Online Master of Arts
Digital Journalism
St. Bonaventure University’s (SBU) online Master of Arts in Digital Journalism goes beyond traditional journalism skills, such as writing, reporting, and editing—competencies that are still essential—and allows you to master the art of digital media and connect with audiences on a wide range of platforms.
Offered at the ACEJMC-accredited Jandoli School of Communication, the digital journalism master’s program offers you an unparalleled education, enriched by its long legacy of journalistic excellence that adheres to the highest standards in the industry, including in areas such as curriculum, diversity, inclusion and ethics.
Our program combines traditional journalism with technology, all shaped within a moral and ethical framework reflecting our Franciscan values.
In particular, students will learn how to:
- Incorporate digital news into the broader scope of journalism
- Demonstrate foundational skills in photography, video, design, and audio
- Code with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other tools to master digital storytelling and produce compelling media elements
- Report stories and digital news in real-time via social media
- Build your personal brand as a journalist
- Analyze data to understand content consumption and user behavior
- Develop, research, and execute a major journalism project
This is the foundational course in digital journalism. Students will contextualize the role of digital journalism in our rapidly changing society and media landscape. There will be a focus on how diverse audiences interact with journalism and how journalists cover issues of race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual misconduct and other contemporary issues. The course also covers the forces affecting change in the industry and how flexibility, agility and adaptability are crucial for digital journalists and open up many career possibilities.
This course will examine the ethical issues journalists face doing their job and how that comports with the highest ideals of the profession. The intersection of ethics and law and major principles of media law will be discussed including prior restraint, privacy, libel and copyright. How journalists can use public records is also a focus.
The practice and study of using social media for journalism. The course will include an overview of social media platforms and using them to cover news with speed and accuracy, including for breaking news. Also discussed are ways to use social media to build a brand and promote journalistic work.
This course helps journalists understand data and how to use it to inform the public. Students will explore databases and how to use digital tools to analyze and present data.
This course focuses on the web programming languages used to create interactive digital storytelling packages that include multiple media elements. Students will learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery, among other tools for interactive storytelling, and apply those to produce significant journalistic work.
A three-course sequence (JMC 701, 702, and 703) in which students research, report and present a major digital journalism project. The project is designed to let students push their journalistic storytelling in a long-form project where they will incorporate the many techniques, tools and ideals taught throughout their master’s program.
The final project should be the most profound piece of journalism students have produced to date.
