Journalism - Online Schools, Degrees, Courses

Finding the Right Journalism Degree and College

Short-listing Journalism Colleges
The first thing that needs to be done is to shortlist schools based on your interests. There are schools that are good at churning out wannabe broadcast or print journalists, while others focus on magazines, sports writing, online and new media journalism, etc. Check out their websites and find out which universities and journalism colleges have majors related to your preferred brand of journalism.

Once you have the list of institutions offering a journalism major you want to do, narrow down the list some more by taking a close look at the departmental heads, faculty and visiting lecturers. If there isn't a famous and/or experienced journalist in the lot, then strike the college off the list. Having a PhD doesn't qualify anyone to be a journalist. It is being a journalist and spending years on the beat filing stories and breaking heads with nitpicky editors that makes someone a good journalist and writer.

Those Who Can, Teach
You have to learn the art of writing in various styles, from informal blogs to the AP Stylebook. Journalists learn the hard way not to mess with editors, or look down on them. Once an article has been sent back by the editor because of shoddy research or incomplete information, newly appointed reporters learn very quickly not to send something in for publication until the information it contains has been verified from multiple sources.

Speaking of which, cultivating sources is the bread and butter that keeps a journalist busy and successful, and these things cannot be understood or learned by reading books or parroting what gets taught in journalism courses. That only works when taught by someone who has done it, and will show you exactly how to smell out a story, what to say and how to extract information from reluctant or hard to meet people. This is why it is important to have successful journalists on the faculty.

Online Journalism and the Role of Technology
The availability of the latest equipment and facilities is also an important issue here. It's hard to learn about new media, crowd-sourcing and online journalism if the college is using the same equipment as they had in the 90s. In fact, eLearning platforms at the college can be helpful in teaching journalism classes online and will also show students how to leverage the power of the internet for their own work.

Journalism Careers
One important thing to remember is that journalism careers tend to work well in big cities where the newspapers, magazines and publishing companies have their head offices. These companies also tend to take on interns about to get a journalism degree from one of the local colleges, and this provides valuable exposure and possibly a great job down the line.

To get this same job from a small town needs a move up the ranks at a small town newspaper and then a lateral move to the big city to look for the right job. That's wasting at least 5 years and could make the difference between a part-time job as a reporter and a solid journalistic career with a big publishing or media company.