The Daily Plan-it / Dean of Students Blog, Columbia J-school :: June

MEMO: Student Calendars

Filed under: Greatest hits, Holidays/Holy Days, Calendars

Please use our Google Calendar to help you track various Deans and Career Services events as well as all-class events.

[Separately, see our listing of Spring and Fall all-class lectures; more to come soon.]

OFFICIAL J-SCHOOL MASTER STUDENT CALENDAR
You can access it here or use this button to get the calendar for your own Google Calendar:
SPJ
CALENDAR (SPJ events + suggested events):
You can access it here or use this button to get the calendar for your own Google Calendar:

Suggestions for the SPJ Calendar to Rebecca Castillo, rc73; or Duy Linh Tu dnt3

NON-GOOGLE ACADEMIC CALENDAR:

THE ACADEMIC CALENDAR (semester start dates, holidays, etc).
You can always find links to all of the calendars mentioned above by going to the main J-School page, going to Events, and clicking on Calendars.

Questions to dos@jrn.columbia.edu

SOME GOOGLE CALENDAR TIPS: StopDesign, Jim’sTips, LifeHack.org.

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MEMO: Suggested Reading List

Filed under: Part-time Students, Orientation, Major memos, M.S. Program, FAQ, Greatest hits, Newly-admitted students, Preparing for the School

SUGGESTED READING LIST for M.S. STUDENTS

To help you to develop an understanding of New York City and its issues, past and present, the faculty recommends the following books and Web sites. The list is long, (although by no means exhaustive) and we don’t expect you to read every title on it. However, we do ask that you familiarize yourself with “The Power Broker,” Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of master planner Robert Moses.

In addition, we suggest that you select an anthology or two, a couple of the classics (fiction and/or nonfiction), and several titles in subject areas that interest you journalistically. If you’re an aspiring education writer, for instance, you might want to read the books listed under “Education.”

Lastly, you should get into the habit of reading at least a couple of New York newspapers every day – if you live outside the metropolitan area, you can read them online – and also checking the Web sites of some of the local broadcast stations. This will not only acquaint you with the city that will serve as your laboratory during the time that you’re here, but also with the journalism that is going on here – and the media outlets to which you may wish to eventually pitch your stories.

Recommended reading:

Robert Caro: “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York” (New York: Knopf, 1974)

Classic non-fiction books about New York:

EB White: “Here is New York” (Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York, 1949)
Meyer Berger: “The Eight Million: Journal of a New York Correspondent” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1942)
A.J. Liebling: “Back Where I Came From” (North Point Press, 1990)
Willie Morris: “New York Days” (Little, Brown, 1993)

Classic novels about New York:

Betty Smith: “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” (Harper & Row, 1943)
Tom Wolfe: “The Bonfire of the Vanities” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 1988)
Pete Hamill: “Snow in August” (Little Brown, 1997)
Bel Kaufman: “Up the Down Staircase” (Prentice-Hall, 1964)

Anthologies:

Dan Barry: “City Lights: Stories About New York” (St. Martin’s Press, 2007)
David Remnick (ed): “Wonderful Town: New York Stories from the New Yorker” (Simon & Schuster, 2007)
Phillip Lopate: “Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan” (Anchor, 2004)
Connie Rosenblum (ed.): “New York Stories: The Best of the City Section of the New York Times” (NYU Press, 2005)
Pete Hamill: Piecework: “Writings on Men & Women, Fools and Heroes, Lost Cities, Vanished Calamities and How the Weather Was” (Little, Brown, 1996)

9/11:

David Halberstam: “Firehouse” (Hyperion, 2002)
Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins: “Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11” (HarperCollins, 2006)
Tram Nguyen: “We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities after 9/11” (Beacon Press, 2005)

Criminal Justice:

Greg Donaldson: “The Ville” (Ticknor & Fields, 1993)
Brian MacDonald: “My Father’s Gun: One Family, Three Badges, One Hundred Years in the NYPD” (Plume, 2000)

Education:

Samuel G. Freedman: “Small Victories: The Real World of a Teacher, Her Students and Their High School” (HarperTrade, 1991)
Alec Klein: “A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America’s Best High Schools” (Simon & Schuster, 2007)
Diane Ravitch: “The Great School Wars of New York City 1805-1973” (Basic Books, 1974)

Immigration:

Joseph Berger: “The World in a City: Traveling the Globe Through the Neighborhoods of the New New York” (Ballantine Books, 2007)
Tram Nguyen: “We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities after 9/11” (Beacon Press, 2005)

Media:

Kate Darnton, Kayce Freed Jennings and Lynn Sherr (eds.):”Peter Jennings: A Reporter’s Life” (PublicAffairs, 2007)
Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones: “The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times” (Little, Brown, 1999)
Gay Talese: “The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World” (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1969)

Life in New York:

LynNell Hancock: “Hands To Work: The Stories of Three Families Racing the Welfare Clock” (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2002)
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc: “Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx” (Scribner, 2003)
Jim Dwyer: “Subway Lives: 24 Hours in the Life of the New York Subway” (Crown, 1991)

Politics and Business:

Jack Newfield and Wayne Barrett: “City for Sale” (Harper & Row, 1988)
Jim Sleeper: “The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York” (W.W. Norton, 1990)
James B. Stewart: ”Den of Thieves” (Simon & Schuster, 1992)

Race/Ethnicity:

Alex Haley: “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” (Mass Market/Paperback, Reissue 1989)
Jervis Anderson: “This Was Harlem: A Cultural Portrait 1900-1950” (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1991)
Diane Ravitch: “The Great School Wars of New York City 1805-1973” (Basic Books, 1974)
Samuel G. Freedman: “Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church”
Jim Sleeper: “The Closest of Strangers: Liberalism and the Politics of Race in New York” (W.W. Norton, 1990)

Religion:

Lis Harris: “Holy Days: The World of the Hasidic Family” (Summit Books, 1985)
Samuel G. Freedman: “Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church” (HarperCollins, 1994)

Sports:

Michael Shapiro: “The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers and Their Final Pennant Race Together” (Doubleday, 2003)
Jimmy Breslin: “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? The Improbable Saga of the New York Mets’ First Year” (Viking, 1963)

Technology & Media:

Henry Jenkins: “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide” (NYU, 2008)
Clay Shirky: “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” (Penguin Press, 2008)
Andrew Lih: “The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World’s Greatest Encyclopedia” (Hyperion, 2009)

City sites:

Online & Print Media:

Broadcast media:

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MEMO: Fall 2009 Welcome Letter - Part-time Students

Filed under: Part-time Students, Newly-admitted students, Calendars

FOR PART-TIME M.S. STUDENTS.

A letter from Bill Grueskin, Dean of Academic Affairs.

Dear part-time students,

Welcome, or welcome back, to the Graduate School of Journalism! You are about to embark on one of the most challenging periods of your life. In the upcoming months, you will be expected to learn and hone the reporting, writing and editing skills that form the bedrock of incisive journalism, while also developing the technological acumen you’ll need to advance our profession in a time of unparalleled change.

But before I get into the details, I want to offer the new students a word of congratulations. We were honored with the largest applicant pool ever last winter. You were admitted to this school after at least two, and often three or four, faculty and staff members read your essays, tests, transcript and clips. The fact that you made it here in this competitive year means that we have great confidence in your ability to succeed at Columbia and beyond.

