Times a changing for NU J-School

This letter arrived in my inbox this morning from the head of Northeastern's School of Journalism Stephen Burgard. It seems NU's School of Journalism is getting with the times and going to start offering more focus in the classroom on multimedia and online journalism, long heralded as the future of the industry. These changes are in line with what I wrote about last year, College journalism programs, students’ newspapers fall behind advancing industry: Some see need for a drastic change in curriculum, addition of new media elements throughout coursework

A condensed version of Burgard's letter:

Dear Journalism Students:

The semester is winding to a close and, while the Boston springtime has yet to bloom, many of you are or will be scattering soon. Before that happens, I wanted to take a moment to touch base and bring you up to date on some things.

...

You are hearing a lot nowadays about demands in journalism education because of new technologies and economic changes in our field. We have been doing a lot as a faculty in the past year and a half to address how best to serve your needs in preparation for the new world of journalism, public relations, graduate study or other careers..

Currently we are working to incorporate the best of our program's storied tradition - its sound curriculum in good journalism practice and excellent co-ops and internships - with courses that prepare you for the new digital world. We are looking at the core courses, especially Journalism 2 and Journalism 3, to see where they can or should be adapted. We now also have two new elective courses exclusively designed for students who are well along in our program to learn how to do journalism for new media. These are Prof. Dan Kennedy's Journalism of the Web course and Prof. Liz Matson's Online Journalism course. Both are proving very popular.

I should say that Gladys McKie and Susan Conover have been working with the faculty to update our website and make it more informative and useful. If you haven't visited it recently, have a look at northeastern.edu/journalism, and you can see, for example, something on some of what Prof. Matson's students have been doing.

Additionally, we have been at work with the Creative Industries initiative on a brand new minor for journalism students in interactive media. We are waiting only for final approval from the trustees for Creative Industries' overall program to roll out this minor, and hope we will be able to say more about it very soon. The idea will be to combine the good journalism practices work we currently are doing in our program for the major with new interdisciplinary offerings for students who want to do advanced work in the digital world. Please watch the website for details.

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Cordially,

Steve

Stephen D. Burgard
Director, School of Journalism