouse keeper and his life of solitude, nuns in a convent in the Bronx, a family that lives on a bobbing houseboat by the Hudson River piers, or a young couple who work as live-in caretakers at the Edgar Allen Poe House. Homes and their inhabitants are infinitely varied. There are nursing homes, squats, and artist communes; there are immigrants whose homes are statements of their foreign cultures and values; there are nannies whose homes are in fact other people’s homes.

Because our homes reveal our values, dreams and interests, an article about a person’s home is also an article about that person. Imagine a young techno geek, gripped by his ambition to launch an Internet startup; his distracted, obsessed consciousness is perfectly reflected in his apartment strewn with software code and electronic devices and hardly a place to sit. Or imagine a group of nuns who decide to put a green roof on their convent to satisfy their ecological beliefs. Or imagine an artist who lives for her art, who has an all-white apartment -- and who is happy to explain what her vision of beauty is.

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Advanced Reporting: Entrepreneurial New York

Instructor: Jessica Seigel

Course ID: JOUR-UA 301, Section 004

Days: Mon 3:30-7:10pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 652

Prerequisites: Foundations, The Beat

This is the Capstone course. Subject matter varies from section to section, but the basic skeleton of the course is the same across sections: the emphasis is on development of the ability to produce writing and reporting within a sophisticated longform story structure. The course involves query writing, topic research and reading, interviewing, and repeated drafts and rewrites, leading to a full-length piece of writing aimed at a publishable level and the ability of the student to present the reporting orally.

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They’re young, they’re ambitious and they’ve gone rogue. In today’s fast-changing “flux” economy, entrepreneurs are forging a new way of creating, living and working, from techies and fashion designers to digital publishers and Off Broadway producers. In this course, you’ll report from the start-up front lines, choosing among topics such as: arts, fashion, food, green, social/activist entrepreneurship, and technology. You’ll learn to blend lively reporting on personalities and trends with the nuts and bolts of the money-side, from how to judge if a company is viable to assessing the competition. How do you separate braggarts, wannabes and vaporware from the real up-and-comers? How do you report what’s new in context of what’s been? How do you balance stylish prose and vivid creative content with business info? You’ll find out by sharpening your interviewing and reporting skills, while developing your own unique narrative voice in magazine style. To build up to your 3,000-word Capstone project, you’ll write shorter, related features including a trend report, quickie Q & A, mini profile, story query and your own “elevator pitch.” Interested students may also try first-person narratives on launching your own start up (or at least trying.) In the past, students have written about movers, shakers and up-and-comers in sour pickling, gaming, sneaker design, DJing, theatrical improv,  artisanal cheese, top blogs, professional gambling, S&M, bartending school scams, restaurants from green to meat-centric, and much more. 

Professor Bio: Jessica Seigel has covered arts, business and technology as a columnist and staffer for The Chicago Tribune, Brill’s Content and Pink Magazine. Her start-up, fashion, and tech coverage has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Marketplace Public Radio and NPR.

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Advanced Reporting: Advanced TV Reporting

Instructor: Marlene Sanders

Course ID: JOUR-UA 301, Section 004

Days: Mon 2:00pm-5:40pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 750

» Syllabus (PDF)

Prerequisites: Foundations, The Beat

This is the Capstone course. Subject matter varies from section to section, but the basic skeleton of the course is the same across sections: the emphasis is on development of the ability to produce writing and reporting within a sophisticated longform story structure. The course involves query writing, topic research and reading, interviewing, and repeated drafts and rewrites, leading to a full-length piece of writing aimed at a publishable level and the ability of the student to present the reporting orally.

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In previous classes, students have learned the rudiments of story selection, writing and shooting.  This class advances those skills, with the added pressure of meeting real deadlines; i.e., producing pieces that air on a live, weekly news broadcast.  Stories will gradually grow in complexity over the semester.

Class one. Explanation of what the students will be expected to do during the semester, including how grades will be determined.  Discussion of types of stories to be done and  how they should be researched and presented to the professor for approval.  Students are instructed to bring in story ideas by the next session.  There will be attention to interviewing skills. All story ideas must be accompanied by a list of questions to be asked.

Students are required to do 4 stories of normal length and one more complicated, longer final piece.

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Advanced Reporting: Neighborhoods

Instructor: TBA

Course ID: JOUR-UA 301, Section 002

Days: Wed 9:30am-1:10pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 653

Prerequisites: Foundations, The Beat

This is the Capstone course. Subject matter varies from section to section, but the basic skeleton of the course is the same across sections: the emphasis is on development of the ability to produce writing and reporting within a sophisticated longform story structure. The course involves query writing, topic research and reading, interviewing, and repeated drafts and rewrites, leading to a full-length piece of writing aimed at a publishable level and the ability of the student to present the reporting orally.

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In this course students will get to choose any city neighborhood and explore in depth one aspect of its culture. Whether it’s food, crime, fashion, gentrification, housing, health, education or business anything goes.  Students will be required to choose a neighborhood and find its story, find what matters to the people who live there.  Students will learn multimedia techniques and also be required to produce a slideshow and short video as was way of putting different lenses on their journalism as they work towards their capstone. Their work will live on a website that they design.

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Investigating Journalism (lecture)

Instructor: Clay Shirky

Course ID: JOUR-UA 501, Section 002

Days: Mon/Wed 2:00pm-3:15pm

Room: Silver 208

» Syllabus (PDF)

Journalism and Prospective Journalism Majors

JOUR-UA 501Investigating Journalism
(formerly  JOUR-UA 501 Foundations of Journalism)

This lecture course will introduce you to issues in journalistic writing and reporting, such as the choices journalists face in method, style, and form; the political impact of the news media; questions of sensationalism, bias, and diversity, and the current digital upheaval. To better understand what journalism has been and might be, students are also introduced to a selection of the best journalism, from Edward R. Murrow on migrant farm workers to Adrian Nicole LeBlanc on family life around the drug trade in the Bronx. Your work will be reading the assigned pieces, coming to class ready to comment on and question them, preparing for some tests and producing a paper of two during the semester. (Unlike most of the courses in the Carter Institute and the Journalism major, this is not a reporting and writing course, though reporting and writing will often be discussed. )

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Elective Reporting Topics: Data Journalism and Investigative Reporting

Instructor: Charles Seife

Course ID: JOUR-UA 204, section 001

Days: Wednesday 11:00a-1:30p

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 659

» Syllabus (PDF)

This four-point course will both survey what the emerging field of data journalism is about and plunge students into the practice of it.  Students will learn how to find useful documents and other sources of data, extract meaningful information from large data sets, prepare data for public use, and make it possible for consumers of the news to interact with the data. They will also learn how to use data to perform investigative journalism. Outstanding examples of data journalism from around the world will be studied -- and the techniques those pieces used will be added to students' arsenals. A final project will test students’ skills in using data to produce publishable-quality journalism.  

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Journalism Seminar: Undercover Reporting

Instructor: Ted Conover

Course ID: JOUR-UA 401, section 001

Days: Thur 11:00am-1:30pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 700

Undercover reporting is one of the most potent practices in journalism, and one of the most controversial. Here it will be considered on a continuum with kinds of participatory reporting that have aimed to produce not exposé but rather a deeper, insider quality of understanding. With exceptions, both methods involve immersion and the kinds of ethical stakes that come with one's subjects either forgetting, or never having known, that one intended to write about them. Using Brooke Kroeger's authoritative new history as a principal text (and her extensive online database as a resource), we will consider key works of the past 125 years of (mainly American) undercover and participatory reporting in their ethical and literary dimensions.