All of you also have our admiration. This is a tumultuous time in journalism as the business models that have supported most news organizations are facing huge challenges. Despite that, it is clear that you share our confidence that new models will emerge, and that for those with creativity and courage, this is a time of tremendous opportunity for reporters to practice and distribute journalism in new and exciting ways.

Finally, the faculty and staff of this school believe, as we expect you do, that journalism is integral to a free, open and vital democracy. We want you to learn not just skills but values, not just techniques but the understanding of how a dynamic press fuels the transparency our society needs.

The letter below will give you vital information on how the school year proceeds, what our expectations are of you, and what you can expect from us. Please read it carefully.

HOW THE SCHOOL IS ORGANIZED:

Several departments at the school will affect your life here.

The Dean of Students Office will handle most of your day-to-day needs. This department, run by Prof. Sree Sreenivasan and Assistant Dean of Students Melanie Huff, includes admissions, financial aid and career services. Obviously, you’ve already run the gauntlet with the admissions department. If you have questions or concerns about your financial aid, you should contact The Office of Admission and Financial Aid in Room 203.

You will be dealing quite a bit with both Dean Huff and with Elena Cabral, an adjunct professor who also serves as interim director of the part-time program. Prof. Cabral is a graduate of the part-time program and an experienced journalist; she can advise you on curriculum and scheduling issues. Dean Huff oversees the balloting process for courses and also plays a vital role in helping students understand course points, navigate relationships with other schools at Columbia, and deal with school and university policies.

As the year progresses, you will hear more from Career Services, led by Ernest Sotomayor. This department is in close contact with employers and will help guide you through the process of identifying and qualifying for opportunities after you graduate.

The Academic Affairs Office oversees the school’s curriculum, hiring of adjuncts and placement of faculty in courses. I am the academic dean, and am assisted by Prof. Laura Muha, who is assistant dean for faculty affairs. While most of the decisions for the fall curriculum have already been made, we welcome student input into the lineup for the spring.

The Technology Office, overseen by Larry Fried, handles issues associated with checkout and upkeep of our cameras, recorders and computers.

You may at some point come into contact with other assistant deans here, including Sheila Thimba, who oversees administration and budget; Elizabeth Fishman, who handles communications; Susan Shine, who oversees development; and Arlene Morgan, head of prizes and programs.

Finally, there’s Nicholas Lemann, the dean of this school. He is an accomplished journalist and author, and is also an instructor, teaching classes for M.A. and M.S. students and, like the rest of us, advising master’s projects and theses.

FALL SCHEDULE:

The fall semester officially begins Sept. 8, 2009, or the day after Labor Day. Please note that not all classes begin at this time; most RWIIs (electives) and a few others begin in mid-October.

One of the more significant changes in the curriculum this year affects our full-time M.S. students, and some (but not all) part-time students. In the place of the Critical Issues class (which combines history and ethics) and the Law class, which were each two points, we are offering one-point classes in Law, History, Ethics and Business of Journalism. Full-time students will take two of those classes in the first half of the Fall semester and two courses in the second half; the order of how those classes are taken will be randomly assigned by the Dean of Students Office. Those classes will be offered in the mornings and afternoons on Fridays.

Part-time students who haven’t taken Law or Critical Issues are welcome to join full-time students in those Friday classes. Or, they can take the traditional Law or Critical Issues classes which will be offered on weeknights in the fall.

Please use this link to review the M.S. graduation requirements and the semesters in which specific types of classes are offered.

CHANGES IN CONCENTRATION: Students occasionally ask to switch their medium of concentration. Because there are equipment and lab demands associated with each concentration – particularly broadcast and digital media – we are only rarely able to accommodate that. Any such request should go to Assistant Dean Huff. (Please note: We’ve changed the name of the New Media concentration to Digital Media.)

REGISTERING FOR CLASSES: You do not register yourself for classes; we do that for you. We do, however, ask you to let us know your preferences via an online ballot which will be available from 10 a.m. July 6 to July 13. Not every student will get every first choice, as some classes are oversubscribed. We do promise, however, that we will do our best, as long as you fill out the correct ballot for your concentration and submit it by 10 a.m. on July 13. If you fail to do so, you will be assigned to classes on a space-available basis.

Here are the steps for making your selections:

Look over the fall course offerings, available online here. You can read students’ evaluations of many of the classes and professors here. You will first need to have activated your Columbia email account.

On July 6, we will post a link to the fall ballot on the Dean of Students Blog.

Click on the ballot for your concentration, fill it out and submit it by 10 a.m. on July 13. The balloting process is not first-come, first-served; as long as you fill out the correct ballot and submit it by the deadline, you will be given equal consideration for all classes. Please note that you do not ballot for RW1, Master’s Project, law, ethics, history or business of journalism, or for any skills classes and/or electives dictated by your area of concentration. We automatically place you in those classes.

If you want to be considered for Prof. Judith Crist’s Personal and Professional Style elective, you must submit writing samples along with your ballot. These can be sent in the body of an e-mail – not as an attachment – to Assistant Dean Huff at dos@jrn.columbia.edu. The deadline is 10 a.m., July 13. Please indicate in the subject line that the clips are for Prof. Crist’s class.

ADDING OR DROPPING CLASSES: You may request to change one or more of your classes during the official add/drop period each semester. The add/drop period for Fall 2010 begins at 10 a.m. on Aug. 24 and ends at 10 a.m. on Sept. 18.

During this time, a link to the add/drop form will be available on the Dean of Students Blog. On each form, you may request to add one class and drop one class. All add-drop requests are processed on a first-come, first-served basis. We stress that they are only requests; there is no guarantee that we can accommodate them. It is particularly difficult for us to change RW1 classes or Master’s Project advisers.

We do not send e-mails approving or rejecting requests for schedule changes. You must keep checking your class schedule on the web at Student Services Online. Sometimes it takes days for a space to open in a class. Sometimes a space never opens. Until you see a change reflected on your class schedule there, your request has not been approved. All requests remain on file during the add/drop period.

OUTSIDE CLASSES: In lieu of one of your required journalism electives, you are eligible to take a 4-point language course or a 3-point elective in another division within the university. To do so, you must do the following:

Fill out the J-School’s Fall 2009 ballot as if you were taking all of your classes within the J-School, since cross-registrations aren’t always possible.
Identify a graduate-level class (4000+) that meshes with your proposed J-School schedule and is justifiable in light of your journalistic goals. You can look up courses here.
After your Journalism course assignments have been posted in Student Services Online, send an e-mail to dos@jrn.columbia.edu asking to replace your elective with the outside class. You must include the class name, course number, professor, number of points, and a description of how it will help you to achieve your professional objectives. Note: The meeting time of the outside course must fit within your J-School course schedule. We can’t adjust your J-School schedule to accommodate an outside class.
Once the Dean of Students Office has approved your request to take the outside class, you must fill out the M.S. approval form and get it approved by the outside division (dean or professor).
Once you have done this, give the form to Assistant Dean Huff, and she will register you for the course. Please note that for Fall 2009, this must be completed between 10 a.m. Aug. 24 and ends at 10 a.m. on Sept. 18.

INTERNSHIPS: Students sometimes ask about doing internships during their time at the J-School. While this is not forbidden, it is highly discouraged during the fall semester and cautiously encouraged in the spring, because we feel your studies come first. Our curriculum is intense and demanding, and we find that students often underestimate the amount of time that it will take to complete their coursework.

