Belief in photography's indexicality has haunted the medium since its inception. Once understood to offer proof of something real, the idea that we might trust a photograph to relay anything genuine now feels absurd. Looking to shifting discourses regarding photography's relationship with objectivity, authenticity, and fact, this course examines the origins and evolution of our understanding of the medium's duplicity. Over the course of the semester, we will trace the historically erratic belief in photography's ability to document and attempt to think critically about the medium's capacity to create, reveal, and critique the real.

Trauma has become a part of our everyday lives with the pandemic, mass shootings, police brutality, etc. What is the role of researchers, reporters, filmmakers, and museum workers in mitigating the effects of trauma on individuals and communities? Throughout this course, students will learn how to conduct trauma informed interviews, interpret, and present their findings in a safe and respectful way that can facilitate healing rather than increase the pain. By the end of the course, students will be expected to develop their own interview-based research project.

The most powerful journalism transports readers into foreign terrain with depth, nuance and intimate knowledge, allowing them to steep in the worlds of other people. This is the product of immersive reporting, a high-wire act of journalism that is as challenging as it is rewarding. In this course, we will explore both the virtues and limits of immersion, tackling questions about the purpose, ethics and practice of deep reportage. Students will learn first-hand how to immerse, building skills in observation, interviewing tactics, and story structure, while producing a final work of narrative nonfiction.

This seminar will explore the challenges and opportunities that today's rapidly evolving media landscape presents to freedom of the press, and to the democracy that the media serve. Discussion will focus on where news comes from and how citizens can best assess the credibility of individual news reports. Students will evaluate how successful traditional mass-media outlets and emerging digital media have been at accomplishing the lofty goals embodied in the First Amendment. They will craft strategies for determining their own personal media diet and work to develop new models for serious, sustainable news ventures.

What insights can the length of a person's shadow offer in uncovering the site of an extrajudicial killing? How might the configuration of a tree guide us to a missile launcher that downed a civilian airliner? From bystander videos of police violence in the U.S. to satellite images revealing potential mass graves in Sudan, there is an unprecedented amount of information available to anyone with an internet connection. This hands-on course will delve into the emerging field of online open source investigation, a new form of accountability and explanatory journalism and the latest method of news-gathering.

News outlets have a long history of excluding, misrepresenting, and maligning Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, and other racialized communities. Today, journalists grapple with the legacy of longstanding racial injustices even as new challenges - like algorithmic bias and artificial intelligence - continue to emerge. In this course, we will explore ways that journalists succeed and, all too often, still fail in reporting on racialized communities. Drawing on these lessons, we will brainstorm, discuss, and devise more-inclusive and reparative ways of covering the news.

Students will learn ways to tell stories in sound-rich, innovative ways while maintaining journalistic integrity. To do that, we'll read, hear and watch great stories. A movie, a song, a news story - different mediums can offer lessons for more powerful audio storytelling. They'll learn from some of the best journalists in the industry and think critically about where the line should be between entertaining and informative reporting. Students should expect to work on several projects throughout the semester that hone various skills necessary to build soundscapes from writing to story mapping to audio gathering and editing podcasts.

This course considers the role of both mass media and social media in American politics and the influence of the media on Americans' political attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. We will examine the nature of news and news-making organizations, the role of the news media in electoral campaigns, how the media shape the behavior of politicians once in office, political advertising, and social media's impact on society, both positive and negative.