Journalism (JOURN)

This is an archived copy of the 2015-16 guide. To access the most recent version of the guide, please visit http://guide.berkeley.edu.

Courses

JOURN 24 Freshman Seminars 1 Unit

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
The Berkeley Seminar Program has been designed to provide new students with the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member in a small-seminar setting. Berkeley Seminars are offered in all campus departments, and topics vary from department to department and semester to semester.

JOURN 39H Freshman/Sophomore Seminar 1.5 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Fall 2009, Spring 2009
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

JOURN 39J Freshman/Sophomore Seminar 1.5 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2010, Spring 2009
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

JOURN 39K Freshman/Sophomore Seminar 1.5 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2013, Spring 2013
Freshman and sophomore seminars offer lower division students the opportunity to explore an intellectual topic with a faculty member and a group of peers in a small-seminar setting. These seminars are offered in all campus departments; topics vary from department to department and from semester to semester.

JOURN 98 Directed Group Study in Journalism 1 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015

JOURN 100 Introduction to News Reporting 3 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Summer 2017 First 6 Week Session, Summer 2016 10 Week Session, Summer 2016 First 6 Week Session
Survey of journalistic principles and practices, and study and practice of methods of gathering, writing, and editing news.

JOURN 102AC The Wire: When Journalism Meets Drama 3 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2013, Fall 2012, Spring 2012
The goal of the class is to make students aware of how the issues of crime, policing, and identity are framed and mediated through television, as well as through conventional journalism. The class will explore the relationship between real crime, popular fiction, and television, specifically The Wire.

JOURN C103 Edible Education: Telling Stories About Food and Agriculture 2 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2013, Fall 2012
As the costs of our industrialized food system become impossible to ignore, a national debate over the future of food and farming has begun. Telling stories about where food comes from, how it is produced (and might be produced differently) plays a critical role in bringing attention to the issues and shifting politics. Each week a prominent figure in this debate explores what can be done to make the food system healthier more equitable, more sustainable, and the role of storytelling in the process.

JOURN 110 Introduction to Multimedia 3 Units

Terms offered: Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2016 10 Week Session, Summer 2016 First 6 Week Session
What’s it like to tell stories using a variety of different media? Competence in the use of new journalistic tools and the skill to shape content for rapidly changing formats are both essential for any communicator in the 21st century. This intensive introductory course is designed to teach foundational skills for students who have minimal or no experience in creating multimedia news packages. Using lectures, readings, discussions, guest speakers, and field work, we will guide students through an exploration of the elements and forms of multimedia storytelling, and teach skills in newsgathering and story production.

JOURN 111 Social Media and Journalism 3 Units

Terms offered: Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2016 10 Week Session, Summer 2016 Second 6 Week Session
This course will help students understand and use social media for journalistic purposes by focusing on how social networks, conversational media, and associated digital media tools and platforms can be used to develop new sources, establish beneficial conversations with end users, identify story ideas and trends, aggregate and curate the work of other journalists, and promote their own work.

JOURN 115 Advanced Multimedia 3 Units

Terms offered: Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2016 10 Week Session, Summer 2016 Second 6 Week Session
Instruction begins with how to properly approach a news assignment for online publication, specifically how to choose which media form—video, audio, photo, graphics, or text—is best for telling a particular type of story or different segments of a story. Students also learn how to storyboard an assignment by breaking a story up into its component parts and deciding which type of media should be used to tell each part of the story. This is followed by lessons on capturing video, photo, and audio; proper technique; and working with news subjects.

JOURN 120 Investigative Reporting 3 Units

Terms offered: Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2016 10 Week Session, Summer 2016 Second 6 Week Session
Whether it’s matters of national security, public health, or official misconduct, investigative reporters play a crucial role in a democracy, exposing events, realities and conditions that powerful interests would often prefer kept quiet. The best investigative reporters – such as Woodward and Bernstein, Seymour Hersh, Glenn Greenwald – change the way we think about the world.
The objective of this course is to teach students the basic tools and techniques used in investigative reporting. We will explore how to find sources, obtain public records, and craft enterprising reporting into compelling stories that go behind the curtain of public life.

JOURN 130 Specialty Reporting 3 Units

Terms offered: Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session, Summer 2016 10 Week Session, Summer 2016 Second 6 Week Session
This course provides background and techniques for students interested in developing their journalistic skills at covering a single beat. The course will explore the concepts and methods used by beat journalists to write stories that go deeper than general reporting--including source development, understanding key issues, debates and institutions, and parsing official documents. The course will launch with The Good the Bad and the Ugly of American Business. (In subsequent years, at the discretion of the J-School Dean, Specialty Reporting may shift its focus to other news beats.)