That said, some students do juggle internships and schoolwork successfully. If you are interested in an internship, please let Career Services know early in the fall; that office can help you identify appropriate opportunities and hone your applications.

Please note that if you wish to receive credit for an internship – and many media companies that offer internships require this – your RW1 professor must confirm to Career Services that you will be able to handle both internship and coursework. More information on internships is available via the internship link on our Career Services page.

AUDITING CLASSES: Students may audit classes in which they are not formally enrolled as long as the instructor agrees. Please keep in mind that most instructors expect student auditors to attend all classes and participate in all discussions. In addition, university regulations prohibit the instructor from editing or grading your work unless you’re formally enrolled as a student in the class. So before you approach an instructor for permission to audit, think about your workload, especially since you won’t have the benefit of formal feedback from the instructor.

GRADES: The journalism school has a pass-fail system of grading, which is designed to encourage you to do your best here without making you feel as if you’re competing with your classmates. To give you a sense of your progress, you’ll receive a written evaluation from most of your instructors at the end of each term; in RW1, you’ll also receive a written midterm evaluation.

If at any point during the semester, an instructor feels you are not doing passing work, he or she will inform the Dean of Students Office, which will issue you a letter placing you on warning or, in more serious cases, on probation. The letter also will describe what you must do in order to be removed from disciplinary status. If you have not met the conditions of the probation letter by the end of the semester, you will not be permitted to register for the following semester’s classes or to graduate.

On the other side of the curve, an instructor who judges your work to be superior can choose to pass you with “honors in class,” a designation that is taken into account when considering graduation prizes.

Copies of all evaluations, honors designations, warnings and probation letters are kept on file in the Dean of Students Office.

GRADUATION REQUIREMENTS: To graduate, you must complete all required courses, accumulate at least 33 points and pass the four “core” courses in the curriculum: RW1, the Master’s Project, along with two courses usually taken in the spring, the Reporting/Writing Seminar and the Media Workshop. A student who fails any two courses, or the same course twice, will be dismissed. In addition, the faculty reserves the right to withhold a degree from any student deemed unworthy because of poor performance or unprofessional behavior.

CAUSES FOR DISMISSAL: Faking a story, making up quotes or plagiarizing constitutes grounds for instant dismissal. Students are not allowed to use work they do in one course for another course without the written permission of instructors in both courses.

E-MAIL: When we received your enrollment fee and you were logged into the university system, you were assigned a UNI (short for “university network identifier”), which consists of your initials plus an arbitrarily assigned number.

To activate your UNI, go to http://uni.columbia.edu/

Once your UNI is active, you can log into your Columbia e-mail here. (Your e-mail address is your UNI plus “@columbia.edu”; however, when entering your UNI into the system as a login, leave off the “@columbia.edu” and enter only the letter-number combination.)

All official communications from the J-School and the university will be sent to your Columbia e-mail address; if you wish them to go to another e-mail, you can set up your Columbia account to forward your messages electronically.

TUITION: Your tuition bills are issued by and paid directly to the university, not the journalism school. The university will send you an electronic statement at the beginning of each semester; you can also access it through the Student Services Online link on the university’s website. There is no need to worry if you have not received a tuition bill yet; the university tells us they won’t go out until Aug. 10, with payment coming due on Sept. 17.. Information on payment options, plus access to your online account, can be found here.

TECHNOLOGY: You can expect to use both a digital camera and a digital audio recorder while reporting stories for class and for our main student web site, http://columbiajournalist.org. We have this equipment on hand, so it is by no means mandatory for you to purchase your own; however, many students wish to do so. If you are considering this, please take a look at our technology guide for incoming students, where you’ll find suggestions for affordable equipment that interfaces smoothly with the rest of our technology. The guide also includes information on computers and laptops, as well as vendors who give discounts to our students.

DEAN OF STUDENTS BLOG: For one-stop access to information about all aspects of student life at the J-School, check out the Daily Plan-It, a blog published by the Students Affairs Office. On the blog, you’ll find special-event announcements; links to upcoming (and archived) chats and webcasts; transcripts of talks by guest speakers; housing resources; financial-aid information; technology resources; and links to the official school calendars – to list just a small portion of the information you’ll find here. Get into the habit of checking the blog regularly; in particular, we recommend that you read the “Prepping for the J-School” section on the blog.

ACADEMIC & EVENTS CALENDAR: For quick reference, here is a link to the page through which you can access (and import) the J-School’s master calendar.

SOCIAL LIFE: The Society of Professional Journalists, our student organization, organizes a wide variety of social activities, from movie nights and Friday happy hours to the annual Halloween party and the end-of-term faculty roast. Elections for SPJ officers are held in September. The 2009-2010 SPJ adviser is Prof. Duy Linh Tu.

CLASS OF ‘10 FACEBOOK PAGE: Interested in getting to know some of your classmates before you arrive on campus? Join the Class of ’10 Facebook group

SUMMER READING: New York City will serve as your journalistic laboratory for the next 10 months, and the more you know about its history and dynamics, the better prepared you will be to cover it. To that end, we recommend that you choose some additional titles and websites of your choice from this list recommended by the faculty.

MISCELLANEOUS THINGS TO DO BEFORE ARRIVING ON CAMPUS:

Fill out the Journalism School Emergency Contact Form: http://fs8.formsite.com/cjdos/Emergency/
Record your meningococcal meningitis vaccination decision at: https://ssol.columbia.edu/ssv/crt/menIntro.html
Complete a measles, mumps and rubella record and submit it to Health Services: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/studentservices/newstudents/docs/MMR/index.html
Register your mobile number to receive important communications from Columbia University in case of an emergency situation: https://ssol.columbia.edu/?tran[1]_tran_name=seni

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MEMO: Fall 2009 - M.S. Curriculum

Filed under: Part-time Students, Major memos, M.S. Program, Registration, Greatest hits, Newly-admitted students, Preparing for the School

FOR FULL-TIME & PART-TIME M.S. STUDENTS.

Fall Term Courses

REPORTING & WRITING (RWI) 6 points
Note: we will assign you to a RWI section and instructors

This is the core course in reporting and writing on which much student work is built. Using metropolitan New York as a laboratory, students cover a variety of news events and issues. Street reporting is supplemented by regular deadline writing exercises under the supervision of the Faculty and by assignments designed to familiarize students with material they will encounter in professional work. Classes will have or share Web sites where student work will be published for the communities they cover.

RWI seeks to blend instruction in the craft and the substance of journalism so students will graduate knowing how to write in an accurate, clear and complete fashion, meet a deadline, gather and verify material, and understand several subject areas that are essential to reporting. They also will learn and use several digital-media techniques and gain experience in incorporating those skills in the reporting and publishing process.

Street Reporting: Instructors will generally give students at least one reporting assignment each week. Some assignments may be stories to be reported and written that day; others may require deeper coverage for an entire day, to be handed in the following day. Later in the term, instructors may ask students to execute longer pieces requiring reporting and writing spanning two or three weeks.

Deadline Writing: Students spend several hours writing in class under deadline conditions, with on-the-spot supervision. Sometimes, students are given material in class from which to write their stories, while other days they must develop their own sources.

Accuracy is essential. Errors in punctuation, spelling and grammar may be grounds for failing a paper. Students will be expected to redo assignments that don’t meet their instructors’ standards.

