Global and Joint Program Studies

A select group of students each year have the opportunity to work toward a joint M.A. degree in Journalism along side Africana Studies, French Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Near Eastern Studies, Russian and Slavic Studies, European and Mediterranean Studies or International Relations. This program is known informally at Journalism as GloJo.

By design, GloJo crosses disciplines and media platforms and just as intentionally remains small. It is expressly for students with strong international or transnational interests, background in specific area studies, and, as appropriate, the needed language preparation. The program provides the opportunity to deepen knowledge of each respective region, culture or discipline as it opens opportunity for careers in journalism and any number of related fields. On the Journalism side, the focus is intensive preparation in research, reporting, writing along with multimedia techniques and tools. The Curriculum link takes you to a typical course progression through the two-year program and, just below that, you'll find the requirements for graduation by unit. These differ somewhat from partner program to partner program.

Only one application is needed, but the admission process has two steps. The partner programs review the applications first and GloJo after that. For admission to the joint program, both departments must say yes.

From the very start, GloJo students take their required two Writing, Research and Reporting classes together, one in the first term and one in the third to intensify our supervision of the forthcoming thesis while advancing reporting and writing skills in long form. This both ensure class cohesion within the larger Journalism graduate program as well as GloJo's international inflection. In addition, since, as we know, all global is local, we strongly encourage the GloJo students to spend the first or second spring semester as a reporter for Bedford + Bowery, our new collaboration with New York Magazine. Starting in June 15, it supplants our much-touted three-year collaboration with the NYTImes.com site, The Local East Village. B + B will has a broader geographic reach. A subject-area reporting elective plus a specific skills course or seminar rounds out the five journalism courses.   

We endeavor to limit each entering GloJo group to 15 students. The first and second year groups gather regularly outside of class in informal monthly dinner gatherings that have been expressly conceived to support degree progress and master's projects preparation. We celebrate, too. These evenings sometimes involve guests from the working world and our recent alumni to enable the further sharing of experiences, expertise, information and professional and academic contacts.

Here you can see where our students are interning and where some of our recent graduates are working. Check our future events and past events calendars to get a sense of the who's-who of journalism who pass through the doors of the Carter Institute week after week. 

The master's project (here you can find some recent abstracts) generally involves summer travel between the first and second years of the program. This we support with modest GloJo travel grants. Students prepare for these reporting forays during their first two semesters in the program. They enlist two faculty mentors, one from Journalism and one from the partner program.

Reporting continues after the summer and the writing usually begins in the second Spring. It results in a substantive long-form (6,500-10,000 words) journalistic work in narrative, explanatory or investigative style, under-girded with academic references. In recent years, several students have produced documentaries, photographic essays or multimedia projects such as this one or this one, which NPR aired. Some partner programs will accept this work as the final MA project; others will require a more traditional academic thesis in addition. Again, this varies from partner to partner.

Master's projects in near-entirety, or in substantial excerpt, have appeared in such publications as Harper's Magazine, City Limits, Tablet (twice), GlobalPost.com (twice), in VQR (twice) and on NPR's Latino USA. Students are encouraged to publish professionally as part of the learning experience. We regularly post these pieces on our Facebook page as they appear as well as on this site.

We also make a point of featuring on our website the strong shorter published work of our students and continue to do so for recent alumni as they advance in the professional world. We also encourage the entrepreneurial efforts of our students such as Latin American News Dispatch, the creation of Andrew O'Reilly and Roque Planas (GloJo-LatAm 2011). GloJo-LatAm, GloJo-IntRel and other GloJo students with LatAm background or travels continue to post for the site. 

Prospective students are invited to visit the Institute during the fall and spring academic terms to learn more about the program. We can arrange for you to sit in on a class and suggest you check Course Listings for classes that might coincide with your visit. If you happen to be in town for a Sunday GloJo dinner, we'd be delighted to invite you to one of those as well. We will post the 2013-14 dates as soon as they are scheduled. To join us, please email global.journalism@nyu.edu for further details.

To schedule a class visit and tour of the facility (GloJo WRRI and II are on Fridays, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., find other options in Course Listings), please contact graduate.journalism@nyu.edu. Please note that visits should be scheduled well in advance if you wish to meet with faculty.

By all means join our Facebook page for regular informal updates.

Please note the recommended deadline for all applications is December 18. Application review begins by January 4, so do get all your applications documents in well beforehand to allow time for GSAS processing.