Practicum or Master's Project

The fourth quarter for MSJ students gives you professional experiences or the option to create thesis-level multimedia and long-form narrative stories. These experiences refine your mastery of journalism by enabling you to apply a cumulative composite of MSJ training and expand your career credentials.

You have four options to complete your fourth-quarter Practicum or Master's Project:

Option 1: Media practicum or portfolio
Part-time practicum programs sponsored by Medill

• Washington, D.C. through newsroom reporting.
• San Francisco through the fourth or optional fifth-quarter Content Strategy program.
• Embedded reporting, which includes field reporting with researchers and the production of in-depth multimedia journalism upon return.

Option 2: Student-initiated internships

You can find your own full-time or part-time internship at a broadcast, magazine, newspaper, online news service or other media site and obtain approval of the site from Medill. We can selectively provide support services to identify sites.

• You commit to a 10-week, full-time internship for two units of academic credit.
• You commit to a part-time internship for one unit of academic credit.
• A faculty adviser oversees the level of work produced and interfaces with you and the site.
• You research a paper contextualizing the changes, challenges and future of the media industry that your internship site represents.

Option 3: Master's programs
Programs requiring thesis-level research, reporting and productions such as multimedia, documentaries or long-form narrative stories for two units of academic credit.