Please, help! Journalism in Stanford.

LucasMendes · July 2, 2012, 5:28pm

Hi, I hope you can help with this doubt

I am very interested in a transfer to Stanford to complete my undergraduation, but I’m a journalism student. I want to know, if is possible attend for some department of Stanford, maybe i’m wrong, but they don’t have a specific course in this area

Thank you for your attention.

kelsey11 · July 2, 2012, 5:31pm

they don’t have a journalism class at stanford? I’m pretty sure they do

LucasMendes · July 2, 2012, 6:03pm

As i said. Maybe i’m wrong, but i’m almost sure they don’t.

simba9 · July 4, 2012, 11:27pm

You can send an email to the Stanford Daily -

<a href=“http://www.stanforddaily.com/about/[/url]”>http://www.stanforddaily.com/about/</a>

Other than that, I know nothing about Stanford Journalism.

docfreedaddy · July 22, 2012, 10:10pm

Stanford has limited offerings in journalism, though what they do have is likely good quality. If you want a coherent, well-designed program that is acknowledged as excellent at another well-regarded, private California university, review the offerings at USC’s Annenberg school ([USC</a> Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism](<a href=“http://annenberg.usc.edu/]USC”>http://annenberg.usc.edu/))

zenkoan · July 22, 2012, 11:40pm

LucasMendes, to view Stanford’s course offerings in journalism, go to explorecourses.stanford.edu/browse and enter “journalism” in the search box. It will return several dozen courses in journalism and related topics. As in many other areas, Stanford offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of journalism. Many journalism courses are offered by the Communications Department (Communications being a frequently-selected major by aspiring journalists at Stanford and elsewhere), and some are offered by other departments such as Anthropology, English, various Lit departments, film studies, etc. Cheers.

docfreedaddy · July 22, 2012, 11:51pm

Good advice from Zenkoan, but observe carefully the prerequisites as most courses are for graduate students. I would encourage you to compare the offerings with a well-developed undergraduate journalism program such as Northwestern and USC offer.

zenkoan · July 23, 2012, 12:19am

There are a good number of intro-level courses among the listings. Additionally, at Stanford, prereqs function as recommendations rather than requirements; they are more advisory in nature regarding the expected knowledge base for students choosing a class, and they aren’t enforced. We’re not only allowed, but encouraged, to take grad-level courses as undergrads if we have the necessary preparation. This is a very valuable feature of the academic experience for me here, and I’m sure it is for many of my classmates as well.

docfreedaddy · July 23, 2012, 1:03am

Zenkoan provides sound advice in general. During admit weekend the Stanford journalism advisor indicated graduate courses were not always available to undergraduates because of the relatively few number of offerings vs. graduate student demand for courses.

Keep in mind as well, Stanford’s graduate program in Journalism was ranked #19, while Syracuse, Northwestern, Columbia, University of Missiouri at Columbia and USC were ranked #1-#5. <a href=“http://www.tvweek.com/np51_28pg_SinglePg.pdf[/url]”>http://www.tvweek.com/np51_28pg_SinglePg.pdf</a>

If you wish to remain in California, you might carefully compare the sequence of course offerings and integrated internships from Annenberg, (<a href=“http://www.usc.edu/dept/publications/cat2012/private/pdf/2012_2013/communication_and_journalism_12.pdf[/url]”>http://www.usc.edu/dept/publications/cat2012/private/pdf/2012_2013/communication_and_journalism_12.pdf</a>) with those courses offered from Stanford and confirmed as potentially available to you as an undergraduate. Stanford does not offer internships, though assists in the application process for internship placements.

zenkoan · July 23, 2012, 2:24am

Actually, Stanford’s graduate communications department (which houses its graduate journalism concentration) was the top-rated program in the most recent ranking conducted by the National Research Council, which uses actual quantifiable metrics among its assessment tools:

“Stanford’s Department of Communication got the top rating overall in a ﬁeld of 83 programs
ranked in the ﬁrst evaluation of graduate programs in Communication by the National Research
Council. Completed over ﬁve years, the 2010 rankings of doctoral programs by the National
Research Council used two methods to produce ﬁnal program assessments. Stanford
Communication was the only program to place in the top category according to both methods
used in the report. The rankings were comprised of surveys completed by faculty peers and
regression modeling based on a series of eight indicators of faculty and graduate student merit
(publications per faculty, citations, percent of faculty with grants, awards per faculty member,
support for new students, average completion rate, time to degree and Ph.D. graduates with
academic jobs).” More here: <a href=“http://comm.stanford.edu/events/2010/nationalresearchcouncil.pdf[/url]”>http://comm.stanford.edu/events/2010/nationalresearchcouncil.pdf</a>

(And btw, that opinion poll by readers of the tv magazine didn’t rank Stanford #19; they just listed #11-25 in alphabetical order. Lol.)

docfreedaddy · July 23, 2012, 2:44am

Zenkoan makes several good points. The NRC provides a ranking of Ph.D programs heavily geared toward academia, not undergraduate study.

