This course will introduce students to the challenges facing democracy and the role that journalism plays in addressing them. Students will learn the basic principles of reporting (interviewing skills, AP style, and ethics) by working closely with nonpartisan investigative news organizations that serve vulnerable communities in a battleground state. Our classroom will become a virtual newsroom. We will engage in a virtual listening tour, conduct professional research, and write our own stories about the stakes in the swingiest of swing states. We will learn, at the highest ethical and professional levels, how to find and follow the news.

In this seminar students will learn the sophisticated reporting, research and writing techniques that investigative reporters use to root out corruption in public and private institutions. While learning to produce compelling news pieces, students will discover how these tools can be used to advantage in other fields and in everyday life. In addition to exploring new models of journalism (crowdsourcing, social networking, etc.), they will meet with some of the nation's most successful investigative journalists.

What does it mean to report from the margins? What is center, and what is periphery? How does who I am, how I am, affect the way I write, and what I choose to write about? REPORTING FROM THE MARGINS will interrogate the fundamental tenets of journalism objectivity, professional distance and aim to recast them for the modern world. Throughout the semester, students will read works that both uphold, and challenge, existing notions of what makes an observer, and what makes a subject, and become adept at the power analysis that reveals hidden prejudices and biases that come to shape a story.

This seminar will focus on refugee crises and human rights issues at a time when migration becomes a key issue in the 2024 Presidential election. A series of day trips to Philadelphia, New York, and Washington D.C. will give students the opportunity to report from the field. The course will combine fundamentals of journalism and narrative reporting with historical studies and data and analysis of immigration policy and the prosecution of crimes against humanity. Students will investigate the impact of migration and universal jurisdiction while producing original reporting in various journalistic forms, including news, profiles and features.

Public trust in the media and journalists continues to plummet. That is especially true in minority communities that critics say are too often ignored. Where residents say they see too many negative depictions of people who look like them if they see anyone at all. Beyond that, according to polls, most journalists say their newsrooms still lack staffing and editorial diversity, especially along ethnic and racial lines. This course will examine why and how the media struggles to cover the issues and concerns of significant portions of the population in an increasingly diverse country.

As the economy shifts, who wins and who loses? This seminar, taught by a top NPR editor, will arm students with critical skills to analyze and write with clarity about the role economics plays in shaping our lives. From everyday decisions like who to date, where to travel, or what to buy, the economy also impacts us in significant ways over time, depending on our race, gender or class. Students will learn to synthesize complex ideas and also how to frame, structure and write clearly and concisely.

This course will teach STEM & non-STEM majors how to write about research in STEM fields with clarity and a bit of flair. Goal will be to learn to convey technical topics to non-experts in a compelling, enjoyable way while staying true to the underlying facts, context and concepts. We'll do this through readings, class discussion, encounters with professional writers and journalists of all sorts, across several different media. Most important of all, students will practice what they learn in frequent writing assignments that will be critiqued extensively by an experienced science journalist.