UC Berkeley Journalism - Students

Jackie Spinner, MJ 1995,
Washington Post, Washington DC

Here is my postcard from the edge. Dateline: the Washington Post. Summer 1997. I spent three weeks in Army boot camp and fired my first M-16. I even led the troops on a morning run. I met with sources in the back rooms of dark restaurants. I camped out in a hotel for weeks and weeks. My mission: a seven-month assignment to write about one of the most sensational military trials in history and help put my paper out front on a national story about drill sergeants, sex and abuse in the Army. When one of my stories led the front page of the Washington Post for the first time, I actually cried. You see, these weren't exactly my caviar dreams back in graduate school. I had merely hoped for a job. And I still can't believe that I'm now a reporter for the Washington Post.

I sweated for this all of those late nights in the upper newsroom, the unpaid internships, the hustle, the times when I took on too much and crashed. Even so, I know that there are others who deserve to be here, too, and are not. Or are happy where they landed. Not everybody has to like what I do. There are long hours, longer days. Sometimes they edit the heart and soul out of my copy. Sometimes the pressure of working for a major newspaper gets to me. But those are the times when I look ahead and think about next summer, the possibilities I cannot even imagine: Maybe one day they'll let me go overseas. Maybe one day I'll have an editor as good as Neil Henry. Maybe one day I'll be an editor. Maybe. But in the meantime, I'm having a really great time. You can pinch me now.

Student Resumes

Class of 2009
First Year Students

Class of 2008
Second Year Students

Third Year Students

Student Stories are published by both the Journalism School and a variety of leading publications throughout the world. We also publish North Gate News Online, which showcases first-year student work.

Student Projects take many shapes, from group reporting project to individual in-depth reporting efforts.

Each year we welcome 55-60 new students to our program, all of whom share a passion for journalism. Learn more about our students in the overview, Student Body at a Glance.

We are committed to diversity in the classroom.

We encourage mid-career reporters from abroad to explore our Visiting Scholars Program.

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 interview. 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.” To augment on-the-street skills, J200 students also take computer-assisted reporting, a comprehensive introduction to using electronic resources for stories. Students learn how to search property records, find an elusive source’s phone number or use a database or spreadsheet. Not surprisingly, J-School students often find themselves the best-trained computer reporters in their newsrooms when they arrive at their internships or jobs.

A third 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 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 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 a summer internship, J-School students are well prepared to take the next step in their journalistic careers.