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Master's Project, Special Programs, or Practicum 

Master's Project, Special Programs, or Practicum 

2 units.

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 three options to complete your required fourth-quarter Master's Project, Practicum or Special Program:


Option 1:
Master's Project

Under the guidance of an expert faculty adviser, students produce professional quality journalism in a variety of formats including text, audio and video. Strong student work is often published in professional news outlets.

Option 2
: Special Programs
  • Washington, D.C. offers course work and practicum experiences focused on Politics, Policy and Foreign Affairs. Students in this specialization are automatically enrolled. Students outside of the specialization may apply.
  • Embedded reporting, which includes field reporting with researchers and the production of in-depth multimedia journalism upon return.
Option 3: Student-Initiated Practicums

You can find your own full-time internship at a broadcast, magazine, newspaper, online news service, audio outlet or other media site. Medill must approve that sites fits our criteria for a rigorous and enriching experience. 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.