Journalism 402: Intellectual Foundations

We pick up where we left off with the spring edition of our television magazine show. We've shown the audience what we can do, and now we will show them that we can do it even better. Doing a television magazine is an immersive experience. You must make full use of your writing skills as well as your performing skills to write, report, and produce the news that will be seen by your audience. Our goal is to complete a minimum of three half-hour shows, and maybe more if we can produce them in timely fashion.

But as we all know, journalism is more than tapping computer keyboards or pushing buttons on cameras. These are tools we use to communicate. Knowing how to use the tools doesn't make you a journalist. Journalism is about using tools and improving our technical skills to create work that is meaningful and insightful and advances the public interest. That is why it is so important to understand the connections between journalism skills and the intellectual framework in which those skills evolved, and how they are practiced today. Drawing connections between the skills you have learned and the intellectual traditions of journalism will be the goal of Intellectual Foundations.

This is the fourth course in the basic core of the Journalism major. It is designed as a six-credit experience. The primary format will be problem-based learning with students producing a news magazine that reflects their understanding of the interface of the stories they have done and the "community" they serve. Students are expected to demonstrate their knowledge and skills through active, hands-on learning, with a continuing emphasis on Journalism's fundamental civic role of reporting about government, public, and policy affairs.