Advice & inspiration

II’s guide to grad school – the where, when and why (Part 3)

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Today we complete our series highlighting graduate programs across the country with overviews from students at UC Berkeley, Columbia University, and Northwestern University. Finally, I will add my two cents about my Information Science program at UNC, and II Spanish Editor Andrea Ballocchi will give you her take on her graduate studies at the University of Miami.

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University of California, Berkeley | M.J. in Journalism New Media

Angela Kilduff: “I chose UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism because its two-year Masters of Journalism program gives students the time and training to work in a variety of media. The instructors are a mix of full-time faculty and working professionals, and the classes are small. The degree requirements are minimal, letting students follow their interests – whether that means writing long form print pieces in Michael Pollan’s class, developing multimedia packages with Paul Grabowicz or doing both. Being part of the UC system has its advantages – you have access to renowned experts in other disciplines and can take classes outside of the J-School, but there are also drawbacks. Budget issues led to higher student fees and less time in class – cutting both semesters short by a week.

Despite that, there are a lot of opportunities. My class launched hyperlocal websites that have gained readers and recognition. They are outlets for work and places for experimentation.

The Bay Area News Project is just beginning, but the non-profit news venture was launched in collaboration with the J-School. It promises to provide internships for students as it seeks to expand coverage of the Bay Area for the New York Times.

There are travel classes offered every semester, funding students’ travels to Japan, Africa and many other places.

Out-of-state tuition is pricey but still competitive, and California residents pay a lot less. Financial aid and teaching assistant positions can help offset the expense. Applications are due December 1.”

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Columbia University | M.S. in Journalism, Digital Media Concentration

Vadim Lavrusik: “If you want to get digital media skills or refine old ones and get them in one year, then Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism might be your fit. It’s essentially a trade school for journalists looking to get new skills or refine ones they already have. But be prepared to work your butt off regardless of your past experience. I had a decent amount of experience coming in and a lot of the people in the program are folks that have been in the field for a number of years but decided to come back to school, and even they feel overwhelmed. Because it is only a one year program, they pack in a lot in the short time span.

I’m in the digital media track, which I highly recommend over anything else. After all, it’s the future. With the digital media track, you essentially learn everything that the print or broadcast students are learning, plus some coding, Flash and Web skills to go along with it. The first semester focuses on the basics of storytelling, and the ability to do it well. You thrown in a class called reporting and writing 1, which consumes most of your work the first half of the program. You and a group of students work to cover a neighborhood or a topic for a website that you build. Just like in a newsroom, you pitch stories, report them and write them (or produce them). For digital media concentrators, you also take a class called Digital Media Newsroom. This is where you learn how to shoot and edit video and photography, Flash, interactives, and apply it to one in-depth project that the class produces as a whole. We profiled small business owners struggling in the economy. Each profile had an audio slideshow, video, flash graphic, Google map and text piece. On top of these two intensive courses, the first semester you have the choice of some skills classes, such as Social Media for Journalists with Sree Sreenivasan. And you are required to take some contextual courses that help you understand and navigate this changing world of journalism. That includes media law, ethics, business and history.

Almost immediately beginning your time at Columbia, you realize that on top of all this, you are to complete a master’s project, which stretches across the two semesters. I am in my final week before turning my master’s project in. You get to work as a team, so my partner and I worked to build a site that covers the growing New York tech start-up scene, and followed one start-up going through the process. We’ve been producing content for the site since January and will finish an in-depth profile on the start-up for next week. It’s a five-part video documentary that lives on a flash component of our site and will also include an interactive. That said, I write this from inside a video edit suite as I work on my project. People have been living here for the past couple weeks.

The program has exceeded my expectations. Not only do you get the skills, but you get to live in a great city and meet some amazing people that come to this school every day. If the journalism school skeptics out there would take this program, they would realize the value and relevancy of a journalism education today. What it comes down to is do you have the skills to be not only a good journalist, but a great one.”

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Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University | M.S. in Journalism

Michelle Minkoff: “I chose to attend the graduate school at Medill to deepen my knowledge, expand my reporting and writing skills and make the most of all technology has to offer for reporting and presentation. I was impressed by the newsrooms the school operates in both Chicago and Washington, DC — we report alongside “real” journalists, attending media events and press conferences, and our work is published on a school Web site in addition to professional local and national publications, who serve as our clients. Our professors serve as both teachers and editors. As a result, many first-timer mistakes are made within the comfort of an academic environment, and we often have the opportunity to immediately apply what we learn. You can choose to concentrate in a variety of subject-areas (I chose health and science) or techniques (video, interactive, etc.) The program is one-year, and the amount of knowledge you can assimilate in that time is staggering. Add some internships and optional quarters if you like, and you can flesh the program out even further. I stretched it out to 18 months, but that’s not typical.