JOURN 134 International Reporting 3 Units

Terms offered: Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session
In a globalizing world local stories often become international ones. From politics to financial markets to terrorism and climate change, a more closely connected world often means critical issues do not stay put. Events in Russia, China, Iran and Germany regularly occupy headlines in the U.S. Journalists covering foreign lands now face new levels of complexity in their work. Competent reporting demands a high levels of skill: a broad awareness of global trends, an ability to develop reliable sources, and a keen understanding of how different communities respond to the forces affecting their lives.

JOURN C141 Understanding Journalism 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
In this course, students learn why sound journalism is so important to a healthy, working democracy. Journalism is rapidly changing. The class will give a context to those changes and provide an overview of comtemporary journalistic institutions. Students will examine how news is made, who decides what news is, who makes it, who profits by it, and what rules guide how reporters and editors work. Central issues affecting journalism, such as bias and professionalism, will be discussed. The class is not specifically intended for future journalists, but students will learn why pursuing a career in journalism can be so fulfilling and thrilling, as well as becoming better consumers of the news.

JOURN 197 Field Study in Journalism 1 - 2 Units

Terms offered: Summer 2017 8 Week Session, Summer 2016 8 Week Session, Fall 2015
Supervised experience in the practice of journalism in off-campus organizations. Individual meetings with faculty sponsor and written reports required. See Additional Information, "Field Study and Internships."

JOURN 198 Directed Group Study in Journalism 1 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2017

JOURN 199 Supervised Individual Study and Research 1 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
Enrollment restrictions apply; see department.

JOURN 200 Reporting the News 5 - 7 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
This course is an intensive 15-week research and workshop experience. It provides the foundation for the rest of the curriculum offered at the J-School. 200 Stresses hard news reporting, writing, and editing. In small classes faculty members with extensive experience in newspaper reporting work to develop the scope and quality of the reporting and writing ability of their students. The researching, reporting, rewriting, and editing schedule is extensive and students work on a range of stories covering a broad spectrum of subjects. The aim is to produce professional level work--publishable newspaper stories--in an environment and timeline similar to a professional environment.

JOURN 201 Advanced News Reporting 3 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
Advanced study of reporting in more complex subject areas and more sophisticated writing styles.

JOURN 209 Multimedia Reporting Bootcamp 1 Unit

Terms offered: Fall 2015, Fall 2014, Fall 2013
This is a required one-week intensive multimedia training workshop at the beginning of the fall semester to equip all first-year graduate journalism students with basic knowledge of digital storytelling techniques as well as the use of multimedia equipment and editing software to produce multimedia content. The objective is to train all students—regardless of their planned area of specialty—with some foundational digital skills to be applied during their reporting for the school’s local online news sites in the J200 Intro To Reporting class. The concepts and skills taught during the workshop also will be reaffirmed and expanded over the semester in the Multimedia Skills class.

JOURN 210 News Photography 2 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Fundamentals of photography and taking news photography.

JOURN 211 News Reporting Laboratory 2 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
This course is an intensive laboratory course taken in conjunction with our core reporting class, 200. It is designed to simulate as closely as possible the deadline and production pressures of a modern, multi-media news organization. Students report to the newsroom during the week to receive their reporting assignments. Print, audio, and video elements are gathered, produced, edited, rewritten as necessary and then made available to pre-selected media outlets for publication. Each section will produce a themed final project.

JOURN 212 Advanced Radio 1 - 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Radio students may continue to develop their news and production skills in several formats: (1) the reporting and production of the weekly "Inside Oakland" program (broadcast on KALX-FM). Each episode explores a specific theme with focus on the geographic, cultural, and political entity known as Oakland; (2) the collaborative production of a documentary program focusing on a particular topic; (3) the development and production of independent long-form pieces for broadcast on different outlets.

JOURN 213 Documentary Photography 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
An exploration of magazine photography as applied to photo essay, day assignments and book projects, as well as content based lectures (location lighting, environmental portraiture, etc.) and critiques. Students work on in-depth assignments that include research, reporting, and photographing. Legal/ethical and business issues are explored, including fund-raising and grant writing to support extended projects.

