With stock market volatility and millions of Americans facing uncertain financial prospects in their youth, middle age and Golden Years, perhaps no journalism beat has more relevance than business news. You will experience it first-hand. We will visit local businesses and meet business leaders you will write about. The business world will be our classroom -- from local factories, to tech companies and stock exchanges. We will visit and write about them on deadline. The terms and lingo can seem daunting at first, but it’s a financial reporter’s job to make it crystal clear and put it in a useful context for your audience. In this class, learn how to find meaningful feature and spot news business stories, research, report, write and produce them. By the end of the class, you will be able to write a range of business stories, including the government’s monthly inflation and employment reports, quarterly corporate earnings, mergers and acquisitions and personal finance. You will also learn how to turn potentially dry stories into interesting, entertaining and informative ones -- and have fun doing it! The business beat can’t be beat, so join it!

Students will report on one of the most fascinating aspects of New York: its stunningly diverse people. The goal is learning how to craft strong, captivating stories featuring classic New York characters and settings - with emphasis upon resourceful newsgathering and interviewing; responsible presentation of facts and events; vivid character development, color and detail; coherent structure, impeccable mechanics, and artful language. Students will be required to write four short features profiling local individuals, groups, venues, and/or institutions, with a fifth (longer, more in-depth) piece as their final. Through field trips, guest speakers, in-class exercises, readings, lecture and discussion, students will be encouraged to not only strengthen their reporting/writing skills, but also to broaden their perspectives about the varied cultural/socioeconomic milieus of their subjects. These New Yorkers may be "ordinary folks" or luminaries, individuals who are extremely successful in their fields or who are struggling to overcome serious challenges, born-and-bred New Yorkers or part of the immigrant tapestry that lends color and vibrancy to our city.

You don't have to be a player to be a great entertainment reporter. In the end, what matters is your skill in scoping out relevant people and information. Learn from a former Daily News gossip columnist the secrets of covering the city scene like a pro. Whatever your interest—music, nightlife, fashion, Hollywood or the arts—there are certain hard-nosed skills that can set you apart from the rest of the soft news pack. We explore this surprisingly complicated and nuanced segment of journalism with the help of guest speakers, reading assignments and most importantly, by going out there and getting real stories.

Ideological arguments about issues such as abortion, the separation of Church and State, immigration, and gay marriage, dominate the headlines and airwaves. But are the people covering these stories experts? Do they even know where to go to get real expert opinions? Can anyone cover these stories without being overly opinionated themselves or without offending someone? This course will introduce students to the current ideological discourse, or lack thereof, in the news media. Specific beats will be assigned, and the students will learn how to write stories for print and radio media. Readings include Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America by James Davison Hunter; Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (Great Questions in Politics Series) by Fiorina, Abrams & Pope, and Religion in the News : Faith and Journalism in American Public Discourse (Paperback) by Stewart M. Hoover, among others.

This course offers a timely, edgy convergence of two important trends. Increasingly, the relevance of mainstream media is being questioned. At the same time, the public is more interested in stories about people and programs that are making a contribution to society, and that aim to make the world a better place. This course will help train journalists to find and report stories that not only inform but also inspire. The focus won't be all about "reporting good news." Stories won't all be positive or noncontroversial. Students should not expect to be doing only one type of story. We'll do a range of classic journalism stories, including spot, newsfeatures and profiles. And we'll hone the classic journalism skills: finding story ideas, pitching, background research, reporting, interviewing, story structure, and writing styles that focus on approach, tone, transitions and more. Narrative will be emphasized when and where it works. Print, both magazines and newspapers, will be the primary orientation of the class, but there will also be opportunities for students to produce online and broadcast work. Students will find story subjects that include but go well beyond established nonprofits, charities and philanthropy: social entrepreneurs, environmentalists, political activists, donors. The homeless person who tends a community garden. The Fresh Air Fund. The right-to-life activist. How to set up your own 501(c)3. The programs to teach inner-city kids ballet or hockey or squash or golf. The schoolteacher who looks in on elderly neighbors every evening. Each student will produce several stories and a longer final feature. The goal is to have every student publish at least one story during the semester.

TV or Radio field reporting. Students learn location reporting skills, including interviewing and editing. Students work in small groups, and at term's end, each student produces a three-minute final project. There is a four-hour lecture and a three-hour production lab.

TV or Radio field reporting. Students learn location reporting skills, including interviewing and editing. Students work in small groups, and at term's end, each student produces a three-minute final project. There is a four-hour lecture and a three-hour production lab.

TV or Radio field reporting. Students learn location reporting skills, including interviewing and editing. Students work in small groups, and at term's end, each student produces a three-minute final project. There is a four-hour lecture and a three-hour production lab.