Students will present texts and historical and critical contexts; participate in in-class debates over the merits of controversial projects such as the Chicago Sun-Times' Mirage Tavern investigation and John Howard Griffin's series for Sepia magazine that became Black Like Me; and develop case studies of less well-known reporting not on the syllabus that they evaluate independently in terms of ethics, efficacy, and literary value.

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Journalism & Society: Women and the Media

Instructor: Carol Sternhell

Course ID: JOUR-UA 503, section 001

Days: Tues 12:30pm-3:00pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 657

» Syllabus (PDF)

Women & the Media is a collaborative seminar designed to examine the complex relationship
(or different, contradictory relationships) between those humans we call “women” and those
forms of discourse we call “media.” We will consider women both as subjects and objects, as
artists and models, as creators of “media” in its many forms and as media’s creations. What
does our culture’s “media” tell us about its ideas of gender? What, if anything, does our gender
tell us about our readings of “media”? Student participation in this seminar is key: students are
expected to attend all sessions, to complete all the reading (there's lots of reading!), to
participate actively in discussion, and to lead one of the class sessions themselves. Leading a
class means opening the day’s conversation with a presentation, critiquing and elaborating on
the assigned reading, bringing in additional relevant material, and suggesting questions or
issues that seem particularly interesting or troublesome. The purpose of the course is to
develop our critical and self-critical faculties as journalists, media critics, consumers of media,
and women or men—to think clearly, challenge our pet assumptions, and have fun.
Along with attendance and informed class participation, students are required to conduct a miniresearch
project and present their findings to the class. I want you to pick a “women and media”
topic that really interests you and then report the hell out of it. If you’re interested in the effect of
music videos on teenage girls, for instance, you would first put together an extensive
bibliography of what has already been written on the subject. You would figure out what the key
questions in the field were: do media images affect teens’ behavior or not, and how can anyone
tell? You might interview some of the leading researchers in the area and tell us what they say.
You’ll certainly want to read the most important books/articles on your subject. A paper is not
required; instead, students will present their findings to the class during our last three sessions.

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Journalism as Literature: Learning from the Best to be the Best

Instructor: TBA

Course ID: JOUR-UA 504, section 001

Days: Tues 11:00a-1:30p

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 654

» Syllabus (PDF)

Learning from The Best To Be The Best is a survey of some of the most entertaining and well-written literary journalism of the last two centuries. We will read these articles and book excerpts carefully - "deep reading," it is called - to discover how good writers take basic journalism and enliven it with literary technique. We want to catalog as much of that technique and structure as we can so that we can "steal it," appropriate the devices for our own work. Students will work in teams; each week a team will "present" the readings and incite a discussion with the rest of the class. There will be some three to five formal academic papers in which students will be asked to demonstrate their understanding of the material, and there will be a number of "creative" assignments as well. The main text for the course is an excellent anthology of non-fiction: The Art of Fact by Kerrane and Yagoda..

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Internship

Instructor: Sylvan Solloway

Course ID: JOUR-UA 980

Days: Fri 1:00pm - 3:00pm

Room: TBA

DECLARED JOURNALISM MAJORS ONLY Hours Arranged

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry, The Beat

To enroll:
1) Students must be declared journalism majors who have been offered an internship. The Career Services director must approve the internship. All sophomores must consult the director before applying for a credit internship.
2) No credit will be given for internships in advertising, marketing, public relations or the fashion/accessory closet.
3) Students may take the course for 1, 2, 3 or 4 credits but can earn no more than 4 credits total while attending the institute. Only one internship for credit is allowed per semester.

For moew information go to the Career Services section.

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Advanced Individualized Study

Instructor: TBA

Course ID: JOUR-UA 997

Days: TBA

Room: TBA

To enroll in Advanced Individualized Study, an interested student must find a full-time faculty member to be a sponsor and then must develop and file a syllabus. The syllabus must be approved by the faculty member and the Journalism Director of Undergraduate Graduate Studies (DUGS). It must list, in week by week fashion, all readings and all writing assignments that the student will undertake for the Advanced Individualized Study. Once approved, this syllabus constitutes your "contract" on the project and the student's work will be judged and graded with that in mind.

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Journalism & Society: History of the News

Instructor: William Serrin

Course ID: JOUR-UA 503, section 003

Days: Tues 9:30am-12:00pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 655

How have people traditionally understood
“news”? What assumptions are
built into this form of communication?
How do changes in the medium
through which news is exchanged from
speech to writing, to print, to broadcasting
affect its content and perspective?
These questions are approached
through anthropological research, classical
literature, and historical texts, as
well as through the formal history of
journalism. Students are encouraged to
draw conclusions about the nature and
logic of news that can be applied to
modern news systems.

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Investigating Journalism (lecture)

Instructor: Mitchell Stephens

Course ID: JOUR-UA 501, Section 001

Days: Tues/Thur 11:00-12:15

Room: Silver 414

» Syllabus (PDF)

Journalism and Prospective Journalism Majors

JOUR-UA 501Investigating Journalism
(formerly  JOUR-UA 501 Foundations of Journalism)

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Journalism Ethics and First Amendment Law

Instructor: George Freeman

Course ID: JOUR-UA 502.001

Days: Monday 6:20pm-8:50pm

Room: 12 Waverly L120

» Syllabus (PDF)

SPRING SEMESTERS ONLY

Prerequisites: Foundations

This course is designed to acquaint students with the basic protections and restrictions of the law as they apply to the media, as well as the ethical problems and dilemmas journalists face. First Amendment rights and legal and ethical responsibilities and limitations will be examined and discussed. The course will look at these questions from five viewpoints: from (i) the practical view of a journalist doing his job with (ii) heavy consideration of ethical imperatives, and (iii) from a legal prospective, all the while (iv) considering the rules in a public policy context- are they fair and appropriate in our society? -- while (v) noting the historical context in which they arise. Significant court cases and fundamental legal rules as well as past ethical scandals and issues will be explored in the context of political and historical realities, and in terms of journalistic standards and practices; contemporary media law issues and ethical problems and guidelines will also be focused on. Among the basic First Amendment issues which will be examined are libel, invasion of privacy, prior restraints, newsgathering and newsgathering torts, and the reporter's privilege; some of the ethical issues to be explored include objectivity in reporting, bias and transparency, conflicts of interest, and fair dealings with subjects, sources and advertisers.

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Journalistic Inquiry

Instructor: TBA

Course ID: JOUR-UA 101, Section 001

Days: Tues/Thur 6:30pm-8:20pm

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 655

» Syllabus (PDF)

JOURNALISTIC INQUIRY

Prerequisites: Foundations

This is the first-level reporting, research and writing course, which emphasizes in-depth research and interviewing technique as it introduces a variety of journalistic forms, including the reported essay, the newspaper pyramid style, magazine and newspaper feature style and broadcast newswriting style. The course focuses heavily on the critical and impartial examination of issues through research and reporting. Research methodology is key, as are observation and interview preparation and techniques. Research and reporting projects will include interviews, off- and on-line research, including books, government and non-governmental documents, interviews and databases, scholarly journals and other sources. This course provides a strong foundation in basic journalistic forms, issues and responsibilities.