REPORTING & WRITING FOR BROADCASTING (RWI) 8 credits
Several sections of RWI will be tailored for broadcast students and taught jointly by print and broadcast professors. The course will cover the same print reporting techniques as other sections, plus reporting for radio and television. Because the Jumbo RWI is an eight-credit course, broadcast students DO NOT take an RWII elective.

ESSENTIALS OF JOURNALISM
This program includes four required courses, each half a semester long. Full-time M.S. students will take two the first half and two the second half, in varying order. All courses will be taught in morning and afternoon sessions on Fridays.

Law of Journalism, 1 point
Instructors: Freeman, Karle, Zucker
This course provides students with a practical understanding of legal issues that most affect journalists today. Students will get a basic understanding of the First Amendment, and will move from there to learning about privacy, defamation, libel, fair use of content and copywright, agreements with sources and rules governing liability for journalists whose sources commit crimes or torts. Many of these issues will be addressed within the changing contexts brought on by the Internet.

Business of Journalism, 1 point
Instructors: Grueskin, Klein
This course will give students a basic understanding of the business of gathering and publishing news. Students will learn about the models that have supported print and broadcast outlets, as well as the concentration of media and regulation by government bodies. We will look at the disruption in those models caused by the Web and other factors. Students will learn about new news organizations and business models for stand-alone journalists. At the end, they will be challenged to think, in small groups, about business models for the future.

Ethics of Journalism, 1 point
Instructors: Klatell, Solomon
In this course, students will deal with ethical issues that often arise in the practice of journalism. Those include verification of information, the relationship between your personal morality and journalistic decisions, issues brought up by competition and the ubiquity of news, and the impact the Internet has on forcing decisions within narrow time frames. The class will rely heavily on case studies developed at the Journalism School.

History of Journalism, 1 point
Instructors: Lemann, Schudson, Tucher
How has the role of the journalist changed over the decades? This course will look at the influence of partisanship, technological change and varying definitions of objectivity to examine how journalism has been changed. It will include examination of several key fators, including important court cases, major news events and significant changes in technology, including radio, television and online.

Part-time M.S. students may either take Journalism Essentials on Friday mornings with the full-time students or they may opt to take Critical Issues for two points and Journalism, the Law & Society for two points in the evenings (This fall’s schedule for them is in the section for PT students only at the bottom). Beginning next fall (2010), Journalism Essentials will also be offered in the evenings.

MASTER’S PROJECT
3 points in Fall; 3 points in Spring (6 points for PT students over the summer)

In its scope and duration, the Master’s Project is a student’s most sustained effort. In terms of relative importance, credits and priority, however, it should be kept in perspective with the rest of the curriculum. The Project is not a thesis in the traditional academic sense, but rather an in-depth exploration of a topic as a journalist would pursue it.

Master’s Projects may be executed in print, digital media or broadcast (radio or television) forms. Students work on radio and print projects individually, and students doing video or digital-media projects work with one or two partners. Video documentary projects require an extra semester (see below).

An assigned adviser offers advice in selecting a topic, fixing its focus and working through an approach, conducting the research and doing the reporting, then organizing, writing, rewriting (and re-recording, where appropriate) the various versions.

For those students undertaking the project this academic year (All FT and some PT students), we would like to know from you which type of project they would like to undertake – including the general topic, if you know that now. Students should indicate their preferences, even if they are tentative, on the Fall ballot, since we will attempt to match advisers with students according to their preferences, as much as possible.

Students will begin meeting with their adviser in September, and regularly thereafter, depending on whatever arrangments students and advisers choose.

* Please note that part-time students opting to do their Master’s Project over during the academic year (fall/spring), must be available on Friday afternoons for group meetings.

Master’s Project Requirements
Every student carrying out a project must meet the minimum requirements of 1) a proposal; 2) an early outline; and 3) three drafts or edits. Some variations are permitted at the discretion of advisers. The broadcast (see below) and digital-media faculty have slightly different requirements.

Students must meet with their advisers early during the Fall to develop a topic. That topic must be fixed by Nov. 6. Serious work on the project will proceed during the Fall as well as over the holiday break. A “billboard” or brief description, preliminary outline and list of likely sources must be submitted to advisers Dec. 1. The results of your initial reporting and interviews are due by Dec. 15; your adviser will specify what he/she requires. The first draft is due on Jan. 19, 2009. The second draft is due Feb. 22. The third-and final-draft will be turned in at the end of the Spring break, March 22.

You should stay in close and frequent contact with your adviser, who will explain the school’s expectations and requirements for completion of the project.

Choosing a Topic
Students should consider a topic that is significant, interesting, and feasible and will sustain their interest over months of research. You should choose a topic you find fascinating and complex. You don’t have to already be an expert on the subject; indeed, a good reporter becomes an expert.

For both logistical and educational reasons, the topic must focus on the New York area — that is, the student must collect most of the necessary information, and interview characters in person, in the New York area. You may need to do phone or email interviews, and collect information online, but that should be a lesser part of your overall reporting effort. Projects that need reporting in a foreign country will not be approved. Projects needing substantial reporting outside of the New York region also are discouraged.

Print projects should run between 5,000 and 8,000 words; in rare cases, they may go longer if the material requires it and if the adviser so recommends. With approval of advisers, they can also include online elements, such as slide shows or audio elements. Projects executed in broadcast or digital media vary according to the complexity of the material involved.

If you have a particular area of interest for your project, please indicate that on the ballot due July 13. We will try to match your interest to an appropriate advisor, but can’t guarantee individual choices. And if you don’t have a topic in mind yet, that’s fine. You’ll get plenty of advice when you arrive on how to narrow down your interests.

Required Third Semester for Video Master’s Project
Students who opt to complete a video project must stay for an additional semester — either the summer or fall of 2010 — to complete their work. The faculty believes that high-quality, 30-minute video documentaries need more time than our standard program permits. The proposal and acceptance process for television master’s projects will take place in the Fall semester. If you have any interest in pursuing this, please indicate so on your ballot; you will be able to change your mind later. Approximate extra tuition cost will be $9,000 for the third semester. Scholarship aid is available to help defray that cost if needed.

Master’s Project Reference List
These are highly recommended as examples of the kind of journalism to which the Master’s Project aspires:

Helen Benedict: Portraits in Print (Columbia University Press, 1991)
Joan Didion: Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Washington Square Press, 1991) and The White Album (Simon & Schuster, 1979)
Oriana Fallaci: Interview with History (Houghton Mifflin, 1977)
Frances Fitzgerald: Cities on a Hill (Simon & Schuster, 1986)
Samuel Freedman: Upon This Rock: The Miracles of a Black Church (HarperCollins, 1994)
Pete Hamill: Piecework (Little Brown, 1996)
LynNell Hancock: Hands to Work: The Stories of Three Families Racing the Welfare Clock (William Morrow, 2002)
Randolph T. Holhut: The George Seldes Reader (Barricade Books, 1994)
J. Anthony Lukas: Common Ground (Knopf, 1985)
William Lutz: The New Doublespeak (Harper Collins, 1996)
John McPhee: The John McPhee Reader (Vintage, 1976, originally published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Jessica Mitford: Poison Penmanship (Knopf, 1979)
Sylvia Nasar: A Beautiful Mind (Touchstone, 2001)
Bruce Porter: Blow (St. Martin’s Press, 1994)
Michael Shapiro: Solomon’s Sword: Two Families and the Children the State Took Away (Westview Press, 2002)
In-depth broadcasts such as Frontline, 60 Minutes, All Things Considered, Nightline, and various radio and television documentaries

SPECIALIZED REPORTING/WRITING ELECTIVES (RWII)

3 points
As the title indicates, these 10-week courses focus on specific news beats, such as international reporting or business reporting, or on specific writing techniques, such as feature or profile writing. Faculty assign an average of three writing assignments, along with regular reading assignments, though that varies depending on the class and the instructor. All electives begin in October and include a weekly 2-3 hour class meeting on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or on Saturdays. (Schedules are adjusted for Thanksgiving week.) No classes for full-time students are offered Thursday evenings, because students are invited to attend the School’s all-class lectures and panel discussions. Part-time students are also invited to participate in those sessions.