He does provide an unfortunate bias as well referring to NewsPro, a publication for news professionals, as a “tv magazine”.

Again, research the programs carefully. You state you are a undergraduate, not a Ph.D candidate. Are you interested in an academic or professional career? Be careful of bias and seek information from various undergraduate journalism programs.

docfreedaddy · July 23, 2012, 3:03am

Here is a link to the NRC Communication ranking system. [NRC</a> Rankings Overview: Communication - Faculty - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“NRC Rankings Overview: Communication”>NRC Rankings Overview: Communication)

There is no NRC ranking for Ph.d journalism programs . You will need to determine for yourself the degree the ranking is valid for your decision-making. It appears Stanford rated well primarily as a program to prepare you as a Ph.D candidate for an academic career in Communications. Newspro rankings are clearly geared toward professional journalism career preparation. Stanford was not rated in the top 10 in this regard.

phantasmagoric · July 23, 2012, 7:27am

As said, look to the communication department. At most elite private universities, journalism is seen as “not worthwhile” for undergraduates: it’s a professional discipline, and instead they steer you to more academic subjects that will prepare you for a professional degree. Similarly, you cannot major in business, but you can major in econ or MS&E; you can’t do architecture, but you can do civil engineering and focus in architectural design; you can’t do medicine, but you can do human biology; you can’t do journalism, but you can do communication; and so on. Stanford and other top privates see an undergraduate education as a time for intellectual exploration, not for professional preparation. Because of this, these more academic analogues prepare you for graduate study in professional disciplines, when it is more appropriate to get a degree in them; lower-ranked schools are typically the only ones to offer undergraduate degrees in professional disciplines. With few exceptions (e.g. Penn allows you to major in business), elite private schools will steer undergrads to a more academic subject over a professional one. If you want to get a professional journalism degree at the undergraduate level, you should look at public universities or non-elite private universities. There’s also Northwestern, but it’s notoriously difficult to get into.

Stanford has the undisputed top-ranked comm department. NRC largely ranks based on the quality of the faculty, which is relevant to undergraduates as well and which determines more or less everything about the department, from programs to facilities. You know that you will be working with the most renowned professors in the field; that you can get involved in the most innovative research; that the department is well-funded, which means better facilities, smaller classes, more opportunities like summer internships, etc.; and so on.

An undergraduate comm degree from Stanford will take you just as far as and likely even farther (given Stanford’s name) than an undergraduate degree in journalism from a school like Mizzou, USC, and the like.

sally305 · July 23, 2012, 7:54am

<h2>“An undergraduate comm degree from Stanford will take you just as far as and likely even farther (given Stanford’s name) than an undergraduate degree in journalism from a school like Mizzou, USC, and the like.”</h2>

Not true. If the OP truly wants to get into journalism, he will develop far better experience, have access to many more internships opportunities and cultivate much more extensive industry contacts at Mizzou, USC, Northwestern, Syracuse, UNC, etc. NRC data is pretty meaningless for an undergrad heading directly into the workforce after college, IMO–it evaluates doctoral programs on their research quality.

phantasmagoric · July 23, 2012, 9:06am

^ How can you possibly prove that they would develop “better experience”? And can you prove that Stanford undergrads are at a disadvantage in internships, relative to these other universities? NRC rankings, and other graduate rankings, are certainly not meaningless for undergrads; this is a myth propagated by those who don’t understand how intertwined undergraduate and graduate education is at elite universities. As I said before, NRC isn’t so much evaluating doctoral programs as it is evaluating the faculty, which of course is what is most important to a PhD student. But the quality of the faculty, again, determines almost everything about the department (from funding to facilities to programs…), including what is most relevant to undergrads.

I’ve been on CC longer than my join date will say, and I’ve seen this absurd argument over and over and over again. Not once has anyone - and I mean anyone - been able to demonstrate that the factors that lead to a high rank in a grad school ranking are somehow different for undergrads. It just makes no sense to assume that the two are separate. It makes even less sense at Stanford, where the two are more heavily integrated than at most universities.