During his or her a career, a journalist will be called upon often to pen a "take out," a story whose length is shy of a magazine treatise but longer than a simple feature. Such stories are the staple of Sunday front pages—narratives, trends, profiles, issue examinations—and some of the most satisfying work a journalist can do. Tapping all the skills acquired to date, students will execute several such "big" stories, with an emphasis on sharp themes, tight organization, elegant writing and detectable voice.

Political reporters don’t just work during election season. They follow office holders, issues and developments inside and outside of partisan politics year round. Important issues such as immigration reform, gay marriage and the teaching of intelligent design create news at all levels of government: local, state and federal. And a solid understanding of the way government works is essential to successfully telling these stories. This course gives aspiring political writers the understanding of government they need to report political stories wherever they happen or as they shift from one political arena to the other. Students will report on issues, movements, and political leaders – not just office holders – in each of the three arenas (municipal, state and federal) and produce a capstone project that examines a political issue or movement and its implications at all three levels of government.

Like any neighborhood, Brooklyn's Park Slope has its issues: There is frantic development on its once low-rise western side, and a growing grocery-store rivalry. Also, like most neighborhoods in New York and elsewhere, Park Slope is many neighborhoods. There are the yuppies in their brownstones, the twentysomethings in their shared apartments and at the Fifth Avenue bars, the nation's largest lesbian community, the old-timers who resent the arrivistes. There are the teens, the offspring of the yuppies, whose Park Slope is far different from their parents' and the twentysomethings'. Any one of these broadly defined "neighborhoods" may be grist for a great story. In this course, we will scout out such possibilities throughout the five boroughs of New York City, from Tottenville to Stuyvesant Town. Thinking hard about what makes a rich story, we will then select one topic, dive deeply into it through reporting and research, and produce an incisive 3,000 word article.

This course is for students who want to try their hand at investigative reporting in New York City, learning to mine documents and official records for exclusive stories.

Mostly, this is a hands-on skills course. The emphasis will be on fieldwork. You will be expected to come up with strong ideas for investigative stories or projects, find the sources you need, do the reporting to back up your idea and write the story in a clear, compelling and fair fashion, adhering to the highest standards of accuracy and objectivity. The story ideas must be New York City based and doable in a semester’s time.

We will cover the different types of sources used in a typical investigative project, including human sources, documents and electronic databases. We will discuss where to find such sources, how to utilize them to maximum advantage and how to organize your material.

Boy or Girl? It's the first question asked about who we are -- and today what that means is up for grabs as social, cultural and scientific revolutions influence our most deeply held beliefs and behaviors. In this course, students will report from the front lines of these most private and public questions, developing story ideas, researching and writing about women's issues, gay rights, bisexual and transgender movements, sex and youth, pornography and the sex trade, reproductive rights, STDs and public health policy.

In On The Road in the City, students will go on a series of journeys throughout the city in search of snippets of ordinary life that say something extraordinary about the city and humanity. In the process, students will be in pursuit of the seeds of cultural change. The mission and challenge will be to present those seeds and portraits of life with prose that gives the reader a sense of making the same discoveries. You will also read three books that employ "road" journalism in different ways. The semester will culminate in your own major project that will require you to journey with a social or cultural world of New York.

In this class you'll research and write magazine-length features and shorts about rampant changes in culture, politics, entertainment and media. Topics could include the future of television, movies and newspapers, an analysis of cultural trends, immigration, national security, the growth of Google, the political battles over a two-tiered Internet, the effect of blogs on politics, the impact of broadband on business, and innovations in crime and law enforcement, etc. There will also be a blog component, where you'll post two entries a week on your chosen beat. You'll analyze the present so you can effectively chart out the near future.

These are the life stories which often elude "official" notice unless major scandal erupts, the everyday lives of families and children. Family issues easily become reduced to politicized clichés, but good reporting on these issues involves engaging the complexity of culture, class, and character. In this class, we will look at some of the places in which family stories can be seen -- the department of social services, the pediatric ward of the hospital, the juvenile courts, the schools -- and discuss ways of approaching these situations and these families. We will discuss the ethics of writing about families and about minor children in particular, and read a wide variety of examples. Students will write several short pieces and one long in-depth story.

Advanced TV news on-location reporting class in which students develop skills under the real-time pressures of a same-day production schedule. The stories are fed into the TV Newscast course. Class meets twice a week. There is an editorial meeting on Tuesday and production day on Thursday.

Prerequisites: None

Why do we think that way? What do we mean by "women" and "men"? If you were a visiting anthropologist from Mars, how could you use our culture's media to understand our ideas about gender? Women & the Media is a collaborative seminar that examines 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 how we read 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.