Specialization is continued and expanded in the spring term in the Advanced Reporting/Writing Seminars. Thus, in the spring students can ballot for a second specialty or ballot to enlarge on one taken in the first term.

Print students will take one of the classes below; digital media students will automatically be registered for a section of Digital Media Newsroom (description below).

The Art of the Profile – John Bennet
Business and Financial Journalism (I) – Mike Miller
Business and Financial Journalism (II) – Tom Herman
Covering National Politics – Thomas Edsall
Covering New York Politics – Wayne Barrett
Cultural Affairs Reporting and Writing – Charles Taylor
Environmental Reporting – Marguerite Holloway
Feature Writing (I) – Karen Stabiner
Feature Writing (II) – Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

Foreign Reporting Off the Beaten Path – Howard French
International Reporting – Tom Kent
News Editing – Robin Reisig
Opinion Writing – Seth Lipsky and Gail Collins
Personal and Professional Style – Judith Crist
Social Impact of Mass Media – Andie Tucher
Writing With Style – Kevin Coyne

RWII: Course descriptions

The Art of the Profile
Instructor: John Bennet,
Mon., 6 to 9 p.m.
This elective offers an in-depth chance to read, study and write profiles. The reading list includes John McPhee, Jane Kramer, Calvin Trillin, Gay Talese, Susan Orlean, Joan Didion and others. Students will write two short profiles and one long one. Your work will be critiqued in class and edited in detail.

Business and Financial Reporting (I)
Instructor: Mike Miller
Tues., 6:30 to 9 p.m.

Business and Financial Reporting (II)
Instructor: Tom Herman
Tues., 6:30-9 p.m.

This course is an introduction to the basic concepts and tools of business reporting, designed for students interested in the field as well as those planning to specialize in other areas. The dynamics of business are at the heart of most journalistic subjects–from politics to culture to sports to foreign affairs–so learning how to make sense of business news and bring it to life are invaluable skills for all journalists. We will study these subjects both through readings, by following and discussing news stories throughout the semester, and by analyzing classic business articles. Our discussion will focus on the different lenses through which business stories can be viewed: people, places, processes (eg how to create a new fast-food product made from Fritos),and numbers (how do they get manipulated, when is it illegal, how does the public find out). Several short features will be assigned, as well as in-class writing exercises. We will cover effective methods for conceiving and pitching stories, identifying and interviewing sources, story structure, and writing. Several class sessions will feature guest speakers from major business and general-interest publications. (A version of this course will likely be repeated in the Spring.)

Covering National Politics
Instructor: Thomas Edsall
Weds., 6-9 p.m.
This course will focus on politics and policy-making in the 2009 session of Congress, looking at political activity through the lens of resource competition at a time of scarcity. The course will examine in detail the partisan forces at work in the drafting, committee work, and ultimate outcome of major pieces of legislation, including the Obama administration’s financial reform agenda and health care reform. Students will write about the progress of legislation, explore interest-group rivalry, and the reasons for the success or failure of legislative initiatives. The course will make use of lobbying and campaign finance reports; will track the activities of trade associations and other stakeholders; observe the actions of members of Congress, constituents, organized pressure groups, the media, and the executive branch.

Covering New York Politics
Instructor: Wayne Barrett
Tuesday 7 - 9 p.m.
Covering New York Politics prepares students to report and write news and feature stories about legislative, congressional and municipal offices, using New York’s 2008 and 2009 elections as a laboratory. The November election gives Democrats the greatest opportunity since 1966 to regain control of the New York State Senate, and students will cover hotly contested senate races in the city and suburbs. In addition, some of the candidates vying to succeed Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2009 will visit the class and become the subjects of class coverage. Races for other city posts—from comptroller to council—will also be examined. Every student will become an expert on one race or candidate, probing donors, vendors, bundlers, associated lobbyists as well as major issues such as campaign tactics and funding of neighborhood support groups. Class guests will include reporters who cover campaigns as well as those who oversee lobbyist and campaign finance systems. Students will be encouraged to post copy on two city newspaper Web sites. In addition to blogs and short news pieces, every student will produce a feature-length story on the race or candidate they select for individual focus and will share their findings with the class.

Cultural Affairs Reporting and Writing
Instructor: Charles Taylor
Mon. 7 to 8 p.m.
This course will help aspiring journalists understand the elements that make up successful, authoritative cultural reporting. Working from a definition of culture that encompasses the arts, politics, and the zeitgeist in general, we will, among other areas, study personality profiles, arts criticism, and the kind of longform literary political criticism that has become orphaned in the era of the sound byte and 24-news cycle. We will focus on developing fresh resonant ideas free of the hype and barely disguised publicity that has come to define too much arts and entertainment — and, sadly, political — coverage in the age of celebrity. There will be three writing assignments: One news-oriented feature, one profile, and one work of criticism. In addition, students will write proposals for all story ideas and present oral pitches for them in class. Rewrites are expected. We will have several guest speakers, including performing artists, writers and editors.

Digital Media Newsroom (I) – Russell Chun & Tom Edsall: Tuesday, 6-9 p.m.
Digital Media Newsroom (II) – Helen Benedict & Duy Linh Tu: Tuesday, 4:30-7:30 p.m.
Digital Media Newsroom (III) – Kenan Davis & Sig Gissler: Wednesday, 6-9 p.m.
Digital Media Newsroom (IV) – Arlene Morgan & Duy Linh Tu: Monday, 6-9 p.m.
Digital Media Newsroom (V) – John Smock & Derrick Henry: Saturday, time TBA
Please note this elective runs 15 weeks rather than 10.
This course will introduce students to multimedia storytelling and newsroom work flow. Using a combination of original reporting as well as building on stories already done for RW1, students will work with several digital-media tools, including web page production; photography and image editing; audio and video editing; blogging; data analysis, etc. This course is an excellent opportunity for students to learn how newsrooms are evolving - combining the best of traditional reporting and editing with the latest new media storytelling techniques. Students will learn to efficiently and effectively apply the technical skills learned in the August training sessions to traditional reporting and writing.
NOTE: This course is mandatory for, and restricted to, digital media majors;

Environmental Reporting
Instructor: Marguerite Holloway
Wed. 6 to 8:30 p.m.
Covering the environment is an increasingly complex and important beat. Through extensive readings, visits with working journalists and scientists, and their own reporting and writing assignments, students taking this class will become familiar with some of the major environmental stories of the day. These will range from the specific concerns of individual communities about clean air and water to national issues—how to balance economic development with the preservation of species and ecosystems, how to wrestle with energy policy, environmental racism and more—to international conflicts over climate change, access to water resources, exploitation of the oceans and many other examples.
Students will also become knowledgeable about the legislation that governs this beat, the complexities of risk assessment and the key challenge of striking a responsible balance by finding sources other than those on the fringe, which can muddy the issues badly.

