Advanced Social Justice and Solutions Journalism

The mission of the Advanced Social Justice and Solutions Journalism course will be to help students develop professional-level reporting skills through the vehicle of in-depth projects in the field of social justice. The projects can be continuations of ones that students have already started in prior quarters, or they can be a new project if a student doesn’t already have one in the works or wants to switch to something different. Possible subject areas include income disparities, housing, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, employment, health care, immigration and refugees, substance abuse treatment, the criminal justice system, education, environmental justice, food security, child welfare and other social justice issues.

Students can work in teams if they wish and can use video, text, photos, graphics, audio or some combination of these media, depending on which makes the most sense for their particular project. 

We will hold workshops on different advanced reporting skills as needed such as source development, data usage, high-stakes interviews, verification techniques and so on. We will share reporting challenges and solutions as a class. There will be readings, but the focus of the class will be on actual reporting.