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Description
You are going to learn to think, act and write like a journalist.
This course will provide an introduction to the basic principles of research, reporting and writing the news. You will be introduced to a variety of ways in which we work in this fast paced, deadline driven business - from writing in the traditional newspaper pyramid style to opinion and feature writing to working for broadcast, and new media. You will do lots of writing because the only way to work on your skills is to practice it over and over.

To be a good reporter you have to be informed about what's happening in the world around you. For this class, you have to read The New York Times, New York Daily News and The New York Post every day. You must watch at least 15 minutes of television news or listen to news radio a day. You must also scan the free papers. (Metro & AM NEW YORK) Once a week you will have a brief news quiz on the big stories of the week and your score will count toward your final grade.

In each class one or two students will take turns leading "Newscheck," which is a discussion on a story of their choosing from the front pages of The New York Times. Everyone must participate in the discussion.
Working journalists will visit throughout the semester. You will be expected to ask well thought out questions and take notes because you will have to write a 600-word story on each newsroom visitor. These stories will be due the day after they are assigned.

We will start out with obits and profiles where you will learn the nuances of storytelling and build up to writing a 1,000-word final news story on an issue of your choosing. This story should be good enough to be published. You will cover news events. We will get into this city's diverse colorful neighborhoods and find stories and spend lots of time exploring and hunting down news in New York City.

If a big story breaks, prepare to cover it. On any given day in the newsroom you have no idea what is going to happen. Be flexible! I can guarantee you that things will change as we go through our semester.

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The Beat: Media Criticism

Instructor: Brian Cogan

Course ID: JOUR-UA 201, Section 006

Days: Mon 6:00p-9:40p

Room: 20 Cooper Square, room 657

» Syllabus (PDF)

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry.  Media Criticism students only.

This course is designed to hone the student journalist's ability to research and report deeply and to be able to imagine and develop fresh ideas, test them with the strength of his or her reporting and resarch, and then to present them in story form. Students will be expected to keep weeky beat notes or blogs, exploring what is current in the topic and demonstrating week after week the shoeleather they have worn in pursuit of their subject matter. Out of this work will come four or five stories in narrative, explanatory or investigative style, depending on the instructor and the specific assignment. Syllabi differ by content of the course but all sections emphasize idea development, interview technique, reporting, background research and writing skills across genres. Broadcast sections vary only by medium.

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This course will serve as an introduction to various schools of media criticism and ways in which different types of media can be interpreted. What is the traditional role of the journalist and how is it changing?  What new theoretical capacities must be analyzed in order to understand the current state of media? This course will look at early critiques of media to the present and will incorporate critical analysis form a variety of perspectives from critical discourse to ideological criticism to market and public journalism based models. While many pundits are sure that modern news media is in a state of flux, few are fully informed of earlier critiques of media from Marx to Dewey to the New Journalists of the 1960’s, each of which provided a critical lens for analyzing journalism and media. In this course through a variety of writing assignments, in-class and take home critiques, and through serious critical analysis of modern media in all of its various permutations students will analyze the ways in which media can be studied.  Ideally students will leave the class with a set of critical tools to use in analyzing mass media and the inherent difficulties facing major news organizations in all of their various permutations.

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Investigating Journalism (lecture)

Instructor: Clay Shirky

Course ID: JOUR-UA 501, Section 002

Days: Mon/Wed 2:00pm-3:15pm

Room: Silver 208

» Syllabus (PDF)

Journalism and Prospective Journalism Majors

JOUR-UA 501Investigating Journalism
(formerly  JOUR-UA 501 Foundations of Journalism)

This lecture course will introduce you to issues in journalistic writing and reporting, such as the choices journalists face in method, style, and form; the political impact of the news media; questions of sensationalism, bias, and diversity, and the current digital upheaval. To better understand what journalism has been and might be, students are also introduced to a selection of the best journalism, from Edward R. Murrow on migrant farm workers to Adrian Nicole LeBlanc on family life around the drug trade in the Bronx. Your work will be reading the assigned pieces, coming to class ready to comment on and question them, preparing for some tests and producing a paper of two during the semester. (Unlike most of the courses in the Carter Institute and the Journalism major, this is not a reporting and writing course, though reporting and writing will often be discussed. )

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WRR I - BER

Instructor: Adam L. Penenberg

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1021.001

Days: Tuesday, 8:30am-2:20pm

Room: 652

» Syllabus (PDF)

Writing, Research & Reporting I: BER is designed to teach the basic skills you'll need to write news stories for business publications. You'll learn everything from how to write on a daily (or even hourly) deadline for newspapers and wire services to penning short pieces for magazines. The emphasis will be on learning by doing, with regular reporting and writing assignments inside and outside of class. We'll workshop your stories in class, dissect current media coverage, take field trips to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Conference Board and New York Stock Exchange, and analyze the merit and structure of good (and bad) news stories. You'll be expected to stay abreast of the news, and to read The New York Times and Wall Street Journal regularly, as well as a number of business magazines (Fortune, Forbes, BusinessWeek, etc.) and websites. By the end of the semester, you should be able to write snappy ledes and smart nut grafs in your sleep—the first step in becoming a first rate journalist—and have the requisite skills to write tight, informative business stories. (Note: WRII covers longer magazine features.) In addition, we'll be working closely with the Internship Director to prepare you for landing a quality internship.

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Law & Mass Communication - BER

Instructor: Stephen D. Solomon

Course ID: JOUR-GA 0011.003

Days: Monday, 1:30-4:00pm

Room: Library

» Syllabus (PDF)

Although the First Amendment appears on its face to prohibit any governmental restrictions on the press, the U.S. Supreme Court in fact balances free and open expression against other vital interests of society. This course begins by examining the struggle against seditious libel (the crime of criticizing government or its officials) that was not won in this country until the landmark decision in New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964. Students will examine freedom of the press through the prism of a rich variety of contemporary conflicts, including libel, newsgathering problems, the right of privacy, prior restraint, and the conflict between free press and fair trial. Readings include a The First Amendment and the Fourth Estate; Make No Law by Anthony Lewis, The Unwanted Gaze by Jeffrey Rosen, and Origins of the Bill of Rights by Leonard Levy. Students write five papers during the semester.

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Writing the Long Form Narrative

Instructor: Adam L. Penenberg

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1182.003

Days: Thursday, 1:30-5:10pm

Room: 7th Floor Library

» Syllabus (PDF)

This seminar focuses on the various components that comprise in-depth magazine stories and non-fiction books. We'll dissect great modern and classic magazine stories, books and book proposals for story, character arcs, dialogue, scenes, analysis, structure, transitions, verb tense, point of view and style. The goal is to figure out how memorable magazine features and narrative non-fiction books that keep your attention to the very last page are created, then to take what we've learned and apply it to our own work. There is one semester-long writing assignment—a 3,000+-word feature story—with several shorter related pieces involving scenes, character, dialogue, or analysis, all of which can be incorporated into your final story. Along the way we'll work on pitches, research and interview techniques, time management, outlines, editing and multiple drafts, and other challenges today's non-fiction narrative writers face.