Feature Writing (I)Instructor: Karen Stabiner
Wed., 6-9 p.m.
Feature writing is a balancing act between assignment and intuition, information and narrative, reporting and the writer’s voice. The category includes everything from a 500-word on-line post to a 5,000-word multi-part series; what matters is that it’s compelling, rich in detail, and definitive. We’ll read good – and not-so-good – examples, analyze the difference, identify potential pitfalls, and hear from writers who excel at the form. You’ll be both writing and reading each other’s work along the way: Exercise counts, in writing as in less sedentary activities.

Feature Writing (II)
Instructor: Christopher Lehmann-Haupt
Mon., 7-9 p.m.
We will devote the semester to reading, discussing, writing, editing and rewriting the kinds of lively, instructive feature stories that appear in the better newspapers, magazines and online publications. The reading and discussion will focus on understanding how exemplary published stories “work”; the writing will comprise original essays in various forms inspired by the readings and discussions; and the editing and rewriting will aim toward achieving professional standards.

Destination Out: Foreign Reporting Off the Beaten Path
Instructor: Howard French
Mon., 6-8 p.m.
Foreign correspondents enjoy an image as the most seasoned and trusted of reporters. This class will take a close look at what happens when reporters are thrust, most often by crisis or emergency, into coverage of places that receive at best only episodic attention from the world’s media, focusing on examples drawn from Africa, Asia and Latin America. It will examine some of the pitfalls working in places that tend to be unfamiliar to reporters and their editors. The aim of the course is nothing short of building the better reporter: people who can ramp up quickly, for sure, but also people who take seriously the need to study history, appreciate the nuances of culture and keep up their guard against cliché and conventional wisdom. Students will be expected to participate in in-depth discussions of weekly readings on individual countries or crises aimed at raising their cultural awareness and appreciation for the use and misuse of history in journalism. Working foreign correspondents will be guests on occasion in the seminar. During the course of the semester, students will be required to write three papers, including two criticisms of current foreign newspaper or magazine coverage and a longer, heavily reported essay on a foreign topic of the student’s choice. For this project, students will be expected to interview.

International Reporting
Instructor: Tom Kent
Mon., 6 to 8 p.m.
This course is an introduction to the techniques and challenges of international reporting for online, print and broadcast media. Main themes include ethics, writing, reporting from dangerous areas, covering the military, career opportunities in the international reporting and ways to engage readers and viewers who may have a slim interest in international affairs. Students will be assigned readings, write three stories of varying length and critique media coverage of current international issues

News Editing
Instructor: Robin Reisig
Tues., 6 to 8:30 p.m.
This course will explain how editors ensure accuracy, fairness, clarity, precision and completeness while keeping an eye on tone and structure. Will also examine the detail work — spelling, punctuation, grammar, style — with an emphasis on how problems in those areas affect meaning and damage credibility. Portions of the course will deal with deciding what is news, and with aspects of presentation (headline writing, photo use), along with an understanding of how the exigencies of the online world affect how stories and posts are edited. Participants will edit stories with an emphasis on reading critically, raising good questions and dealing with reporters in ways that should elicit positive changes in copy.

Opinion Writing
Instructor: Seth Lipsky and Gail Collins
Mon., 6 to 8 p.m.
How to form an opinion — and express it. Taught by Gail Collins and Seth Lipsky, this course will deal with the theory and practice of opinion journalism and will focus on the relationship between good reporting and strong opinion. Students will work on editorials, op-ed columns, and blog posts. The course will explore how to shape an opinion on subjects as diverse as politics, foreign policy, the economy and culture. It will require significant amounts of reading from the giants, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and H.L. Mencken and Mary McGrory, as well as contemporary writers, such as Ross Douthat, Maureen Dowd and Hendrik Hertzberg. The second hour of each class will be an editorial meeting, during which issues will be discussed and assignments will be made for the week. Each student will be expected to produce one opinion piece a week.

Personal and Professional Style Instructor: Judith Crist
Tues., 1:30 to 5:30 p.m.
The nature and demands of this course make it necessary to limit the class size. It is offered to students who have mastered the basic mechanics and techniques of journalistic prose and are interested in developing and refining a personal literary style within a journalistic framework, appropriate to editorials, columns and reviews. The emphasis is on form, structure and semantics for effective and original approaches to specialized writing in areas too long cliché-ridden. There are basic assignments and free-choice exercises, with concentration on self- and intra-group criticism. Prospective students must submit one sample of their best writing and, in no more than 350 words, a statement of their interest in the course. These are to be delivered directly to Assistant Dean Huff, who must receive them by 10 a.m., Monday, July 13.

Social Impact of Mass Media
Instructor: Andie Tucher
Tues. 6 to 8 p.m.
In this course we explore the social consequences of what journalists do and the complex relationships between the press and the public. Through readings, class discussions, and close observations of media past and present, we locate the work of journalism in its social, historical, and theoretical context, focusing on such topics as the media’s obligation to society; relationships between the press and the theory and practice of democracy; the media and storytelling; social ramifications of new technologies and new economic structures; and how the media are implicated in our perceptions of time, space, memory, and identity.

Writing With Style
Instructor: Kevin Coyne
Wed., 7 to 9 p.m.
All prose, good and bad, has a fingerprint. You can usually tell within just a few lines who wrote it, and whether it’s worth reading. So where does a writer’s style come from, and how can you sharpen your own? By taking apart the work of other writers both fiction and nonfiction you will analyze the elements of a prose style in this class, and then apply these lessons to your own work. The idea here is not to learn how to mimic the voices of other writers, but how to develop your own. Among the writers we will be reading are George Orwell, Alice Munro, John McPhee, Tracy Kidder, James Joyce, Jane Kramer, Joan Didion and John Cheever. There will be three writing assignments of medium length: the first an account of a place or an event; the second a portrait of a person; the third an attempt to combine the two into a narrative.

SKILLS OF THE JOURNALIST

1 point per class (These are 5-week mini-courses.)
Please see the Fall 2009 Skills Schedule for class time and dates

Audio Storytelling
This course is open to all full-time students and those part-time students who began the program Summer ‘09, except those in the broadcast concentration. It builds on what you have learned with more advanced training in interviewing, writing, and producing audio reports for radio and other media platforms. Students will work in the digital audio laboratory. Each student will select one assignment done for this class to post as a podcast on the Web.

Flash
Students learn the basics of producing multimedia and interactive projects with Flash, the industry standard authoring tool. Students learn how to translate their story ideas into integrated packages of text, photos, audio, video, and interactivity. We’ll discuss how and when to use Flash, its pros and cons, and how it fits in with other online technologies. Students should be proficient on the Mac operating system and be familiar with Photoshop. Digital Media students may not take this class as Flash is covered in Digital Media Newsroom this fall.

Investigative Skills (non-Stabile)
Students will learn advanced applications of computer-assisted reporting, and will be able to find a variety of hidden documents useful to good journalism: court records, pollution and safety studies, campaign contributions, the filings of tax-exempt organizations, child abuse and industrial safety statistics, corporate records, etc.

Advanced Photojournalism
Building on pre-RW1 training (all FT students who began in August 09 and PT students who began in summer 09 are eligible), students learn additional photography skills, using Photoshop, scanners and printers to produce short photo essays on non-fiction topics.

