S-Community Journalism

The Community Journalism Project is an intermediate reporting class that sends students into ghettos, barrios, and poor white and working class communities of Western Massachusetts. Journalists have become increasingly out of touch with the majority of the population. The working class, the poor, minorities are often overlooked in the mainstream media. This course puts students into the homeless shelters, food pantries, health clinics, community centers, public schools, and low-wage job sites in hope of finding solutions and answers from the real experts.

FYS - Journalism Success:

This course will introduce students to the traditions and expectations of the Journalism Program, as well as resources and opportunities that will help them as they move through the major. Through workshops and exercises, students will meet faculty, get to know campus media and career services staff, learn about the writing and academic expectations of the program.

Sports Journalism

A hands-on course aimed at how to write, edit and cover sports stories. Interviewing skills will be honed in this class, and you will need a flexible schedule in order to cover games outside of classes. Students will learn to write a variety of stories ranging from straight game stories to previews to features and breaking news. Students will read and analyze successful writing styles from sportswriters in all mediums, including broadcast and the Web.

Introduction To Journalism

Introduction to Journalism is a survey class that covers the basic principles and practices of contemporary journalism. By studying fundamentals like truth telling, fact checking, the First Amendment, diversity, the watchdog role of the press and public engagement, students will explore the role of the journalist in a democratic society. Students will also assess changes in the production, distribution and consumption of journalism through new technologies. Students will examine case studies across the media, and learn how different audiences, media and perspectives affect the news. (Gen. Ed.

S-Magazine Writing

This four-credit writing course introduces students to the different forms of magazine writing, including short features and essays, longer-form pieces, first-person narratives, profiles and human-interest feature stories. Students will generate story ideas, develop research strategies, cultivate sources, research markets, and submit queries for publication in print and online formats. Students will read and discuss articles from a range of popular, literary, and trade magazines, and, in a community of peer writers, they will write, review and revise several works of their own.

Video Content Creation

This class is an introduction to radio & television news writing, videography, editing and visual storytelling. Students will learn the basics of radio reporting, videography and broadcast journalism. They will produce a variety of radio and television reports to expand their understanding of the various formats, styles and types of reports used in the media. Students will also work on news judgment, sourcing stories, interviewing subjects and writing and editing their stories for radio, television and the web.

Journalism Ethics

This course will develop an understanding of the ethical questions raised by media coverage in a democratic society at a time of focus on profit over news values and on entertainment over substance. Issues discussed will include: accuracy and fairness, diversity, conflicts of interest, privacy, deception, relationships with sources and photojournalism. We will also learn to identify news values--or lack of them--both as professionals and as consumers. Satisfies the Integrative Experience requirement for BA-Journ majors.
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