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Hyperlocal Newsroom (Video)

Instructor: Jason Maloney

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1080.002

Days: Friday, 1:30pm-5:10pm

Room: 654

» Syllabus (PDF)

The basic requirement of the course is to learn how to produce multi-media content, as applied through reporting on the East Village for the Local East Village blog.

BER students should register for this section.

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WRRI - CRC

Instructor: Mark Schone

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1021.007

Days: F, 9am-2pm

Room: 653

» Syllabus (PDF)

This is the introductory reporting, research and journalistic writing course for CRC students, teaching cultural journalists the skills and conventions of news and feature reporting for print and multimedia. Students receive short- and long-form reporting assignments with intensive rewriting, and basic training in radio production. Open to CRC students only.

This course teaches cultural journalists the essentials of news reporting: the skills andconventions of journalistic practice across media platforms. Whetheryour reported work is published, posted or broadcast, you’ll need to work from the same ground rules as your editors, producers, sources and readers, and to master a repertoire ofbasic forms.

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Critical Survey

Instructor: Dennis Lim

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1184.001

Days: Wednesday, 10:00am-2:00pm

Room: 655

» Syllabus (PDF)

This is a course in reading and writing criticism. Our goal is to introduce ourselves to some of the best cultural critics (mainly of the 20th century); chart the ways in which the nature of 20th-century criticism — and art — have changed; investigate some of the major questions that preoccupy contemporary critics (especially the nature of modernism/postmodernism, high and low culture, irony and sincerity, and the culture wars); and begin to master some forms of critical writing. The paradox of how to develop a critical voice without writing directly about oneself will be explored. Among the critics we'll study are James Agee, Pauline Kael, John Berger, George Orwell, Gilbert Seldes, Susan Sontag, Lionel Trilling, Greil Marcus, Albert Murray, Norman Mailer and Wendy Steiner. Open to CRC students only.

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Cultural Conversation

Instructor: Susie Linfield

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1181.001

Days: Tuesday, 4:00pm-8:00pm

Room: 7th Floor Library

» Syllabus (PDF)

The primary purpose of this course is to inculcate habits of thinking that are vital to informed and intelligent cultural reporting and criticism. This does not mean that students will be taught "theories" of cultural writing, which they can then apply to their "practice." Rather, the point is that your thought process-as you write a piece, as you prepare to write it, or even before that, as you go through your daily life in a world full of potential subject matter-is an integral part of your work as a writer. We all carry on some kind of conversation with ourselves, and with the people we know, about the culture we live in. As writers, however, our task is to self-consciously translate that private conversation into a public one that connects with readers. In this course I ask you to address two questions that bear on this translation. One is historical: what has been said in the cultural conversation before you came to it? To find your place in the conversation (just as you would have to do if you joined a roomful of people talking) you will need to grapple with cultural issues and debates that go back half a century-debates about the nature of art and criticism, technology and mass media, high culture versus mass culture, art and politics, social groups and cultural difference. The second question is personal: what experiences, ideas, emotions, and prejudices do you bring to the conversation? While conventional news writers are simply expected to put their own attitudes aside, cultural journalists must be conscious of their standpoint and its impact on their observation and judgment. Your credibility and the power of your literary voice depend a good deal on your ability to develop this capacity for self-reflection. Open to CRC students only.

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Topics in Cultural Journalism - Cataclysm

Instructor: Susie Linfield

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1281.001

Days: Wednesday, 4:00pm-8:00pm

Room: 7th Floor Library

» Syllabus (PDF)

TBA

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Critical Profile

Instructor: Ruth Franklin

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1182.008

Days: Thursday, 9:00am-12:40pm

Room: 7th Floor Library

» Syllabus (PDF)

This fall's presidential election promises to be very weird and very important--and a field day for the cultural reporter.  This course will address cultural politics both historically and in the present, i.e. as they play out, in real time, in the fall. Are cultural issues a "distraction" from "real" politics--or are they important expressions of our deepest values? This class will look at how issues such as sex, race, abortion, religion, gay marriage, family values, guns, taxes, crime, and education--as well as concepts such as "elitism" and "freedom"--manifest themselves; we will look, too, at how the press covers such topics. The course will examine why and how Americans are increasingly divided into antagonistic "tribes," and will study contemporary populist critiques of mainstream politics from the left (i.e. Occupy Wall Street) and the right (i.e. the Tea Party). This class's writing assignments will include both reporting and analytic pieces. CRC Priority, others with instructor approval.

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Writing Social Commentary

Instructor: Charles Taylor

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1281.003

Days: Friday, 9am-12:40pm

Room: 657

» Syllabus (PDF)

The primary goal of this class is to help students bridge the gap between passion and reason in the writing of social commentary. Just as a lawyer acts as an advocate while laying out a persuasive case, the writer who undertakes a piece of social commentary -- whether a piece of criticism, a review, or a polemic -- must be able to present a case while being aware of potential inconsistencies in logic. Our purpose will not be boring evenhandedness but the ability to make a strong, convincing argument free of cant and cliché. Though you will be relying on facts just as a reporter does, you will be required to bring the very things a reporter is trained to exclude: your opinion, an awareness of your prejudices, and the way you have been shaped by your experience. Reading and discussion will focus on cultivating an informed and critical perspective on current social issues and on the ways those issues are presented and shaped by the news media. Writing assignments will emphasize building a clear and coherent argument, with attention to context and audience.

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WRRI - GloJo

Instructor: Barbara Borst

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1021.008

Days: Friday, 11am-2:40pm

Room: 659

» Syllabus (PDF)

This course will teach you the fundamentals of news reporting and writing. You will learn to write clearly and concisely, and to produce news stories on deadline. These are skills you will need to master no matter what medium you work in-newspapers, websites, magazines, TV or radio-and whether you aspire to report on local, national or international topics. During this first half of a two-semester course, we will focus on news and beat reporting because they are the backbone of journalism. We will learn by doing, with reporting and writing assignments inside and outside class. Our lab will be New York City, which is rich in stories that can challenge the most seasoned reporters. We will begin by learning the basics of news reporting: story organization, interview techniques, developing sources, research methods, and grammar and style. Through classroom discussions, field trips and guest speakers, we will explore journalistic practices and how they are changing.

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Literature in a Hurry - WRRI: LitRep

Instructor: Brooke Kroeger

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1021.010

Days: Wednesday, 3:00pm-6:00pm

Room: 653

» Syllabus (PDF)

New description to come

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Introduction to LitRep

Instructor: Robert S. Boynton

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1182.010

Days: Thursday, 2:00pm-5:00pm

Room: 657

» Syllabus (PDF)

The goal of this course is to help you create a distinctive body of work and, eventually, a capstone piece of literary reportage. It has three basic components. First, it will guide you through the research, reporting and thinking to refine and focus the project you will begin in Portfolio I. Second, it will introduce you to some of the authors, editors and publications of the genre. Third, it will familiarize you with some of the journalistic strategies you will use in your own work.