Social-media Skills for Journalists
This course will help journalists use social media (including such sites as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, among others) to do three things: find new story ideas, trends and sources; connect with readers and viewers; and promote their own work to new audiences. The students will learn best practices as well as what to avoid in this fast-changing world. Many journalists already use these tools, but the course will take that knowledge to new levels with practical, actionable lessons in how best to navigate social media. Using examples from news organizations big and small, as well as individuals, topics covered will include ethics; etiquette; new third-party tools; the changing journalist-source relationship and more.

Stabile Investigative Skills (Stabile Students Only)
This is a 10-week crash course on the tools that investigative journalists use for their research and reporting. The course will focus on the skills that watchdog journalists need: interviewing, document and database searching, data analysis, data visualization and computer-assisted reporting. It will also help students conceptualize investigative projects and run them through the process that journalists go through in the course of their investigations.

*Note: There are several additional skills sections for PT students listed in the PT only section below.

INTERNSHIP
0.5 credit
A student who, with the prior approval of the Assistant Dean of Students and the Office of Career Services undertakes an internship at a media organization can earn 0.5 credit if the work consists of serious journalistic enterprise. At the conclusion of the internship, the student must submit a written description of what he or she has accomplished and learned, and an official of the media company must send a separate letter corroborating that and evaluating the student’s performance. You do not request this class via the ballot. Please contact Career Services Director Ernest Sotomayor for details.

FALL TERM COURSES FOR PART-TIME M.S. STUDENTS ONLY
These courses are not open to full-time M.S. students

The Literature of Non-Fiction 6 point seminar
Instructor: Helen Benedict
Mon., 6:00-9 p.m.
This 15-week course is designed to expose students to the most influential and innovative nonfiction writers of the past and present. Starting with Samuel Pepys and W.E.B. DuBois and moving up to contemporary writers such as Susan Orlean and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, we will examine how nonfiction has evolved in its approach, subject matter, voice and style. Assignments: Two short, critical reviews of the reading matter. One long literary essay, of the type found in The New York Review of Books, that links some of the readings with original research and thought. The essay should concern a writer from the past and from the present and discuss the influences on and evolution of nonfiction. Course not open to new full-time students.

TV Reporting and Writing 3 points
Instructor: Anthony Depalma
Sat., 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
This course is required of students in the part-time program who are concentrating in Broadcast journalism. This course covers the same materials that full-time students receive in their “jumbo” RWI sections, and prepares students for advanced courses in broadcast journalism. For part-time broadcast students only.

Critical Issues in Journalism 2 points
Instructors: Richard Wald
Tuesday, 7-9 p.m.
This course, required of all students, explores the social role of journalism and the journalist from legal, historical, ethical, and economic perspectives. While the course covers some of the same issues raised in Journalism, the Law and Society, they are examined more from an ethical and professional point of view. This course begins in mid-October.

Journalism, the Law & Society 2 points
Instructor: Freeman
Wednesday, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
NOTE: Class meets on the following dates: Sept 9; Sept 16; Sept 23; Oct 7; Oct 14; Oct 21; Oct 28; Nov 4; Nov 18; Dec 2
The course examines the current and historic conflicts between journalists and jurists over fundamental First Amendment issues such as libel, privacy, prior restraint against publishing the news, protection of sources, the right to gather news, and national security. Broadcast regulations, including the Fairness Doctrine and questions of equal time and access are also explored. Reading includes texts of landmark cases. Two special sessions at the end of the course concentrate on practical aspects of libel and invasion of privacy.

Basic Audio Skills 1 point
Students become familiar with radio news writing and reporting. Students write news reports using audio they gather as reporters in the field and produce them using the digital audio laboratory. Note: This class is for part-time students only, and is required for part-time broadcast students.

Photojournalism Skills
Students learn the basics of photography, using Photoshop, scanners and printers to produce short photo essays on non-fiction topics.

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MEMO: Welcome Letter - Full-time M.S. Fall 2009

Filed under: Major memos, M.S. Program, Registration, Fall only, Greatest hits, Newly-admitted students, Calendars, Preparing for the School

FOR FULL-TIME M.S. STUDENTS

A letter from Bill Grueskin, Dean of Academic Affairs

Dear Full-time Master of Science students,

Welcome to the Graduate School of Journalism! You are about to embark on one of the most challenging years of your life. In the upcoming months, you will be expected to learn and hone the reporting, writing and editing skills that form the bedrock of incisive journalism, while also developing the technological acumen you’ll need to advance our profession in a time of unparalleled change.

But before I get into the details, I want to offer you a word of congratulations. We were honored with the largest applicant pool ever last winter. You were admitted to this school after at least two, and often three or four, faculty and staff members read your essays, tests, transcript and clips. The fact that you made it here in this competitive year means that we have great confidence in your ability to succeed at Columbia and beyond.

You also have our admiration. This is a tumultuous time in journalism as the business models that have supported most news organizations are facing huge challenges. Despite that, it is clear that you share our confidence that new models will emerge, and that for those with creativity and courage, this is a time of tremendous opportunity for reporters to practice and distribute journalism in new and exciting ways.

Finally, the faculty and staff of this school believe, as we expect you do, that journalism is integral to a free, open and vital democracy. We want you to learn not just skills but values, not just techniques but the understanding of how a dynamic press fuels the transparency our society needs.

We have continued to make changes in our curriculum to reflect and anticipate changes in our industry. All students, even those in print concentrations, will get digital training. Many classes will build or share Web sites so we can better serve the communities we cover and so you will experience the excitement and the responsibility of doing journalism that is instantaneously available to readers around the corner or across the globe. We have retooled our law, ethics and history classes to provide you with the practical skills and values to report and write for smaller, more nimble organizations. And, for the first time, we are requiring each of you to take a course in the business of journalism, so you will have a better understanding of how this profession will be supported in the years to come.

The letter below will give you vital information on how the school year proceeds, what our expectations are of you, and what you can expect from us. Please read it carefully.

HOW THE SCHOOL IS ORGANIZED

Several departments at the school will affect your life here.

The Dean of Students Office will handle most of your day-to-day needs. This department, run by Prof. Sree Sreenivasan and Assistant Dean of Students Melanie Huff, includes admissions, financial aid and career services. Obviously, you’ve already run the gauntlet with the admissions department. If you have questions or concerns about your financial aid, you should contact The Office of Admission and Financial Aid in Room 203.

As the year progresses, you will hear more from Career Services, led by Ernest Sotomayor. This department is in close contact with employers and will help guide you through the process of identifying and qualifying for opportunities after you graduate.

You will be dealing quite a bit this year with Dean Huff. She oversees the balloting process for courses and also plays a vital role in helping students understand course points, navigate relationships with other schools at Columbia, and deal with school and university policies.

The Academic Affairs Office oversees the school’s curriculum, hiring of adjuncts and placement of faculty in courses. I am the academic dean, and am assisted by Prof. Laura Muha, who is assistant dean for faculty affairs. While most of the decisions for the fall curriculum have already been made, we welcome student input into the lineup for the spring.

The Technology Office, overseen by Larry Fried, handles issues associated with checkout and upkeep of our cameras, recorders and computers.

You may at some point come into contact with other assistant deans here, including Sheila Thimba, who oversees administration and budget; Elizabeth Fishman, who handles communications; Susan Shine, who oversees development; and Arlene Morgan, head of prizes and programs.

Finally, there’s Nicholas Lemann, the dean of this school. He is an accomplished journalist and author, and is also an instructor, teaching classes for M.A. and M.S. students and, like the rest of us, advising master’s projects and theses.

