Two new graduate programs are aiming to propel students into 21st century journalism.

The S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications is introducing computational journalism and media and education in an effort to get ahead in an ever-changing media landscape.

“This is what’s so exciting about this field — it’s a fresh new field and our students will be trailblazers,” said Michael Schoonmaker, a co-director of the media and education program.

Student applications are already coming in for the first class. Stephen Masiclat, who will head the computational journalism program, said in an email that the first class will matriculate this summer.

Both programs aim to develop journalists and arm them with the values professional journalism requires, and were created through discussions with other schools on campus.

The media and education program is a collaboration between the Newhouse School and the School of Education, with co-directors Schoonmaker from Newhouse and Barbara Applebaum from the education school. Masiclat will lead the computational journalism program.

The computational journalism program came out of discussions between Associate Dean for Professional Graduate Studies of Newhouse Joel Kaplan and the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science. Masiclat was brought on to flesh it out.

Masiclat said he and other professors worked for over two years to create a curriculum that would prepare journalists to tell stories using 21st century technology.

“The goal of the computational journalism program is to train a generation of journalists to gather data from many disparate sources, or even develop their own data-gathering means, to tell important stories,” Masiclat said.

Masiclat added he hopes the computational journalism program will attract students who want to tell stories using large data sets or other information that is too complicated for traditional media.

The media and education program was the creation of Schoonmaker and Sari Knopp Biklen, who retired last year and has since passed away. Applebaum became involved after Biklen retired.

Schoonmaker said the program will expand upon traditional media by being one of the first universities in the nation to offer a program between a media and an education school.

“This is a program that brings two different cultures together: the culture of storytelling and the culture of education,” Schoonmaker said.

The goal of this program, Applebaum said, is for students to be able to comprehend and create media, but more so to use this media within the sphere of education. One of the education school’s specific goals is to teach students the social and political contexts of education.

Schoonmaker says the program includes a colloquium — an open forum — to aid students in making the connection between their more theoretical coursework in the education school and their more practical work in Newhouse.

“We don’t want students to be left alone to do that,” he said.

Applebaum said students will take a number of courses from the Cultural Foundations of Education department to gain an introductory study of education. A hallmark of the media and education program is its interdisciplinary nature.

“The culture of education is historically wary of media, especially entertainment media, which is where this program is based,” Schoonmaker said. “Luckily we have two schools that have seen the necessity of making that connection.”

Schoonmaker sees three potential arenas for graduates to enter — media education, educational aspects of the media industry and work with NGOs developing media and education systems in different countries.

“If you scan the universities of this great country, I dare you to find any media school working with any education school,” Schoonmaker said. “There’s such an exciting potential in this and I would watch for other universities to copy this.”

Published on January 12, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact Danny: dmantoot@syr.edu