JOURN 215 Multimedia Skills 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
This class teaches the fundamentals of using digital video, audio, and photo equipment, as well as editing digital files. The class is designed to expose students to what it is like to report in a multimedia environment. While primarily for students taking new media publishing courses, the class will be valuable to any student who wants to better prepare for the emerging convergence of broadcast, print, and web media.

JOURN 216 Multimedia Reporting 2 or 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
For journalists, the World Wide Web opens a powerful way to tell stories by combining text, video, audio, still photos, graphics, and interactivity. Students learn multimedia-reporting basics, how the web is changing journalism, and its relationship to democracy and community. Students use storyboarding techniques to construct nonlinear stories; they research, report, edit, and assemble two story projects.

JOURN 217 Introduction to Visual Journalism 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2014, Fall 2013
"Visual Journalism" explores narratives as they are designed, produced, and consumed in various digital forms. This course serves as your introduction to visual journalism. There is no question that the modern journalist requires a platform-agnostic mindset, along with a broad set of multi-platform newsgathering skills and fluency in the current tools while also upholding the timeless journalistic standards of news judgment, accuracy, fairness and truth.

JOURN 219 Mini-Special Topics 1 Unit

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
A four- to six-week intensive workshop mini-course designed to accompany and enhance other courses in the program. Workshop topics vary from semester to semester, but have included Using the Flash Animation Program, Audio Editing with ProTools, Designing Web Databases, Dynamic Web Page Design, and Using Geographic Information System Programs.

JOURN 220 Coding For Journalists 2 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Fall 2015
This course is an introduction to programming concepts as they relate to the journalism industry. The goal of this course is to equip students with a foundational technical literacy to construct interactive online stories such as data visualizations, infographics, maps, multimedia packages, games or innumerable other types of projects students may conceive.

JOURN 221 Introduction to Data Visualization 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
This weekly three-hour course will explore the skills needed to find, clean, analyze and visualize data. The class consists of two hours of instruction and one hour of supervised lab time working on directed projects. Students will create a final project suitable for publication. The focus will be on free and open source tools that can immediately be applied to other projects and professional work.

JOURN 222 Building Interactive Digital News Packages 3 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016
This class teaches students how to develop interactive online news packages using best practices in design and web development. The course focuses on story structure and production of content and will cover the following topics:

Best practices in developing interactive multimedia stories online;
Design fundamentals and typography for online content;
HTML and CSS for designing and constructing web projects;
jQuery coding for adding interactivity to online content.

JOURN 223 New Media Visuals 3 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
"Visual journalism" explores narratives as they are designed, produced, and consumed in various digital forms. Students will have the opportunity to explore various digital technologies, create and produce narratives, and analyze stories in digital forms. DSLR video narrative, animated visual explainers, data visualization design will all be explored and will serve as the primary areas of inquiry for this project-driven course.

JOURN 226 Science Reporting 3 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
Advanced study of methods of reporting developments in such fields as science, education, health, or the environment.

JOURN 228 Political Reporting 3 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Fall 2014
Study and discussion of politics and practice in reporting political events and campaigns.

JOURN 230 Business Reporting 3 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2015, Spring 2014
Reporting and writing of business, financial, and consumer affairs.

JOURN 234 International Reporting 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2015, Spring 2014, Spring 2013
This course is designed for students who are interested in foreign reporting. Course will include a broad overview of the issues that need to be researched when reporting on the politics, economics, and social issues of a foreign country. Past classes have traveled to Mexico, China, Cuba, Hungary, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru.

JOURN 237 Reporting on Japan 1 or 2 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2016, Spring 2011, Spring 2010
Each semester, this course will focus on a different aspect of Japan. Among other topics, the class may discuss Japan's changing cultural standards or its developing social problems, its political shifts or its history, the changing economy or the shifts in its regional relations and its global role. Through guest speakers--including noted experts, writers, businessmen, and diplomats--and roundtable discussions, students will develop a greater knowledge of the country for use when reporting.

JOURN 242 Profiles 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
In this workshop students use the profile form to develop a variety of skills that may be helpful whenever undertaking an ambitious story: figuring out what the story is and why you are writing it; interviewing; observation; background reporting; structuring material; finding your voice; describing people without resorting to cliche; crafting a lead from what seems an infinite number of possibilities. Readings will be from great magazine and newspaper profile writers.

