First-Year Research Seminar: Journalistic Investigations

Catalog description

Journalistic Investigations will function like a real live newsroom. Each student will develop an original journalistic inquiry they will investigate through the course of the semester. Students will learn the fundamentals of investigative journalism, from identifying a project, to cultivating sources, to interviewing them, to keeping them apprised, to navigating the archive, to submitting a freedom of information act, to presenting their findings in an accessible format. Through the course of the semester, students will learn to take ownership of their own stories. They will also learn to show sustained and meaningful support for their peers. To learn how to structure our own investigations, we will read examples of investigations into war crimes, true crimes, Metoo, immigration, health, and other pressing issues by such practitioners as Hannah Dreier, Lizzie Presser, Caitlin Dickinson, and more. Students will learn: 1.) how to build an investigation; 2.) how to go about assembling the appropriate methodologies for journalistic inquiry; and 3.) how to put together what has been unearthed in the process in a journalistic format.