Overview
It begins with reporting.
Whichever path students choose at the J-School, commitment to reporting is a constant theme. Journalism starts with ethical, effective reporting of facts. Television students learn how to conduct on camera interviews. Documentary film students learn how to read a corporation's quarterly report. Magazine writers master public records searches. The basics of reporting cross all journalistic media.
Students plunge into reporting from the first day of school, when they receive assignments in J200, a required class for all first-year students. Courts, schools, city halls, police stations, fire houses and the streets of the Bay Area are the beats as students begin to think and act like reporters. This could mean hopping off a bus to cover a fire, which happened to one of our students. "Stop the bus," he demanded. "I'm a reporter." Students learn how to search property records, find an elusive source's phone number or use a database to get the information they need to tell their story. To augment on-the-street skills, J200 students learn how to report and publish all of their stories using multimedia platforms. Not surprisingly, J-School students often find themselves the best-trained multimedia reporters in their newsrooms when they arrive at their internships or jobs.
Another course requirement is Law and Ethics, in which students learn a basic ethical framework for contemporary journalism—covering privacy, libel, and confidential sources. Instructors have faced many of these situations themselves. Each class is co-taught by an attorney who represents working journalists. Discussions are not on abstract issues but on day-to-day dilemmas that confront working editors and reporters.
The North Gate curriculum is rich with course offerings that build on basic skills. Some classes are on advanced techniques in TV, radio, new media and photography. Others teach specific types of coverage: business, sports, cultural, investigative or international coverage. At the heart of each is commitment to reporting.
Faculty help students edit, publish and broadcast completed course assignments. Rarely a day passes that student-reported work does not appear in Bay Area newspapers or other outlets. J-School students, with their extensive reporting, multimedia, and writing experience, can spend their summers on the streets of Manhattan for The New York Times or ABC, in the wilds of Alaska for Alaska Public Radio or in Reykjavik for The Iceland Review. They have covered the latest IPOs for San Francisco's MarketWatch.com, and have worked on documentary films for NOVA in Boston. With two years of classroom training, freelancing and internship training, J-School students are well prepared to take the next step in their journalistic careers.