2026 - Fall

Methods and Practice: Film and TV Reporting & Criticism

Course Number: JOUR-UA 202.001

Day & Time: Thu | 12:00 PM – 3:40 PM

Location: 20 Cooper Square, Room 743

Instructor: Mayukh Sen

Prerequisites: Journalistic Inquiry: The Written Word JOUR-UA 101

The moving image, whether on the big or small screen, has a unique power to both shape and reflect the world we inhabit. In this class, we’ll dive into writing about film and television from both a reportorial and critical angle: how to report on the entertainment industry, how to review a piece of work. You’ll engage with the work of writers whose incisive, trenchant critiques of art—both past and present—will help inform your approach to writing about film and television, all the way from Hollywood’s Golden Age to our current-day, fast-changing streaming landscape. Meanwhile, you’ll learn how to report on the entertainment industry as any responsible journalist would, with an informed, well-sourced perspective and a healthy dose of journalistic curiosity.

Writing assignments for this class will involve scene analysis, reviews of short and feature-length films, reports on screenings, episode recaps, and profiles. Reportage and critique, you’ll find, are two sides of the same journalistic coin, and in this class you’ll learn how to master the two forms as well as fuse them—how to inject a reporter’s sensibility into a piece of criticism, how to approach an interview subject with a critic’s eye. In addition to readings and assignments, this class will involve visits from guest speakers working in film and television journalism alongside screenings (including the occasional jaunt to ones held outside the classroom). You will walk away from this class with a firm sense of how to look at what you watch on the screen beyond the surface—and to apply that knowledge to the page.

Notes: Counts as an elective for the journalism major and both journalism minors.

Questions? Email undergraduate.journalism@nyu.edu.