I chose to attend graduate school at Medill directly after undergrad. I’ve known I wanted to be a journalist for a long time, but wanted to get a broader liberal arts base in undergrad, building a specialization afterward. But there was, and continues to be, no question of what I wanted to do. Medill faculty are phenomenal — whether their specialty lies in text editing or data-driven reporting, they excel in their fields, ooze enthusiasm and are always willing to bend over backward to teach and help you.

Fellow students are also of an extremely high caliber, each more driven and talented than the rest. The one piece of advice I would give, and perhaps this applies to grad schools across the board, not just Medill, is to know what you want, and then find who can help you achieve it. There won’t necessarily be a class for every skill or technique you want to learn, and you may not know at first blush just how wide a range of knowledge and experience most professors have under their belt. But some deep research, coupled with determination and perseverance, can go a long way — and those are skills you should be pursuing as a journalist, anyway.”

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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | M.S. in Information Science

Tracy Boyer: “The Information Science program at UNC is ideal for people who want to get a more theoretical background on concepts such as human-computer interaction (HCI) and human-information interaction (HII), information organization and retrieval, and systems analysis. For the developers at heart, there are four excellent database courses that take you from the beginning of learning how to make an ER diagram to programming in PHP to building web databases with MySQL. In addition, there are two web development courses: Web Dev 1 teaches you basic HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and Web Dev 2 teaches you PHP, Ruby on Rails, and other advanced programming languages.

When determining which master’s program I wanted to pursue, I considered Georgia Tech’s Human-Computer Interaction program, NC State’s New Media and Design degree, and UNC’s Computer Science program. One of the major factors why I chose SILS is because I knew that I wanted to garner more programming experience, but I knew I wasn’t an ideal candidate for CS. Furthermore, New York Times’ chief multimedia producer Tom Jackson did the SILS program at UNC, so I knew that I wanted to follow in his foot steps! In hindsight, this program has taught me that I don’t want to be a programmer, but it has taught me invaluable concepts regarding the research and theory behind social media, digital technology, and user consumption trends.

The major downside to my program is the combination of Information Science with Library Science. Some people may argue that this overlap is a harmonious complement to each other, but I couldn’t disagree more. There have been many occasions where the majority of the class is LS students, so the discussion transitions to topics such as indexing library systems and archiving digital collections. Unfortunately, this has frustrated me throughout the entire program and will always be an issue for people with a similar background and mindset.

I am now on track to combine my MSIS with an MBA in one of their dual degree options, about which I couldn’t be happier. I will now be able to blend my more theoretical knowledge about the digital sector from SILS with a business, marketing and entrepreneurial framework from Kenan-Flagler Business School.”

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University of Miami | M.A. in Multimedia Journalism

Andrea Ballocchi: “After graduating with a Journalism degree from the Universidad de los Andes in Chile, I stayed to teach and coordinate projects there. I decided that I wanted to pursue a master’s degree because I felt that my skill set was not as refined as it needed to be and because I realized that I liked the teaching track. I chose the University of Miami School of Communication because I had already worked on several projects with Rich Beckman, who was just starting as a Knight Chair at the School. The multimedia master’s program was being developed and I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to be part of something new. At UM I could develop my skills as a producer, learn programming and also continue improving my abilities in visual journalism.

Since I started attending the University of Miami the “Master of Arts in Multimedia Journalism” was officially launched and current students are in their second semester. The master’s can be completed in 18 months, and it emphasizes two aspects of multimedia storytelling: content providers and production. This allows students to learn a variety of skills, from visual storytelling and information graphics to design and programming.

Pros: The school provides great opportunities to meet professionals from the industry. It has media partnerships with World Press Photo, the Online Newspaper Association and Pictures of the Year International. Also, graduate students work in projects with the Knight Center for International Media, located at the School, and its Resident Professionals with the aim of covering the world’s most under-reported stories.

Cons: Although it is a good thing in the sense that it provides a space for changes and opportunities, the newness of the program is currently a downside because all of the details have not been figured out quite yet. There is still a lot to adjust and improve. Some of the new students commented that higher entrance standards are needed, and that it would be good to have more working professionals in the program.

Another major downside is cost, after all it is a private school in an expensive city.”

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We hope you have enjoyed our series highlighting 15 graduate programs at schools around the U.S. Many thanks to those who contributed their thoughts!

Other posts that might interest you:

• II’s guide to grad school – the where, when and why (Part 2)
• II’s guide to grad school – the where, when and why (Part 1)
• Rich Beckman discusses multimedia in recent videos, podcast

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