Social Journalism Program Outcomes

What will you be able to actually *do* with this degree?

The social journalism MA program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism teaches students to serve communities in new ways by listening to their needs and engaging people to participate in the process of creating the news.

Sometimes educators and prospective students ask me about the more specific program outcomes. Here they are!

Social journalism graduates will:

1. Begin all aspects of the journalistic process, from reporting a story to cultivating a beat to designing a new product — with the audience and its needs at the center. Practice the core principles of social journalism — the mindset of journalism as service and why engaging readers in the process of doing journalism matters
2. Use a variety of tools and techniques to listen to communities, understand their information needs and pressing issues of concern, and build empathy and trust
3. Employ crowdsourcing strategies and tools to collect information and viewpoints from a diverse range of sources
4. Demonstrate an understanding the current media landscape, how it’s changing, what its future looks like.
5. Report — find relevant information, conduct research, interview diverse sources, mine social media for newsworthy signals.
6. Write in a clear and concise and engaging manner. Tell stories and distribute information in a variety of media forms, including photo, video, audio, and graphics.
7. Verify the accuracy and ownership of many kinds of content, including news shared via social media or offered by other sources, and apply critical thinking to understand the motivation of sources and the relationship of facts to shifting “truth.”
8. Find and utilize data to serve communities and create basic visualizations of that data
9. Interpret a wide range of digital metrics, from page views to impact, and use this information to iterate strategy.
10. Learn basic coding skills to communicate well with more experienced web developers and build basic web interactives or tweak websites.
11. Use social media to grow and engage audiences, report stories and network within the field, including popular tools and emerging ones.
12. Develop, test and pitch ideas for startups and new products within existing news organizations. Understand the business of journalism to help news organizations develop new routes to sustainability.
13. Work through complex ethical decisions in journalism, especially those surrounding social media and user generated content.
14. Be aware of evolving legal issues of relevance to journalists and social media practitioners.
15. Be known for collegiality, professionalism, leadership, teamwork, generosity, and most importantly, a respect for diversity.

Socialj alum Simon Galperin, ’16, now works at Groundsource and was recently selected as a RJI Fellow. He is working on an innovative project, Community Information Cooperative.