PLANNING YOUR SEMESTER

August

You’re going to work hard this year. You have a great deal to learn in a short period, so we want you to make the most of your time here. That’s why we’re asking you to come to campus the second week of August, and will provide you three full weeks of classroom instruction before the university’s academic year officially begins after Labor Day.

Fall Schedule:

The fall semester officially begins Sept. 8, 2009, or the day after Labor Day. But by that time, you should be quite acclimated to New York and the J-School.

You will take between 16 and 19 points during the fall semester, depending largely on which concentration – newspaper, magazine, broadcast, or digital media – you designated on your admissions application. A broad outline of the fall course requirements for each concentration is below, and descriptions of individual classes can be found here. Requests for modifications to individual schedules are processed by the Dean of Students Office during the official add/drop period, which begins at 10 a.m. on Aug. 24 and ends at 10 a.m. on Sept. 18.

This lead-up time will be jam-packed, with classes or lectures every weekday and some weeknights. You might need some of your weekend time, too, to get assignments done.

For full-time M.S. students, the academic year begins on Aug. 12, 2009. (International students begin orientation Aug. 10; they will receive a separate note about this; they will get a separate email with details.) Plan to arrive at 8 a.m. on Aug. 12 so you can get your ID cards and class schedules. We’ll also have coffee and a continental breakfast on hand. By 9 a.m., we’ll ask you to head to join us for orientation.

You must attend orientation. This is where you’ll learn everything from how to activate your computer account to how to use our electronic databases. There’s no makeup session for this.

Starting Aug. 17, you’ll begin your digital training, learning photography, audio and Final Cut Pro. You’ll also start meeting as an RW1 class, with initial forays into your beats and early drills to sharpen your writing skills.

Required classes for newspaper/magazine concentrators:

Reporting and Writing I, or RW1: 6 points
Journalism Essentials: 4 points
a. Law: 1 point
b. Ethics: 1 point
c. History of Journalism: 1 point
d. Business of Journalism: 1 point
RWII elective: 3 points
Master’s Project: 3 points
A 5-week skills class: 1 point each (Note: Students in the Stabile Investigative program are automatically enrolled in a special 10-week investigative skills class.)

Required classes for broadcast concentrators:

Reporting and Writing I, or RW1: 8 points
Journalism Essentials: 4 points
a. Law: 1 point
b. Ethics: 1 point
c. History of Journalism: 1 point
d. Business of Journalism: 1 point
Master’s Project: 3 points
A 5-week skills class: 1 point each (Note: Students in the Stabile Investigative program are automatically enrolled in a special 10-week investigative skills class.)

Required classes for digital media concentrators:

Reporting and Writing I, or RW1: 8 points
Journalism Essentials: 4 points
a. Law: 1 point
b. Ethics: 1 point
c. History of Journalism: 1 point
d. Business of Journalism: 1 point
Digital Media Newsroom
Master’s Project: 3 points
A 5-week skills class: 1 point each (Note: Students in the Stabile Investigative program are automatically enrolled in a special 10-week investigative skills class.)

CHANGES IN CONCENTRATION: Students occasionally ask to switch their medium of concentration. Because there are equipment and lab demands associated with each concentration – particularly broadcast and digital media – we are only rarely able to accommodate that. Any such request should go to Assistant Dean Huff. (Please note: We’ve changed the name of the New Media concentration to Digital Media.)

REGISTERING FOR CLASSES: You do not register yourself for classes; we do that for you. We do, however, ask you to let us know your preferences via an online ballot which will be available from 10 a.m. July 6 to July 13. Not every student will get every first choice, as some classes are oversubscribed. We do promise, however, that we will do our best, as long as you fill out the correct ballot for your concentration and submit it by 10 a.m. on July 13. If you fail to do so, you will be assigned to classes on a space-available basis.

Here are the steps for making your selections:

Look over the fall course offerings, available online here. You can read students’ evaluations of many of the classes and professors here. You will first need to have activated your Columbia email account.

On July 6, we will post a link to the fall ballot on the Dean of Students Blog.

Click on the ballot for your concentration, fill it out and submit it by 10 a.m. on July 13. The balloting process is not first-come, first-served; as long as you fill out the correct ballot and submit it by the deadline, you will be given equal consideration for all classes. Please note that you do not ballot for RW1, Master’s Project, law, ethics, history or business of journalism, or for any skills classes and/or electives dictated by your area of concentration. We automatically place you in those classes.

If you want to be considered for Prof. Judith Crist’s Personal and Professional Style elective, you must submit writing samples along with your ballot. These can be sent in the body of an e-mail – not as an attachment – to Assistant Dean Huff at dos@jrn.columbia.edu. The deadline is 10 a.m., July 13. Please indicate in the subject line that the clips are for Prof. Crist’s class.

ADDING OR DROPPING CLASSES: You may request to change one or more of your classes during the official add/drop period each semester. The add/drop period for Fall 2010 begins at 10 a.m. on Aug. 24 and ends at 10 a.m. on Sept. 18.

During this time, a link to the add/drop form will be available on the Dean of Students Blog. On each form, you may request to add one class and drop one class. All add-drop requests are processed on a first-come, first-served basis. We stress that they are only requests; there is no guarantee that we can accommodate them. It is particularly difficult for us to change RW1 classes or Master’s Project advisers.

We do not send e-mails approving or rejecting requests for schedule changes. You must keep checking your class schedule on the web at Student Services Online. Sometimes it takes days for a space to open in a class. Sometimes a space never opens. Until you see a change reflected on your class schedule there, your request has not been approved. All requests remain on file during the add/drop period.

OUTSIDE CLASSES: In lieu of one of your required journalism electives, you are eligible to take a 4-point language course or a 3-point elective in another division within the university. To do so, you must do the following:

Fill out the J-School’s Fall 2009 ballot as if you were taking all of your classes within the J-School, since cross-registrations aren’t always possible.
Identify a graduate-level class (4000+) that meshes with your proposed J-School schedule and is justifiable in light of your journalistic goals. You can look up courses here.
After your Journalism course assignments have been posted in Student Services Online, send an e-mail to dos@jrn.columbia.edu asking to replace your elective with the outside class. You must include the class name, course number, professor, number of points, and a description of how it will help you to achieve your professional objectives. Note: The meeting time of the outside course must fit within your J-School course schedule. We can’t adjust your J-School schedule to accommodate an outside class.
Once the Dean of Students Office has approved your request to take the outside class, you must fill out the M.S. approval form and get it approved by the outside division (dean or professor).
Once you have done this, give the form to Assistant Dean Huff, and she will register you for the course. Please note that for Fall 2009, this must be completed between 10 a.m. Aug. 24 and ends at 10 a.m. on Sept. 18.

INTERNSHIPS: Students sometimes ask about doing internships during their time at the J-School. While this is not forbidden, it is highly discouraged during the fall semester and cautiously encouraged in the spring, because we feel your studies come first. Our curriculum is intense and demanding, and we find that students often underestimate the amount of time that it will take to complete their coursework.

That said, some students do juggle internships and schoolwork successfully. If you are interested in an internship, please let Career Services know early in the fall; that office can help you identify appropriate opportunities and hone your applications.

Please note that if you wish to receive credit for an internship – and many media companies that offer internships require this – your RW1 professor must confirm to Career Services that you will be able to handle both internship and coursework. More information on internships is available via the internship link on our Career Services page.