Course Requirements

SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM

SPECIALIZED JOURNALISM (THE ARTS)

The M.A. in Specialized Journalism is designed to allow students to range widely across the University while pursuing a highly customized course of study that meets their individual interests. Students can take courses that build subject matter expertise or that develop advanced journalistic skills, and they have wide latitude in finding the mix that suits their personal goals.

• Required Courses: 18 units of advanced coursework including a master’s professional project on a topic of the student’s choosing, exclusive seminars on research methods and decision making, and advanced reporting courses in several topic areas including science, religion, demography and education. Students also have the opportunity to develop a directed research project in which they work individually with an Annenberg professor in a course of their own design.
  
• Electives: 16 units of elective coursework that you choose from USC’s highly regarded academic units, including the Rossier School of Education; School of Policy, Planning and Development; College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; and School of Communication and the School of Journalism. Specialized Journalism faculty and staff will assist you in selecting electives most appropriate to your fields of study and abilities.

The M.A. in Specialized Journalism (The Arts) is designed to provide you with a highly customized course of journalism practice and study in a specific arts field of your choosing. In addition, you are given the opportunity to develop an array of advanced reporting and leadership skills broadly applicable to a career in journalism.

The program is intended for:

1) professional arts journalists who work in any medium
2) recent college graduates holding bachelor’s degrees in journalism or in one of the arts
3) experienced arts practitioners

The required curriculum is designed to be completed in nine and a half months (August to mid-May) and is comprised of two parts:

• Required Courses: 18 units of advanced coursework, including a master’s professional project and journalism courses in arts and culture reporting, criticism and commentary. Attention is paid within the curriculum to helping students acquire the tools, develop the skills and cultivate the mindset central to organizing, launching and managing successful entrepreneurial ventures.
  
• Electives: 16 units of graduate level electives in a learner-centered program taken across USC’s arts schools, including the School of Architecture, School of Cinematic Arts, School of Theatre, Roski School of Fine Arts, and Thornton School of Music. The elective course work must be taken from faculty-recommended lists in at least two arts schools, with at least 8 units from one. 
  
  FY12-13 Elective Course Catalogue (subject to change)

Sample of Elective Courses:

Classic Rock: Popular Music of the Sixties and Seventies
Introduction to Interactive Writing
Programming for Interactivity
Television Documentary Production
Film, Television and Cultural Studies
Case Studies in National and/or Regional Media
Film and/or Television Style Analysis
Introduction to Screenwriting
History of American Architecture and Urbanism
Great Houses of Los Angeles
A History of Architectural Theory: 1400-1914
Contemporary Asian Architecture
Architecture in the Urban Landscape: Projects and Places
Poetry and Prose into Drama
Theatre and Therapy
Art, Business and the Law