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How Books are Built: The Basics of NonFiction Narrative

Instructor: Michael Norman

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1050.001

Days: Tuesday, 3:30-7pm

Room: 653

» Syllabus (PDF)

This is a lively seminar about the most difficult aspect of book writing: How to structure a narrative. Through careful reading and exercises, we will attempt to discover how fine non-fiction books are made. We will read five book-length narratives (among them Praying for Sheetrock by Melissa Faye Greene, and The Duke of Deception by Geoff Wolf) then take those books apart, chapter by chapter, to discover what material the writer collected, how and why the writer organized that material and, finally, what structure the writer used to create a compelling narrative that attempts to hold the reader from first page to last. Seminar members, working in teams with protocols supplied by the instructor, will "present" the books for analysis and lead a discussion of them.

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Portfolio

Instructor: Robert S. Boynton

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1182.001

Days: Wednesday, 3:00pm-6:00pm

Room: 654

» Syllabus (PDF)

The NYU Portfolio Program is designed to educate journalists in a way that is both conservative and revolutionary: Conservative in that it emphasizes knowledge of various journalistic traditions, basic literary skills, and practical outcomes (aka getting published) and revolutionary in that we are going to pursue these goals without primary emphasis on the "boot-camp" model ("skills" courses, "content" courses, etc.) that has dominated journalism education for the last half century. By invitation, we encourage and enable a select group of students to use their NYU Journalism Department experience to develop a coherent, sophisticated body of work.

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WRRI - Magazine

Instructor: Mary W. Quigley

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1021.003

Days: Thursday, 10am-3:50pm

Room: 654

» Syllabus (PDF)

Magazine editors have always put a premium on in-depth reporting and stylish writing. But in this new environment – with new magazines sprouting on the internet and established magazines charting their website traffic – the ability to write well on deadline has become a priority too.  In this introductory class, you will be exploring New York City and writing about a variety of topics including politics, crime, culture and fashion. Assignments include a mixture of long and short features, and hard news assignments. The goal is to learn to write sparkling prose, dig up news nuggets, and learn to pitch your work. The class also includes a  five-session photojournalism tutorial.

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WRRI - Magazine

Instructor: Meryl Gordon

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1021.011

Days: R, 10am-3:50pm

Room: 652

» Syllabus (PDF)

This is a professional course, concentrating on the basics of the craft of journalism — coming up with an idea, getting it approved, reporting the facts, organizing the material and writing the story. Students will spend a lot of time looking for story ideas, and pitching them — a critical part of the real-world newsroom experience. Perhaps the biggest emphasis of the class will be on the most important part of journalism: gathering the facts. Students will have many reporting exercises during in-class drill sessions, but will also do a great deal of "live" street reporting. We will rely much more on primary sources — original documents, and especially what people tell us — rather than secondary sources that are better suited for the background that sends us to primary sources.

In drills and in the stories produced outside of class, students will learn the classic styles of organizing and writing, and will begin learning what works best for them on different types of stories. We'll read and analyze many examples of the day's news, looking at what works, what doesn't and why. We'll look at what gets covered, what doesn't, and the impact of both. The ethics of journalism will be a constant undercurrent for all our work and discussions.

In addition to exercises produced during drill sessions, students will do a number of street-reporting assignments. Possible story ideas might cover some aspect of a city agency, the courts, police, the arts, culture, business and sports. The story assignments are not merely drills; goal is to produce stories that can be published. (new paragraph)This class aims to lay the foundation for a career in journalism, extremely challenging but extremely stimulating, with the focus always on best practices for the communications professional in the 21st century.

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Law & Mass Communication

Instructor: George Freeman

Course ID: JOUR-GA 0011.001

Days: Monday, 6:20pm-8:50pm

Room: 652

» Syllabus (PDF)

This course is designed to acquaint students with the basic protections and restrictions of the law as they apply to the media, as well as the ethical problems and dilemmas journalists face. First Amendment rights and legal and ethical responsibilities and limitations will be examined and discussed. The course will look at these questions from five viewpoints: from (i) the practical view of a journalist doing his job with (ii) heavy consideration of ethical imperatives, and (iii) from a legal prospective, all the while (iv) considering the rules in a public policy context -- are they fair and appropriate in our society? -- while (v) noting the historical context in which they arise. Significant court cases and fundamental legal rules as well as past ethical scandals and issues will be explored in the context of political and historical realities, and in terms of journalistic standards and practices; contemporary media law issues and ethical problems and guidelines will also be focused on. Among the basic First Amendment issues which will be examined are libel, invasion of privacy, prior restraints, newsgathering and newsgathering torts, and the reporter's privilege; some of the ethical issues to be explored include objectivity in reporting, bias and transparency, conflicts of interest, and fair dealings with subjects, sources and advertisers.

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Storied New York

Instructor: Tunku Varadarajan

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1023.001

Days: Friday, 11:00am-1:30am

Room: 655

» Syllabus (PDF)

New York is the most storied city in America; generations of writers have been entranced by it, and have produced masterpieces in tribute. We will look at the city as a character, in journalism, memoir, fiction, poetry, and film. What is the idea of New York in historical and contemporary imagination, and how different or similar are today's chroniclers of the city from their predecessors? What can we learn about urban reportage from the best practitioners of the genre? We will examine the texts for thematic concerns as well as those of craft. We will look at them as a car mechanic looks at a car; see how sentences are structured so that the text provides pleasure as well as information. And along the way, we will discover the broader possibilities and limitations of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and film.

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Storied New York

Instructor: Perri Klass

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1023.003

Days: M, 11:00a-1:30p

Room: 652

» Syllabus (PDF)

New York is the most storied city in America; generations of writers have been entranced by it, and have produced masterpieces in tribute. We will look at the city as a character, in journalism, memoir, fiction, poetry, and film. What is the idea of New York in historical and contemporary imagination, and how different or similar are today's chroniclers of the city from their predecessors? What can we learn about urban reportage from the best practitioners of the genre? We will examine the texts for thematic concerns as well as those of craft. We will look at them as a car mechanic looks at a car; see how sentences are structured so that the text provides pleasure as well as information. And along the way, we will discover the broader possibilities and limitations of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and film.

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WRRI - NewsDoc

Instructor: Cora Daniels

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1021.009

Days: Wednesday, 10am-3:50pm

Room: 750

» Syllabus (PDF)

The best journalism flows from logical thinking, solid research, and comprehensive journalism. Through short deadline pieces and longer writing assignments this class will simulate a newsroom and teach you how to think like a journalist. New York City will be your reporting lab and you will be sent out into the city hunting for stories from day one. While the primary focus of this class is print, the skills will give you a strong journalism foundation that can be used in any media.

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TV Reporting I

Instructor: Marcia Rock

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1040.001

Days: Tuesday, 10:30am-3pm

Room: 750

» Syllabus (PDF)

This beginning course introduces students to field reporting. Students learn to develop story ideas, write to picture, structure a story and conduct interviews and shoot and edit. Beat assignments cover a variety of topics in the neighborhoods of New York. As the course develops, detailed script analysis is combined with in-depth discussions of the completed pieces. Students work in teams of 2-3. They use small DV cameras, linear and non-linear editing systems.

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Press Ethics

Instructor: Jane Stone

Course ID: JOUR-GA 0012.002

Days: Monday, 12:30pm-3:00pm

Room: 653

» Syllabus (PDF)

This course offers through the case method a critical examination of current and recurring ethical and legal issues in journalism. Areas covered include reporting practices, roles of editors and executives, conflict of interest, sources, defamation and privacy, criminal justice and national security.

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Advanced TV Reporting

Instructor: Marcia Rock

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1175.001

Days: Wednesday, 4:00pm-8:00pm

Room: 750

» Syllabus (PDF)

We have several objectives in this class this semester. One is to finish your long piece. The other is to produce a short piece for our Election Special. You will work in groups of 2 for the election stories and then report live from various locations on election night as a follow-up to your reports. We will discuss this in class tonight and you will pitch stories on 9/21. This is very much a workshop class. You will present your work during the various stages of production—developing your story, reviewing your raw tapes, scripts and rough-cuts during class. Each of you will develop a schedule with deadlines for both stories and submit this by 9/28. During class, I will also bring in tapes to discuss that will stimulate discussion of form and content. Classes may run past 8:00 PM as we get more involved in story development so please don't schedule yourself too tightly on Wednesdays. Before you edit your election pieces, I will conduct an AVID session to give you some shortcuts. If you want to work on FCP, you have access to the 504 A computers, but you will compete with all the other students for time on those machines. Our final class is Dec 14. From past experience, that is not enough time to view all projects so I suggest we also meet on the 15th. We can meet in the afternoon as well since formal classes are over on the 14th. If you need the time, we could also have our last meeting on 12/19. Please do not schedule airline tickets before then. We will also pick a date in early February for your film festival screening. We normally have it on a Saturday, be we could try for a Friday. Please choose from Jan 28 or Feb 4. Parents and friends, of course, are invited.

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Video Editing

Instructor: David Spungen

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1182.007

Days: Thursday, 6:20-10pm

Room: 750

» Syllabus (PDF)

This course is dedicated to the craft of editing and producing for the TV News Magazine
genre, broadcast journalism's long-form storytelling vehicle. The course is broken into
three elements: (1) hands-on non-linear editing - students are given the raw elements from
a story previously broadcast on CBS News (the Diet Project) and edit their version of the
project in a simulated broadcast environment. (2) dissecting video story telling styles in the
news magazine and long-form genre. (3) Integrating these learned editing techniques to the
students’ documentary work. There is class time dedicated to one-on-one editing sessions.

Students may work with AVID, Final Cut Pro 7 or both to do their editing. It is important
to understand that this course is not a “how-to-use editing software”. For what it’s worth,
Professor Spungen is fluent in editing with AVID software and is happy to answer any
AVID related questions. His knowledge of FCP7 is not as strong, however all attempts will
be made to help students with FCP7 questions.

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WRRI - RTN/RNY

Instructor: Yvonne Latty

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1021.005

Days: M, 11am-4:50pm

Room: 654

» Syllabus (PDF)

This class is your newsroom. You will learn to research, pitch story ideas, find the right angles, hit the streets and write it up on deadline. You will use this nation, rich with culture, diversity, money and power, to learn and practice your skills. Journalism is about people, their stories, the government and services that enable them to live their lives. This class is about finding your voice and embracing your beat with passion, respect and understanding. This is a multimedia class. In the course of our year together you will learn to shoot and edit video, discover the magic of audio and create compelling slideshows, all for the web and for our website, "NYC Pavement Pieces." But remember, the words always come first.

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Law & Mass Communication

Instructor: Ruth S. Hochberger

Course ID: JOUR-GA 0011.002

Days: Thursday, 9am-11:30am

Room: 659

» Syllabus (PDF)

This course examines the application of ethical and legal principles to journalistic decision making, in print, broadcast and on-line. Unlike other professionals, journalists must make their ethical decisions rapidly, often without clear guidelines, and on their own, and the results of their decisions are open to public view. Also unlike other professionals, violations of ethical precepts are not punished by professional discipline or revocation of a license. This makes it vital that journalists weigh the value of how and what they choose to report against the potential harm to subjects, sources and society as a whole. The objective of this course is to provide guidance, through consideration of hypothetical and actual situations and analysis of case decisions, in developing a framework to help you make ethical and legal professional choices and to suggest some criteria against which those decisions may be measured.

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Investigative Reporting

Instructor: Joe Calderone

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1182.005

Days: Tuesday, 6:20pm-10pm

Room: 657

» Syllabus (PDF)

This course seeks students interested in learning the skills necessary to produce exclusive, hard-edged, ground-breaking reporting, combining human sources with original, document-based research. Bloggers, Tweeters, aspiring TV talking heads and print reporters will learn how to cut through the noise and produce reporting that stands out, makes a difference.and gives them an edge in a crowded field.

The emphasis is on New York City-based fieldwork resulting in a capstone, semester-long investigative project of your choosing that is worthy of publication. You will learn how to develop ideas for a project, find and cultivate sources, pitch and write the story in a clear, compelling and fair fashion while adhering to the highest standards of accuracy and objectivity. You will see how to mine the records of courthouses, police agencies, property clerks, health agencies, City Hall, campaign finance, tax authorities and other municipal, nonprofit and law-enforcement offices for exclusive material. Your aim will be to produce a story that sheds a light on a little-known or hidden topic with important implications for the public and readers.

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WRRI - SHERP

Instructor: Michael Balter

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1021.006

Days: T, 920am-3:20pm

Room: 653

» Syllabus (PDF)

The aim of this course is to develop and enhance your journalistic talents through intensive use of the
tools of the trade. We will specialize in science, health and environment writing and reporting, although
the outlook and skills you will acquire will serve you on any of journalism’s numerous news beats.

You will learn to write and report compelling news stories and news features, and greatly improve your
already existing skills. These will include basic elements of journalism such as how to find story leads,
track down information sources, get and conduct interviews, write with clarity, accuracy and style, and
make the most of the editing process. You will learn to write for the print and electronic media, practice
the art of blogging, and have a brief introduction to podcasting. You will also receive a basic introduction
to shooting and editing video in a series of morning and evening workshops.

In class, there will be a strong focus on discussion, newsroom-style give-and-take, and story pitches,
as well as in-class exercises, group edit sessions and some guest speakers. This is a workshop, so class
attendance is MANDATORY. You will put your new skills into practice with regular assignments. And
some of your best work, honed by group and one-on-one editing sessions, will be considered for the
SHERP webzine, Scienceline.

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Current Topics in SHERP

Instructor: Dan Fagin

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1017.001

Days: Thursday, 10am-4:00pm

Room: 653

» Syllabus (PDF)

Current Topics in Science, Health and Environmental Journalism

Current Topics in Science, Health and Environmental Journalism introduces students to the world of science journalism by looking at scientific topics that are at the cutting-edge of current research and also have profound implications for the way we live. In other words, they are the raw material for great journalism. As students immerse themselves in some challenging areas of current science, they will read the work of highly accomplished researchers and journalists, and will also hear from them directly in class. The goal throughout is be to understand and adopt the processes that the best science journalists use when they cover controversial science. You will learn how journalists interact with scientists, conduct research, organize information and write stories. Just as importantly, students also sharpen their analytical skills by writing almost every week for the SHERP webzine, Scienceline. Covering an assigned beat, students follow the peer-reviewed journals and other sources to stay on top of the news as it happens.

