Contemporary Journalism explores how newspaper and magazine reporters think, and how they approach writing stories for newspapers, magazines and/or electronic media. The course focuses on developing necessary skills in journalism. Class time is devoted to such topics as interviewing, sourcing of stories, accuracy, fairness, voice, audience, ethics and libel law, as well as the acquisition of skills to write news and feature stories. Case studies examine professional ethics and the role of the journalist in framing public discourse. The writing assignments -- four stories and several exercises -- enable experienced and inexperienced writers to extend their ability to cover events, identify and document trends, and write profiles and interpretative stories. Weekly readings are assigned from coverage of historic events and the writers who covered them. The course also explores online publishing, the effect it is having on journalism and the reliability of information the public receives via the Internet.
