2025 - Summer

Newsroom: From Pitch to Publish (Fieldwork) (Session 1)

Course Number: SS1: JOUR-UA 302.001

Day & Time: Tue/Thur, 4:00PM - 7:00PM

Location: 20 Cooper Square

Instructors: Whitney Dangerfield, John Surico

Syllabus: Download

Albert Class Number: TK

A vibrant newsroom is filled with journalists evaluating the news of the day, week, month and year. Reporters are talking through ideas with editors, actively pitching, and giving story updates. Editors are then helping to frame stories and take them through the production process.

In this hands-on, interactive class, students will meet for a three-hour session twice a week, where they will cycle through that exact process. Each week will start with a pitch meeting, and then the bulk of the time in class will be dedicated to refining stories, workshopping ideas, planning and doing fieldwork, and talking through reporting strategies. We will have brief lectures on different aspects of getting a story published, including how to create good relationships with editors. Guest speakers, including seasoned editors and journalists, will also visit to offer their experience from the newsroom.

This class will partner with a set of pre-established media outlets who are open to reviewing pitches, offering students a unique, real-time opportunity to leave the class with clips for their portfolio. When (and if) pieces are accepted, students will work directly with editors on their stories. Graduate students will be required to finish the session with three publishable pieces; undergraduates will be required to finish with two. The goal of this class: learn how to frame ideas, report them out, and ultimately get them published. 

This class is co-taught by Whitney Dangerfield, the Publications Director at NYU Journalism and a former editor at The New York Times and The Atlantic, and John Surico, a prolific freelance writer whose work has been published in The New York Times, Bloomberg, and The Guardian.

Note: Open to undergraduate and graduate students. Counts as an elective for the journalism major and both journalism minors. Prerequisites for undergraduate students include Journalistic Inquiry: The Written Word and The Beat; prerequisites for graduate students include WR1. Exceptions must be approved by the professors. Pitching stories to professional sites with an eye to publication is an integral part of this class.

*International students who wish to use the Curricular Practical Training option for this practicum class should contact the NYU Office of Global Services and NYU Journalism Career Services.