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.

This course aims to provide students with a framework for critically examining the intersections between media messages, the digital revolution and the wider sociocultural environment. That journalism has been profoundly impacted by the development of Web 2.0 applications is nowadays axiomatic. However, the precise ways in which such ?new media? phenomena as Facebook & Twitter, the personal blog and the smart phone have transformed news gathering, packaging and dissemination still need to be researched and understood.

What is fact? What is fiction? Can we even tell the difference any more? Today's 24-hour news environment is saturated with a wide array of sources ranging from real-time citizen journalism reports, government propaganda and corporate spin to real-time blogging, photos and videos from around the world, as well as reports from the mainstream media.

Honors Project Seminar

Students will become familiar with legal concepts underlying freedom of the press: censorship, obscenity, libel, privacy, free press/fair trial, contempt, access and other legal problems affecting the mass media. The case study approach generally is used, but emphasis is on the principles and philosophy underlying various aspects of communication law as these affect the daily work of journalists.

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.

The class covers a variety of memoirs; students will write a personal history that combines rigorous emotional honesty with high literary standards. Readings may include the works of Mary McCarthy, Tobias and Geoffrey Wolff, Russell Baker, George Orwell, John Wideman, Mary Karr, Vladimir Nabokov, Harry Crewes, Reeve Morrow Lindbergh, Mary Gordon, David Eggers, Ernest Hemingway, Alice Sebold, Wendy Mnookin and others.

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.