Online Courses, Summer 2020

This course introduces students to the basic requirements of news writing and reporting, including interviewing, covering news events, speeches and press conferences, public records, and more. Students will complete a variety of in-class and outside reporting assignments in a journalistic style.

Prerequisite for matriculated UMass Amherst students: EngWrit 112. If you are not a regular UMass Amherst student and you would like to enroll in Journ 300, please contact the UMass CPE Records & Registration Office (413-545-3653 or regoff@cpe.umass.edu) as soon as possible. 

This is a required course to earn the Certificate of Journalism.

This course explores the challenges and issues facing journalists covering global affairs. Students will learn about intercultural communication, overcoming biases in reporting, and the use of social media as a platform for news reporting. They will also examine the work of foreign correspondents from a critical perspective. Through a mixture of readings and news writing, the course will broaden students' understanding of current affairs on the global stage. 

Basic training in writing editorials, columns and broadcast commentary with an emphasis on political and social policies. How to encourage the persuaded, nudge the neutral and discomfit the opposition. The ability to write quickly will be stressed. Several short (two-page) papers. Prerequisite: Journ 300 or permission of the instructor.

This course focuses on ethical journalism — no matter the medium—and its pivotal role in a democratic society. It aims to help those who plan to become journalists make ethical decisions and to help those who are consumers of the news recognize responsible journalism at a time when it is more important than ever to give voice to the voiceless and hold the powerful accountable. Students will develop an ability to understand and evaluate the ethical decisions that journalists make every day and the consequences of those decisions. As journalism's role in society, its values, and its best practices are all undergoing radical transformations, students will become familiar with traditional codes of ethics in areas such as accuracy, fairness, diversity, sources, conflicts of interest and privacy. But the course also will emphasize the need for students to create their own systems of ethics – principles students have thought through and are always ready to apply, explain and defend.

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.