As the director of the USC Annenberg School of Journalism, I’d like to introduce OJR readers to our Master’s Programs in Specialized Journalism.
These are not your typical journalism M.A. programs. (Though we also have an excellent one of those.) In this innovative nine-month program, we have a different aim: As journalism is reinventing itself, we are reinventing the journalism academy, here in this incomparable learning laboratory of the future, Los Angeles.
Consequently, your fellow students will be atypical, as well. The remarkably interesting group we assemble each year brings artists and arts journalists of every stripe together with journalists eager to go deep into science, demographics, education, religion and a feast of other disciplines. Their work has appeared in the legacy media as well as Neon Tommy, Huffington Post and other online sites.
You will design your own curriculum, ranging across the offerings of this vibrant and richly interdisciplinary University. Along the way, we throw in some key enhancements: The updates in digital skills and social networking, an entrepreneurial mindset and a sense of the emerging lay of the journalistic land that will equip you to be a leader in journalism’s reinvention. As online journalists, you have a head start on this journey. Together, we’ll proceed further.
We have hired some of the best minds in the new-media world and melded them with our distinguished journalism faculty. And all of this exists within the exciting environment of a full-service School of Communication and Journalism that values the creation of new knowledge about this age-old craft we call journalism, as well as the many different ways we can now serve the public’s information needs. And, assuming you can carve out the time, you can participate in Annenberg’s news outlets on every platform and take advantage of the unparalleled diversity of experiences that Southern California offers.
I surely hope you will consider joining us here at Annenberg, where journalism’s future is looking brighter every day. Please visit our website for application guidelines.
About Geneva Overholser
With a bevvy of cutting edge and established journalism professionals there to guide us at several different junctures, we have been given some invaluable tools to attack full-on this new world of reporting and presenting (in my case) the arts.
Robert Niles (the guy behind OJR) has even been in to look over our online proposals, even though many of us are still working out our own comfort zone with new technologies. At each stage, we’ve had excellent instruction and have expanded our respective skill sets because of that attention.
I can’t say enough about the program.
Annenberg is truly driven by the innovative bent to which it aspires, and Geneva, you have reminded me that – contrary to the Chicken Littles – this is indeed a good time to be a journalist. Even a “legacy” journalist! (which I’m not)…because quality and ethics will never be replaced by quantitative ubiquity.
Jarkin