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry or Instructor Permission

Demographics alone suggest that America is a different thing than it was just a few years ago. A shifting racial and ethnic makeup has cast the discussion of how news organizations cover minorities in a near-holographic glow, ever-changing. It is the purpose of this lecture course to dissect and understand the constellation of factors that influence coverage, including the Civil Rights movement, the Americans With Disabilities Act, the growing disparity between haves and have-nots, politics, ethics, economics and the mores of the modern print, broadcast and internet newsrooms. We will examine the myriad ways that people, places and whole issues are tagged with labels and become caricatures. We will move beyond conventional wisdom, beyond simply finding fault, to achieve our most important goal -- to arrive at ideas and solutions for richer, more illuminating and precise coverage.

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry or Instructor Permission

Completion of "Journalism Ethics and First Amendment Law" (V54.0502) prior to taking this course is highly recommended. Contemporary and historical look at the way in which the American mass media cover the American political process. Special attention to coverage of the White House, the executive agencies, Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court, conventions, campaigns, and elections. Examines the Washington press corps, the press conference, the press secretary, and governmental secrecy for their impact on the quality of coverage. During election periods, evaluation of media coverage of candidates for high office.

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.

In this course, students will explore the visions of American social, cultural and political life and upheaval by way of the travelogue. We will read four major pieces of on the road writing and students will be required to write a short essay on each book. In addition, students will be required to select a writer—not on the list—and perform a major explication of the writer's "on the road" work. The final product will be an oral presentation and written paper. We will read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed; William Least's Heat Moon and Blue Highways; John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, In Search of America, and Walt Whitman's Memoranda During War.

Great stories are shaped by daring and often reckless writers and reporters working at the height of their craft. In this class, we will study how front-page news events and personal experience alike can be crafted into original and compelling nonfiction 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 precise use of language and depth and range of reporting and emotional experience. In addition to reading work by Tom Wolfe, Janet Malcolm, Joan Didion, Michael Herr, Joseph Mitchell, David Foster Wallace, Jon Krakauer and other artists of the verifiable world, students will be encouraged to write their own original stories with an eye towards publication.

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry or Permission of Instructor

The battle lines snake across the front pages of newspapers all across the country. Whether it’s global warming or stem cells, nuclear proliferation or evolution, genetic modification or the morning after pill, scientific issues are at the heart of some of the deepest controversies and biggest stories of our time.

In this course we will explore the place where science, politics, and the media intersect. Whenever science is messy or scary, dangerous or damaging, we’ll be there. We’ll explore age-old topics, such as the perceived conflict between science and religion, as well as brand new ones, such as the troubles posed by the possibility of cloning. Students will learn to grapple with issues that baffle scientists, unseat politicians, and give editors nightmares.

The field of media criticism is comprised of a variety of theories and methodologies. Our investigation of them will focus on some of the dominant critical perspectives that have contributed to our understanding of media and its role in society. This course is designed to familiarize you with the basic vocabulary and concepts used in the criticism of different types of media texts and products. We have three basic objectives before us in this course: 1) To become familiar with a number of highly influential and important theoretical approaches to media criticism, and with the terms and concepts associated with them. 2) To develop an understanding of how these theoretical "frameworks" and their related concepts have been used to analyze and understand media texts and culture. 3) To begin to be able to adopt and adapt these frameworks and their central concepts in our own analyses of media texts and products.

"I went to mattress.com, did the research, and ordered my bed the same afternoon."

Before we can write, we need to know, and this class is about gathering information—online and off. More specifically, it's about self-education and how to develop a comprehensive understanding of a subject. The great seduction of internet search engines is the thought that if we follow all the links on the first page or two of hits, we'll have expertise. Why might that be wrong? When is it necessary to open books in a library, or to speak with real people? How can we decide who and what is authoritative—and why would we wish to look beyond the usual suspects? Finally: if a story is dull, it might be because the research was, as well. How can creative thinking make research original and exciting?

Mattresses, as it happens, are difficult to research. But we’ll dig into a number of other subjects in order to understand, first, the importance of a broad and original base of sources, and second, the ways in which good research is a precondition to good writing. Several short writing assignments and one final research paper will be required.

Journalism is often the first step towards a life of professional storytelling. Newspaper stories, magazine pieces, scripts, books, ad copy, radio and TV writing, are all based on solid journalistic principle. With that in mind, this course has one goal: teach the basic structure of first person writing. Emphasis is on reporting, then telling what you saw with clarity. We will focus on cutting the fat out of writing, getting to the bone, the nub, by learning to work the finite details of what you report -- what you actually see or think you see -- into a story that has length, power, and accuracy, told from your perspective.

