Bachelor of Arts Degree in Journalism
Shaping the Leaders of Tomorrow
USC Annenberg's first innovative B.A. in Journalism will prepare our students to build rewarding careers, thrive in contemporary newsrooms, and lead the industry in an exciting time of rapid change.
Our reimagined B.A. retains the core values of the profession – strong reporting, clear writing, ethics, and a fluency in current and emerging technologies – while emphasizing the development of news judgment and critical thinking and the acquisition of digital storytelling and production skills.
Building Foundational Multimedia Storytelling Skills
Building upon our record of innovation in journalism education, the Annenberg faculty has developed a forward-thinking curriculum that encourages students to embrace technology, assess it critically, and employ it in the service of powerful and effective journalism. Several new team-taught courses will allow students to learn from faculty with a strong expertise in video, audio, text and digital journalism. Through this team-teaching approach, students will establish their reporting and writing expertise across multiple platforms. In a newly-integrated Media Center experience, students will acquire the editing, production and digital storytelling skills to produce journalism across a range of media.
Innovative New Courses
The program adds new courses that explore the essential components of a contemporary journalism education, including media literacy, ethical constructs of social media, a civic engagement lab experience, coding for storytelling, and law and ethics for the digital age. At the conclusion of the degree program, students will produce digital portfolios and personal websites featuring their best work at the school.
The curriculum also offers an opportunity to add deeper, more specialized media experience through the selection of electives, including app development, virtual reality journalism, and native content for social media. Electives may also be concentrated in areas of study, such as broadcast and video journalism, digital and emerging technologies or sports journalism.
Report, Write, Produce, Distribute: Journalism in USC Annenberg's Media Center
The reimagined degree program leverages the technologically-rich learning environment of Wallis Annenberg Hall and USC Annenberg's Media Center, which serves as a classroom, a newsroom and an incubator for modern journalism. As part of their course of study, students produce work in TV, radio, digital and emerging platforms. Our Media Center’s converged news environment offers exceptional opportunities for students to cover news stories that engage audiences and contribute to an informed citizenry.
Take a look at the Reimagined Undergraduate Journalism Curriculum:
