Communications major? Great choice.
Journalism? Even better.
Communication is a wonderful business and it’s a terrific time to be going into it. But it’s also a time of upheaval and chaos, and if you are going to be successful, you have to give it everything you’ve got.
Journalism in particular is “a noble profession and one of unequalled importance for its influence upon the minds and morals of the people,” as Joseph Pulitzer once said.
Because of its widely recognized importance, journalism is the only profession explicitly protected by the US Constitution. The press has been the people’s friend and the tyrant’s foe from the invention of the printing press. Although hardly a perfect institution, politicians who attack the press as the “enemy” are doing a grave disservice to democracy. For more information along these lines, RU’s classes in Media History (COMS 300) and Communications Law (COMS 400) are part of the foundation of journalism education.
Start early, work hard, and see if you love it
So — Are you are certain about a career in the media? Then don’t wait to take your major classes until your junior year. The conventional idea that you should “get your General Education courses out of the way first” is OK for people who are not certain, but it is not always appropriate for communication or journalism majors.
My advice is to take your major classes as early as possible so that you can spend time building your portfolio and developing your skills.
It’s also a good idea to take classes that will help in your line of work. Advertising majors will want to take consumer psychology. Journalists need political science and history. Production majors need cinema history and theater lighting. And so on…
One more point: try to master every technique you come across. Don’t just “take” digital imaging. Learn how to prepare photos for the web, take time-lapse video, create animations, and learn everything you can. This is not about school. This is about your career and success.
The RU curriculum
In order to graduate you must earn 120 credit hours. These are usually in 3-hour classes each semester, and students generally take four or five three-hour classes. The ‘traditional’ approach is to take five 3-hour classes, for 15 hours per semester, over eight semesters in four years. (There is nothing to say that you must use the traditional approach. Everyone is different.)
Journalism concentration – 42 hours
The journalism / media studies major requires 36 hours in the major and six more hours in the Communication Core.
School of Communication Core (6 hrs)
COMS 130 — Introduction to Mass Communications
COMS 330 — Media Theory
Journalism sequence (15 hrs)
COMS 104 — Basic news writing
COMS 204 — News reporting (spring only)
COMS 304 — Electronic news gathering (fall only)
COMS 404 — Advanced reporting (spring only)
COMS 481 — Journalism portfolio (spring only)
COMS 499 — Journalism Internship (up to six hours of credit) (Elective)
Media skills sequence (9 hrs)
(all required except 305)
COMS 146 — Media Production 1
or COMS 236 — Publication Planning ‘
COMS 226 — Digital imaging / photography
COMS 305 — Digital storytelling, drone video, livestreaming (Elective)
COMS 326 — Data driven web design
Media history, law and context (12 hours)
COMS 100 — 400 any course (elective)
COMS 300 – 400 (6 hours of electives) — Recommended:
COMS 300 — Media history (elective)
COMS 335 — Media & Society (elective)
COMS 400 — Communication Law & Ethics (required)
Things to watch out for:
- GPA — The required GPA for graduation is 2.25 in all courses.
- Course levels — At least two of the three COMS elective requirements specify 300 or 400-level courses.
- The 40% rule — If you are transferring, you have to earn at least 40 % of your credits at RU in order to graduate here. The best advice on these an other tricky transfer questions comes from the CHBS advising center, but also you should know that if you take a higher level course that doesnt automatically transfer, you can ask the department chair whether it shouldn’t count for credit at RU.
Things to consider:
- BA or BS? — The only real distinction between these two types of diplomas is whether you take extra science and social science courses for the B.S. or study a foreign language for the B.A. In an era of global communication, the choice of a foreign language ought to be rather obvious.
- Internships — The internship supervisor is Betty Kennan. Internships are a great idea, strongly endorsed, but not mandatory.
- Graduation ceremony — It’s possible to participate in the graduation ceremony with 6 credit hours left to go. Those six hours could be internships or online courses, so you dont have to stay in residence at the university.
The graduation process
When you are in your senior year, and have perhaps 25 to 30 credit hours left to take, you’ll fill out the paper graduation application and visit with your advisor.
If you have electives to take, you can simply write in “electives” in the appropriate spot in the lower right on the form. You don’t have to be specific about your course choices at this point.
In addition to the paper graduation sheet you go over with your advisor, there is a new online application available through Banner SSB on the MyRU Portal. From the MyRU Portal, click on the Academics icon then Banner SSB Student Menu. This should default to the Student tab at the top. If not, select Student from the top options. Then choose Student Records and click on “Apply to Graduate.”
There are instructions at the top of each page to help you fill out the application correctly. The confirmation page also includes next steps for various situations. The online applications are usually only open for a month or so. If you have problems, call the CHBS advising center
So…. How do you use your education to launch a real media career?
When you graduate, you will have a sound liberal arts education. That’s the main thing. Then you should also have:
- A set of skills you gain from skills classes, such as web design or print production or video editing
- A portfolio (online in various forms, and also in print and on DVD ) of your published work in journalism, advertising and/or production.
- Work experience with media, possibly student media but preferably local and regional news organizations;
- Volunteer work experience and holiday mini-internships with professional media
- Professional internships.
At this point you hit the jobs boards, send your resume in a thousand different directions, volunteer as a freelancer, and get used to being constantly proactive.
Learn to serve
In the print shops and “chapels” of the 18th and 19th centuries, the printers did not expect to make a living by writing about public affairs. The newspaper was a kind of loss-leader that brought in customers for other kinds of printing and publishing services.
Today, individuals and communities have many publishing needs that are not being served by businesses. If you can find those needs, and find ways to serve them that include the community, then you can help re-discover the financial foundations of the media industry.
For instance, how can video be streamed and/or recorded from community news, sports and cultural events? How can families create compilations of their videos? How can authors collaborate on publishing enterprises? Some ideas about new models for the media are here, on the Revolutions in Communication site.
Now for some general advice.
First and foremost, be proactive. Carpe diem. Don’t wait around for someone else to help you — it probably wont happen. You have to help yourself. Faculty and staff at RU are doing their best, but we are constantly chasing feathers in the windstorm. The fact is that higher education in Virginia is grossly underfunded. This is particularly true of RU and even more particularly true of the School of Communication.
So? Let’s face it: you have to think ahead for yourself, plan your own schedule, develop your own portfolio and think about what will happen when you graduate. It’s unfortunate, but many people graduate with a diploma in communication and can’t find work in the field. That’s not because they weren’t smart or even deserving. It’s usually because they didn’t prepare. You don’t want to be among them.
British engineer Harry Ricardo once said something that might be helpful. [Ricardo was famous for designing the Rolls Royce Merlin engine that was used in British Spitfire airplanes in WWII.]
First and foremost, make up your mind what to go for, that is to say, what in your judgement, will be likely to fulfill a need in say four or five years’ time; having once decided, keep that objective always clearly in view. Do not let yourself be cast down by disappointment, or too elated by those initial successes which so often prove to be only transitory. Do not be afraid of failures. In my experience one learns as much, or possibly more, from one’s failures, and I have been responsible for many, as from one’s successes; the downright failure is always instructive and is usually fairly early apparent before it has cost an undue amount of time or money. The real danger, and by far the most difficult to cope with, is partial success, the achievement which is either not quite good enough, or for which the need is passing. To cope with this taxes one’s judgment to the limit; it requires all one’s strength of mind to break off when cool judgment counsels the abandonment of a project to which one has grown very attached…
From: The Ricardo Story: The autobiography of Sir Harry Ricardo, Pioneer of Engine Research, SAE Historical Series, Warrendale, PA, 1992
Learn how to learn.Whatever field you go into, you need to be able to master the subject and be prepared to make a contribution.
Prof. Barbara Oakley talks about the learning process and what we can do to understand it and use it for success. Also, understanding memory and memorization processes will help. Mnemonics, pegs and loci are also keys to these abilities. You can, as they say, “train your brain” to be more successful.
Be yourself. Don’t feel like you have to “sell your soul.” Your time and work is all that any sane employer needs anyway. Here’s what Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten had to say a few years ago:
“These are financially troubled times for our profession … and it is disheartening to learn that journalism schools are responding to this challenge by urging their students to market themselves like Cheez Doodles.” Gene Weingarten, Washington Post.
He’s right. There’s no need to be a cheese doodle. Be your own best self. Cant find reporting work? Get a job driving an ice cream truck and write about that. Get a job as a bouncer at a bar and write about that…
Be confident. The future will rely on humanities majors, or at least, that’s what Tyrus Miller of the University of California argues in this insightful article.