No computers in this class. No iPods, no taping lectures, no slam poetry, no meandering first person accounts. Bring a pencil and a yellow legal pad. Any motivated student with good pair of walking shoes and an interest in writing is welcome. Students will be expected to wander the city as reporters with specific assignments, then come back and write about what they have experienced. Reading list includes Dispatches by Micheal Herr, Beyond the Game, by Gary Smith, and A Nietzsche Reader translated by R.J. Hollingdale, and a Marvel comic book to be selected later.

Completion of "The Beat" (V54.0201) prior to taking this course is highly recommended. The Profile: Editors love them. Practically every publication — be it fluffy, artsy or serious — uses profiles. It’s a format journalists must master. The profile taps all key journalism skills — interviewing, observing, developing good anecdotes, researching, finding strong story ideas, structuring material and writing.

The writing assignments will be extensive. Students will profile a NYU newsmaker, undertake a "write-around" and write a publishable full-life profile that will require several visits with the subject and interviews with family and colleagues. Students will turn in extensive background research, participate in interview exercises, master "The Get," that is landing that hot interview in the first place, and write the perfect pitch letter. The class will feature guest writers from major news outlets.

A course that blends the practical aspects of technical editing with the critical thinking and craftsmanship needed to structure and polish stories till they shine. If you love to tweak a single sentence until it is absolutely clear, true and elegant, and enjoy deconstructing a feature story to truly understand how it was shaped, this is the class for you! The first half of the semester will focus on the micro elements of editing: from proofreading to punctuation, to grammar and usage. The second half of the semester will focus on the macro elements of editing: from line editing to cutting meaty stories in half to fit the space. Publication tone, house voice and writer's voice will be discussed in depth. Students will also gain experience writing headlines and captions. Other assignments include editing the interview, editing humor pieces, and re-structuring articles that just don't work. Students will learn how to think like editors and shape and tweak stories analytically as well as technically.

Top editors from the best magazines will speak to the class about navigating a career in magazines and working one's way up the masthead. Prof. Jill Dearman developed the in-house Style Guide for book publishers Simon and Schuster. She has edited film reviews for Video Hound, TV Guide, and the Video Sourcebook. As an arts and culture reporter Dearman's stories have been published in New York Daily News, Time Out New York, Punk and numerous other publications. Dearman's literary essays about New York City have recently appeared in Mr. Beller's Neighborhood and New York Stories.

Livewire is the journalism department's feature syndicate, which offers student stories to dozens of newspapers and magazines, including the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Austin American-Statesman and a roster of respected cultural, specialty and international affairs webzines. This is a demanding class for advanced students who aim to build their journalism portfolios. You'll work closely with a professor-editor, and may direct potential employers to the site to review your work. Standards are high, but there's a payoff: some 70 percent of Livewire stories are in print. See us at http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/livewire/.

Principles and methods of magazine editing and production. Includes practical training and instruction in editorial work such as editing stories, layout, proofreading, planning issues, and desktop publishing. The main assignment is a class project editing and designing the departmental magazine, Manhattan South.

This course will explore the evolving world of digital journalism, including blogs, online magazines and other aspects of publishing on the web. Students will experience the roles of researcher, reporter, writer, producer, and web analyst. Each student will write and post updates to a media industry-related blog, and interview leading figures in digital journalism for an online magazine.

Writing and producing TV news programs. During the term, students produce 12 complete broadcasts that are fed live to residence halls and other locations on campus. Many of these casts are also fed to the Internet for online viewing. Responsibilities include all aspects of TV news: story selection and development, field production, anchoring, reporting, operation of all studio and control room equipment, writing, copy editing, and directing. Deadline realities are emphasized as live broadcasts begin on an exact-time basis.

Every couple of years, or so it seems, the press announces the portentous news: women are opting out, burning out, or simply giving out, and are leaving high-powered careers behind to embrace full-time motherhood. At the same time, some 71 percent of mothers of children under 18 are in the workforce. Working and stay-at-home moms face off on magazine covers as each other's worst enemy—or a mother is pictured torn, arms and legs ripped in opposite directions, one arm holding a baby and the other clutching a briefcase. Whether working in the labor force or not, mothers are bombarded with conflicting advice until the point of what Judith Warner calls (in the title of one of our key texts) Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. Meanwhile, on TV, wives are swapped, housewives are desperate, and emergency nannies rush to rescue harried moms. How do we make sense of all this, as journalists and media critics? How do we "read" these cultural messages—and how do we write meaningfully about work and family ourselves? How do we interpret the images of working women, mothers, or working mothers in our popular culture? How do we make our own hard—or not so hard—choices? Some of our readings may include Linda Hirschman's Get to Work: A Manifesto for Women of the World, Joan Blades and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner's The Motherhood Manifesto, Shari Thurer's Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother, and Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels' The Mommy Myth. Students will conduct their own research projects and present their findings to the class.

Additional Prerequisite: Honors Advanced Reporting (V54.0351) [Fall Semesters Only]

Additional Prerequisite: Honors Advanced Reporting (V54.0351) [Fall Semesters Only]

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry, The Beat

Prerequisites: Foundations, Inquiry, The Beat

Students develop their ability to analyze and critique a variety of arts, particularly theatre and other live performances. The course emphasizes discussion of the debates on art, politics, and cultural issues that provide the context for informed critical writing. Students take advantage of London's vibrant theatre, music, and art scenes and should expect to see two performances a week, hear a BBC Proms classical concert, and visit museums such as the Tate and the National Gallery.

Seminar on current issues in journalism as seen from a global perspective, including such topics as the role of international news agencies, the influence of humanitarian agencies on newsgathering, photojournalism in a digital age, how local journalists report the news in countries without a First Amendment, and the risks of covering dangerous or traumatic stories. Looks both at international media and at U.S. media from an international point of view. Includes field trips and guest speakers.

Using the cultural life of Prague as its focus, students will learn to report on the diversity of cultural and artistic activity in the Czech capital in eight main areas—film, photography, literature, architecture, music, visual arts, travel, and literature. Several forms and techniques will be explored including news reports, interviews, reviews (film, literature, theater), feature stories, essays, and commentaries. During the course, students will learn not only about Prague's cultural landscape but they will be encouraged to examine it in various journalistic and literary forms. One of the leading aims of this course is also to introduce the students to extraordinary artists whose work has gained international attention.

The course focuses on combining the techniques of fiction with the rigor of journalistic travel reporting to produce stories that move beyond the constraints of the news and feature story: stories that engage, resonate with readers, provide insight - stories that "produce the emotion." The course proceeds by reading and analysis of contemporary journalism and classic travel pieces; careful examination of the narrative, fictional and literary devices used in travel writing; examination of and practice with various information gathering strategies; and consideration of the ethics of representation. Students will produce travel articles on deadline in several different styles and genres.

This course aims to give students a strong grounding in radio journalism and radio production and unlock the secrets of being a successful freelance stringer. Topics include: organization of a radio station, stringers and the industry, cultivating sources, writing the radio news dispatch, on-air voice and delivery, the technology of radio reporting, conducting the interview, press conferences, covering a news event, sound editing, producing the radio feature. During the semester students will write several news dispatches; record and edit a ten-minute interview; and write, edit, record and produce a radio feature story.

A collaborative seminar designed to question the impact of various forms of media on "society" and various notions of society on "media." Students consider conventional and unconventional media in Central Europe—from the International Herald Tribune to movies to fashion magazines—in an effort to interpret Central European culture. The key question is not "Is this text 'good'?" but "What does this text mean?"

The course will focus on foreign reporting in American and British newspapers and journals (not wire, radio or television) from Evelyn Waugh's Scoop! to the present. How has foreign news in print evolved and what does it take to be a foreign correspondent today? History, extensive reading and guest lectures by contemporary foreign correspondents will bring context to the practical second half of the course in which the class will produce its own stories.

After the fall of Communism in 1989 the old centralized command media system had to be replaced with a new open plural media system. Transformation of print media was relatively simple — it needed only deregulation (abolishing the administrative control of the state, abolishing censorship, opening the system up to free enterprise, etc.). Due to their nature and history, the transformation of radio and television was more complex and problematic — it required not only deregulation, but also re-regulation (rewriting the old laws, transforming the old government agencies into public corporations, delegating regulatory authority to non-governmental bodies, etc.). The course will describe the history of the Czech media since 1989 and will try to analyze results of the transformation and developing trends.

Students report, in teams and individually, on political, economic, and social issues in Accra and beyond. NYU journalism students will be teamed up with journalism students from the University of Ghana/Legon. Reporting will focus around thematic areas (typically, politics, health/environment, and social issues). Frequent field trips and guest lectures.

See the writing, photos and video of the Spring 2006 class in Ghana at Africa House.

This course will examine stories in their many different manifestations. Its objective is to give students a critical appreciation of how stories are told through different media and to serve different agendas-be it art or advertising, journalism or national history. Guest lecturers, using real-world examples from different disciplines, will play a significant role in helping students understand how stories are told. Students will be expected to produce stories of their own through media of their choosing.