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Practicum or Master's Project

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 and the National Security Specialization
  • 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

Option 4: Other program