JOURN 243 Long-Form Writing 3 or 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
This class will trace the process of writing long-form pieces: how writers choose their sources, gather information, organize their material, and decide whether or not to believe what people tell them. Students will act as an editorial board for each other. Readings include profiles, books and book excerpts, Pulitizer-winning newspaper features, and magazine pieces from a variety of outlets. All assignments are intended for publication.

JOURN 254 Opinion Writing 2 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2014, Fall 2013, Spring 2013
The reporting, writing, and editing of newspaper editorials and op-ed essays.

JOURN 255 Law and Ethics 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
The first eight weeks will concentrate on First Amendment and media law, including libel and slander, privacy, free press/fair trial conflicts, and litigation arising from controversial reporting methods. The closing weeks will focus on ethical dilemmas faced by reporters and editors. Using case studies, readings and guest lecturers, the course examines the murkier conflicts that don't necessarily make it to court but nevertheless force difficult newsroom decision-making.

JOURN 260 Investigative Reporting for TV and Print 2 or 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Students will be required to investigate leads that are received by the faculty, and prepare briefing papers for the class to introduce guest speakers. They will work on researching and reporting assignments related to documentary productions and print stories for different outlets. "Sources," people with informtion critical to developing a story, need to be developed. The responsibilites of a reporter engaged in developing sourses will be a constant theme of the seminar.

JOURN 275 Radio News Reporting 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Study of techniques, practices, and methods of gathering and writing radio news. Students will produce weekly live radio news programs. Enrollment is limited to 15.

JOURN 282 Introduction to Visual Journalism 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Fall 2016, Fall 2015
Study of the history and institutions of broadcast journalism (nine weeks), practice, techniques of reporting news for radio and television.

JOURN 283 Reporting for Television 5 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
Producing, directing, writing, and videotaping of live weekly television news program.

JOURN 284 Documentary Production 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Production of television documentary news programs.

JOURN 285 Advanced Television Reporting: Longform Television 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Reporting and production of television news magazine stories and programs.

JOURN 286 History of Documentary 3 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2017, Spring 2016, Spring 2015
This course covers the evolution of American documentary film from 1920 to the present, with special attention to independent productions and documentaries for network television. In the works of Fred Wiseman, Henry Hampton, Lourdes Portillo, Errol Morris, Marlon Riggs, Barbara Kopple, Orlando Bagwell, the Maysles, and the network staff producers, we look at the practical problems of making documentaries for a mass audience. (Required for J-School students who are considering specializing in documentary.)

JOURN 287 Inside <Frontline> 1 or 2 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2012, Spring 2011, Spring 2010
This seminar course provides students with the opportunity to meet with and discuss projects with producers and reporters. Each session will focus on a single documentary episode and take an in-depth look on the development of the story out of an idea, the journalistic approach and methods used by the team, the process of finding and creating the appropriate dramatic structure, and the public impact and critique of the program.

JOURN 290 Editing Workshop 2 or 3 Units

Terms offered: Spring 2012, Fall 2011, Spring 2011
It can take a lifetime of writing to learn how to critique and revise your work. Hard as writing can be, rewriting -- breaking back into your own framework, rethinking, re-imagining, and revising -- can be harder yet. Sometimes only an editor can help you gain the distance needed to view your work. No matter how good a journalist you may be, an editor can help you reach another stage in your writing process.

JOURN 294 Master's Project Seminar 1 - 2 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Summer 2017 8 Week Session, Spring 2017
Group meetings plus individual tutorials. Methods of research, organization, and preparation of professional thesis projects. Required of M.J. candidates working on thesis projects during both Fall and Spring semesters.

JOURN 297 Field Study in Journalism 1 - 2 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Summer 2017 8 Week Session, Spring 2017
Supervised experience in the practice of journalism in off-campus organizations. Individual meeting with faculty sponsor and written reports required. See Additional Information, "Field Study and Internships."

JOURN 298 Group Study - Special Topics 2 - 4 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Summer 2017 8 Week Session, Spring 2017
Specialized seminar topics in reporting and writing.

JOURN 299 Individual Study 1 - 3 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Summer 2017 Second 6 Week Session, Spring 2017
Supervised individual study and research.

JOURN 601 Individual Study for Master's Students 1 - 8 Units

Terms offered: Fall 2017, Spring 2017, Fall 2016
Individual preparation or study in consultation with faculty adviser. Study ultimately leads to the completion of the Master's Project/Examination. Units may not be used to meet either unit or residence requirements for a master's degree.

Back to Top