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Science Literacy & Numeracy

Instructor: Charles Seife

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1018.001

Days: M, 12-3pm

Room: 659

» Syllabus (PDF)

Science Literacy and Numeracy aims to give students a historical and literary context for science journalism, and will also introduce them to crucial concepts in statistics, probability and data analysis. The course will be rigorous, with an extensive reading list tracing the development of science journalism and examining the science journalist's role in society. There will also be heavy usage of problem sets and writing assignments aimed at showing students how to recognize "good science" and it's opposite. The course begins with a discussion of the conflict between scientists and non-scientists, and how science journalists are a bridge between the two cultures. Then students explore how society's way of understanding the natural world has changed over the centuries, the modern methods and philosophies of the practice of science, and some issues that affect scientists and scientific journalists that are not dreamt of in those philosophies. A mini-course in numeracy also arms students with the weapons to understand and dissect scientific studies. Using that knowledge, the class then returns to the scientific world to look at how science journalists have plied their craft, and at the pressures they face that make it hard for them to be solid bridges between scientists and non-scientists.

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Science Reporting

Instructor: John Rennie

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1180.001

Days: Tuesday, 5:00pm-8:00pm

Room: 655

» Syllabus (PDF)

This advanced SHERP class is intended to give a realistic preview of life as a working science journalist. We will explore the process step by step, from finding a story idea to pitching it to surviving the editing process to making sure the final product is accurate, clear and compelling. We will also look at science journalism from the editor's point of view. Open to third semester SHERP students only.

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Environmental Reporting

Instructor: Dan Fagin

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1188.001

Days: Tuesday, 12:30pm-3:30pm

Room: 655

» Syllabus (PDF)

Medical Reporting provides an in-depth look at many of the most important contemporary topics in the always dynamic field of medical journalism, including the biology of cancer, environment-related illness, epidemiology, and the precepts of sound medical research and peer review. Students write several short pieces on journal reports, medical conferences and community health lectures, and one longer, feature-length piece on a health topic of their choice. Medical researchers and prominent journalists are frequent guest speakers. Open to third semester SHERP students only.

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Press Ethics: Digital Thinking

Instructor: Jay Rosen

Course ID: JOUR-GA 0012.003

Days: Monday, 2:00pm-6:00pm

Room: 652

In this course we will examine what makes journalism different now that it runs on a digital platform. Readings and discussion will focus on making sense of the large shifts that accompany the move to digital production and distribution in professional journalism, including the "always on" web, the lower barriers to entry, the rise of social media and "the people formerly known as the audience," the ease of production using digital tools, the "unbundling" of news packages that were well adapted to prior platforms, the loss of monopoly status among news organizations, and the re-voicing of journalism in a more interactive environment for news. By comparing press ethics under the "old" system and the new codes that have emerged in the digital era, students will be able to hone in on what is different for professional journalists today, which is knowledge they will need for the remainder of the Studio 20 program.

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WRRI - Studio20

Instructor: Jason Samuels

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1021.004

Days: Wednesday, 4:00pm-8:00pm

Room: 652

» Syllabus (PDF)

See syllabus for details.

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Studio 1

Instructor: Mitchell Stephens

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1182.009

Days: Tuesday, 2:35pm-7:05pm

Room: 750

» Syllabus (PDF)

This course will examine the phenomenon of innovation, examining current disruptions in news media, how the industry's failure to innovate in a timely fashion is radically reshaping it, and why innovation is more necessary now than ever. We will look at great journalistic innovators throughout history, the causes and effects of major journalistic innovations -- including innovations in form, style, and content -- and the industry's response to new and disruptive technologies through the years. We will examine what new media are doing to reinvent journalism in the age of the Web and social media.

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Studio 3

Instructor: Jay Rosen

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1182.013

Days: Tuesday, 2:30pm-7:00pm

Room: 652

See instructor for details.

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Storytellers

Instructor: David Samuels

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1231.001

Days: Thursday, 1:30pm-5:10PM

Room: 600

» Syllabus (PDF)

Great stories are shaped by talented, reckless, funny, arrogant and often misanthropic writers and reporters working at the height of their craft. In this class, we will study how world-shaking historical events and everyday experiences alike can be crafted into original journalistic narratives. We will concentrate on the writer’s angle of approach to the subject – his or her “voice” – which is made more or less convincing through his or her control over language and the depth and range of his/her reporting. The first half of each class will consist of close readings of nonfiction narratives on Balkan wars, acid trips, nervous breakdowns, rock and roll concerts, a sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subways, a visit to the Iowa State Fair and assorted other subjects by some of my favorite journalists and novelists including Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace, Denis Johnson, Rebecca West, Ryszard Kapucinski, Haruki Murakami, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Joseph Mitchell. Each class will begin promptly at 12:30 PM and will be divided between an hour and thirty minute discussion of the assigned reading and an hour and fifteen minute discussion of your written work. Latecomers will be greeted with derision. We will break at 2 PM for afternoon snack. We will also enjoy visits from enlivening and informative guests from Harper’s, The New Yorker and other high-class venues, who can answer any questions you might have about reporting and editing, and who will help you shape your ideas with an eye towards publishing your own work.

Literary Reportage and Magazine priority.

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Profiles

Instructor: Ted Conover

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1231.002

Days: T, 11:00am-2:00pm

Room: 7th Floor Library

» Syllabus (PDF)

What makes a magazine profile grab you from the start and keep you reading for 500 words—or 5,000? How do you get subjects to give you the access you need to show them as they really are? What are the various approaches to crafting a narrative and telling a story that makes the subject come alive? How do you choose which truth to tell—there are always many—about the person you're profiling? The goal of this course is to learn the basic rules of profile writing, from pre- and post-reporting around the subject to creating a level of trust with him or her to formulating a writing plan of action to crafting the final tale. By semester's end you will have written several profiles of different approaches and lengths, from a 500-word person-in-the-news story to a Q&As to a full-fledged richly-textured portrait. We will read and analyze current and classic profiles. focusing especially on the use of scenes, quotes, background information and authorial interjects. Classes will include guest speakers from the print or digital magazine space—editors and writers in sports, music, business, film, politics, culture and TV journalism—who will share stories, lessons and, perhaps, connections and advice for your own forays into professional profile writing.

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The Editor's Vision

Instructor: Alexis Gelber

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1019.001

Days: M, 1:00pm-4:40pm

Room: 655

The class will examine how editors imprint their own sensibility on a magazine, woo an audience and develop a unique identity for their publication. Coming up with the right mix of articles is a constant challenge; editors are always trying to re-invent the formula as well as struggling to find interesting ways to package service pieces or celebrity profiles, or come up with catchy covers and headlines to boost newsstand circulation.

New magazines evolve either from one person's passionate idea (Esquire and its founder Arnold Gingrich, Tina Brown and the Daily Beast) or are launched by corporate magazine development departments (Oprah, Real Simple, Lucky). This class will examine the history and evolution of magazines, from the hits and misses (Portfolio, Domino) of recent years to a look back at the past. Weekly classes will focus on different aspects of magazine-making, and leading editors, art directors and photo editors will visit as guest speakers to provide their expert insights.

