Overview

Reporting and writing are the central disciplines of journalism. Accordingly, the core of the ACJ curriculum in the first term is an extensive series of lectures and workshops on gathering and presenting news in the core stream (New Media, Print or Broadcast, as the case may be).

Through laboratory exercises and field assignments, students learn to seek out information and convey it in journalistic form. This experience helps them develop the variety of skills indispensable to all branches of journalism; in particular, the ability to write clear, straightforward, and concise English. In similar lectures and workshops, students learn to edit news copy and to write headlines for the core stream (New Media, Print or Broadcast, as the case may be).

Print students learn the basics of page design and layout and New Media students learn basics of coding and web design. Broadcast students learn camera techniques and video editing.

During this term, all students are required to attend a series of substantive lectures, designed to introduce them to the history of the media, to the legal and other aspects of professional journalism, and to many of the critical economic, political, social, and environmental issues of our times. These lectures, offered by outstanding scholars and media practitioners, reflect a central conviction of the Trustees of the Media Development Foundation: that journalists, especially in Asian countries today, have an important role to play in increasing public understanding of the fundamental and often complex problems of our societies, avoiding the traps of superficiality and dilettantism.

There are five required courses in the first term: Reporting, Writing and Editing; Tools of the Modern Journalist; Key Issues in Journalism; Media Perspectives; and The Media, Law and Society.

Critical analysis of the existing news media is another important element of the curriculum in the first term. This exercise helps future journalists become aware that the way in which an event is viewed and reported depends to a great extent on the imperatives of the medium in question and on restrictions imposed by shifting outside influences.

Second Term
In the second term, students continue to pursue their core stream specialisations, producing work of increasing range and complexity. They learn to select, report, edit, and produce pieces in the form required by the particular stream they have chosen. Under the guidance of professionals, they develop their skills in interviewing, researching and news gathering, and sharpen their ability to recognise and develop stories. They use the Internet and other information and data resources to discover new angles to the stories they are working on as well as new ideas for stories.

Apart from acquiring the skills to write editorials, opinion pieces and news features with detailed reportage, students in the print stream will learn to publish a lab newspaper and produce multimedia news stories for the print.acjnewsline.com and word.acjnewsline.com.

Students in the broadcast stream learn writing for TV, Camera, Editing and Studio Techniques. They start producing TV programmes and documentaries.

New Media students produce a weekly e-zine of news and public affairs: www.acjnewsline.org

Students take one or two of the three mandatory electives during this term. Students get to select from a wide range of journalism- and domain-related subjects. Click here for the full list.

The students start their integration course in the second term wherein they are first taught the fundamentals of the chosen course.

Reporting on weather patterns is also part of the curriculum. With realtime data generated by the weather station installed on the terrace of the academic block in collaboration with The Weather Company, an IBM business, students can forecast the weather for the next fortnight. With the historical data available on the Weather Company’s website, they can study the changes in the weather patterns over the years.

In the third term, students further enhance and hone their skills in their streams of specialisation. They also continue to take elective courses.

Much of this final term is devoted to two major pieces of work required of all students — the Investigative Report and the Dissertation.

In the third term, the students conclude the integration course with a capstone project.