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Investigative Reporting

Instructor: Mike McIntire

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1182.006

Days: R, 6:20-10pm

Room: 653

» Syllabus (PDF)

Your objective will be to master basic investigative tools and techniques, as well as how to apply them to everyday reporting and major enterprise pieces. We will explore how to take advantage of the two main sources of information documents and people and discuss when and how to use computer data to both enhance a story or provide the foundation for a major project. Throughout the course, the goal will be to constantly delve beneath the surface. Going deep is the essence of investigative reporting, which pulls together all publicly available information, as well as harder-to-find material, to present the fullest possible picture. Corporations and powerful individuals employ armies of PR experts, lawyers and lobbyists to ensure that only their version of reality prevails, and it is the lonely duty of journalists to dispel this fog of self-interest. At least as important as mastering the technical skills will be learning to think critically and skeptically. The relentlessly upbeat press release, the carefully worded SEC filing or the late-Friday-afternoon earnings statement each, as a matter of course, should be probed for accuracy and omission. What important development went unsaid? Did the company chairman really resign to "spend more time with his family"?

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Reporting the Arts: The Pop Culture Beat

Instructor: Jeff Giles

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1231.006

Days: W, 6:30pm-10:10pm

Room: 653

» Syllabus (PDF)

Prof. Jeff Giles


This course will teach you how to write and report about the arts critically, passionately, and distinctively at a time when there are more platforms than ever available to journalists, but fame is a debased commodity and much of our culture is punch-drunk with its own silliness. We'll dissect great arts journalism old and new, long and short, in print and online. And we’ll also study bad articles that people were paid thousands of dollars to write to see what they reveal about how difficult it is to get access to a subject, how important it is have an angle you believe in, and how vital it is to develop your voice as a writer. We’ll discuss how to pitch stories, how to negotiate with publicists, how to work with editors, and how to build a career. Guest speakers will include prominent writers and editors, as well as publicists and executives who can give us a sense of what entertainment writers look like from the other side of the fence. Assignments will include a review, a Q+A, a handful of blog posts, and, as a final project, a 3,000-word feature story.

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Reported Essay

Instructor: Judith Shulevitz

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1182.011

Days: M, 9:30am-1:10pm

Room: 655

» Syllabus (PDF)

The Persuasive Essay

Sometimes you have a hunch that something’s not right with the world, or that a new argument needs to be made. In this class, you’ll start with a kernel of insight and develop it into an essay-length argument. You’ll figure out what point you want to make and read the key articles or books on that subject, so that you know what the big debates are and won’t repeat work done elsewhere. You’ll do interviews and find new data. Maybe you’ll look for characters whose stories help you make your case. Or maybe you’ll want to write about yourself—the experiences that piqued your interest, what happened when you went out to report the story--but though you'll be free to write in the first person to some extent, this will not be a class in writing personal essays or memoirs. In this class, you'll learn how to use evidence, observation, interviews, and analysis to persuade your reader, in addition to personal testimony (if you use that at all).

There will be weekly readings, as well as several short exercises in topical opinion-writing. In these blog-post-length pieces, you’ll practice techniques discussed or illustrated in the readings (the counterintuitive argument, the argument from example or representative anecdote, the argument that says that some old way of thinking should revived, and so on). You’ll riff off the news even as you develop the ideas that will shape your end-of-term essay. These exercises will help you digest the material you’re gathering and figure out its relevance to current events. Each short piece will be evaluated for originality, factual accuracy, and persuasiveness, as will the longer one.

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Reporting the Arts

Instructor: Rob Brunner

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1231.003

Days: Wednesday, 6:30pm-10:10pm

Room: 657

» Syllabus (PDF)

Prof. Jeff Giles


This course will teach you how to write and report about the arts critically, passionately, and distinctively at a time when there are more platforms than ever available to journalists, but fame is a debased commodity and much of our culture is punch-drunk with its own silliness. We'll dissect great arts journalism old and new, long and short, in print and online. And we’ll also study bad articles that people were paid thousands of dollars to write to see what they reveal about how difficult it is to get access to a subject, how important it is have an angle you believe in, and how vital it is to develop your voice as a writer. We’ll discuss how to pitch stories, how to negotiate with publicists, how to work with editors, and how to build a career. Guest speakers will include prominent writers and editors, as well as publicists and executives who can give us a sense of what entertainment writers look like from the other side of the fence. Assignments will include a review, a Q+A, a handful of blog posts, and, as a final project, a 3,000-word feature story.

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Front Of The Book

Instructor: Nick Marino

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1231.005

Days: Monday, 6:00pm-10:00pm

Room: 654

» Syllabus (PDF)

Course description: The front-of-book is the fast-paced, voice-driven section every magazine uses to establish its personality and reel in readers. It's a lively mix of topics and storyforms that, when done right, hangs together like a magazine unto itself. By discussing both writing and editing for the front-of-book, this class will give students a 360-degree perspective on assigning, pacing, crafting and polishing the opening pages of any magazine.

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Magazine Composition

Instructor: Caroline Miller

Course ID: JOUR-GA 1231.004

Days: Monday, 2:00pm-5:40pm

Room: 657

» Syllabus (PDF)

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NY Mag Bedford and Bowery Internship

Instructor: Daniel Maurer

Course ID: Internship JOUR-GA 1290.005

Days: TBA

Room: TBA

» Syllabus (PDF)

In the summer of 2013, N.Y.U.'s Arthur L. Carter Journalism School will launch Bedford + Bowery in collaboration with New York magazine. The new site will cover the East Village (just as The Local East Village, our collaboration with The New York Times, did before it) as well as the Lower East Side and the north Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint. 

 This unique immersion experience is your opportunity to cover these diverse, vibrant, and rapidly changing neighborhoods – which represent a “community of interest” – for NYmag.com. It can be taken as an internship for 1, 2, 3, or 4 credits (counting toward your internship credits) or as an elective for 4 credits (counting as academic credits that need not go toward your internship credits but are the equivalent of a 4-credit class). Either way, you will spend two full days per week writing for the site and shaping its identity, and you’ll receive compensation – as Bedford + Bowery’s modest budget allows – for works of significant enterprise.

Reporters for Bedford + Bowery will get real-time, on-the-ground experience producing lively, engaging, and timely stories in the areas of education, politics, crime, housing and real estate, arts and culture, and business, to name just some of the areas of coverage. You’ll cultivate sources and learn to write quickly and accurately, with an engaging, “bloggy” tone and sense of humor when appropriate.

Reporters will be on call at the 20 Cooper Square newsroom from 10 p.m. to 6 p.m., two days per week. You’ll run on breaking news, walk the beat, cultivate sources, and find stories to pitch.

The site strives to be the first to report neighborhood news in a competitive environment, so you’ll learn to thrive under tight deadlines and turn around copy that meets the standards of New York magazine, editors of which will work closely with the site in case a story warrants pick-up across other NYMag.com blogs or even in the magazine. You should expect to write a story per day, and be able to work on longer features while also producing shorter items. 

In addition to reporting duties, you’ll be called upon to manage some of the important aspects of a news site, e.g. comment moderation, listings production, aggregation, social media promotion, community engagement. You’ll also be part of theongoing discussion about how to make the budding site relevant and attractive to a growing readership.

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