Stanford doesn’t officially have a “journalism” major, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have the opportunities or a strong network. These are just some of its alumni in journalism and media:

[List</a> of Stanford University people - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“List of Stanford University people - Wikipedia”>List of Stanford University people - Wikipedia)

The undergrad journalism major is not well-respected in industry. Most need to go for a graduate degree, and even then, journalism degrees are not particularly impressive, which is why the average salary is so low; they’re a dime-a-dozen. But a Stanford degree is not, and as I said, given the name of Stanford, it would take you just as far if not farther. Stanford’s alumni network is quite powerful and well-connected across almost all industries and sectors.

Turn on the TV and you’ll see Stanford alumni on MSNBC, Fox, and more. Flip to ESPN and you’ll see alumni of USC. ;)

sally305 · July 23, 2012, 11:29am

^^This post is so fully of false claims I don’t even know where to start.

The “better experience” at top journalism programs involves real opportunities to work IN THE FIELD during the undergraduate years. Mizzou has its own NBC/CNN affiliate, public radio station, a newspaper and a magazine. Undergraduates work at all of these places. Medill (Northwestern) sends its students away for a term during junior year for residency programs at newspapers, magazines, TV/radio stations, and online news outlets around the U.S., Latin America, the Middle East, and South Africa. USC uses the LA media market as a working laboratory for its students. And all of these schools, and many others, have Pulitzer-winning journalists among the faculty who teach undergrads.

What you don’t seem to understand is that there is a huge difference between theory and practice in journalism. It is simply not true that undergraduate journalism degrees are not respected in industry, or that “most need to go for a graduate degree.” Nor does the fact that some Stanford alums end up working in the media diminish the value of programs that focus more intensively on preparing undergrads for media careers. There’s no question that students who have been taking classes from actual journalists and working in real media as undergrads have a wider range of industry connections, starting earlier in their college years, than those who don’t. Go ahead and look at the list of alums of top journalism schools and see where they are working. There is no comparison, despite your “scientific” observation from watching television.

phantasmagoric · July 23, 2012, 1:05pm

Stanford has its own radio station, newspaper, magazine, and lots of other publications. Nothing stops students from interning at major news organizations; indeed, many do. The reality is that internships are mostly for the summer, and students are certainly not at a disadvantage there: news organizations recruit from Stanford as well. And I daresay the Stanford name gives them a leg-up in a world where credibility and reputation are of utmost importance.

Re: internships, you might look at this:

[Communication:</a> Internship Office](<a href=“http://comm.stanford.edu/internships/]Communication:”>Internship Office)

Stanford has 4 Pulitzer Prize winners among its faculty (who do teach undergrads). That’s more than USC.

To be honest, I have never heard anyone contest the point that jundergrad ournalism degrees are a dime-a-dozen and aren’t particularly useful. Most major players in the media don’t even have a journalism degree.

You clearly don’t know much about Stanford’s comm department, and are assuming that it’s inferior because it doesn’t have “journalism” in the name. The reality is that the two areas - journalism and communication - are two sides of the same coin, and indeed many j-schools are actually schools of communication. Stanford is not at a disadvantage as a result: news organizations are keenly aware of which schools are at the top, for either journalism or communication, and that has an influence on where they recruit, either for jobs or for internships.

I have no doubt that USC, Mizzou, Columbia, etc. have a much longer list of prominent alumni in media. But that’s largely a function of size: they have entire schools devoted to it, whereas Stanford has only a department. On a per-capita basis, I’m sure Stanford holds its own against them, and maybe even surpasses them.

sally305 · July 23, 2012, 2:24pm

The difference is, at Stanford the primary opportunities are limited to campus media during the year and internships (potentially in “real” media) over the summer. At a J-school students have significant real-world opportunities at real-world media outlets during the school year AND over the summer. That gives them an edge when they are applying for their first jobs out of college.

I also don’t see how you can argue at the same time that journalism curriculum is useful but the degree is not. What’s more “useful” then, a BA in English or philosophy? At Northwestern, journalism classes represent only 25 percent of students’ transcripts–they take a ton of other classes in, and often double major in, other areas as well. I imagine the same is true of other universities with journalism programs, even if they are not in the same “elite” category as Northwestern and Stanford.

No one is disputing the quality of a Stanford education for most fields. But if you surveyed media employers on who they would be more likely to hire–a Stanford grad with a BA in communications and a few samples of articles from the Stanford alumni magazine or a USC or Mizzou grad with published clips from a real newspaper or a reel from an affiliate news station under their belt, most would choose the latter.

phantasmagoric · July 23, 2012, 4:19pm

Of course, I will give you this, but add an additional caveat: does it really matter whether there are opportunities during the school year? Most students simply don’t have the time or energy to focus on an internship or whathaveyou in addition to their classes and other extracurriculars. This same logic has been applied to Stanford and Silicon Valley, and NYC universities and finance. Sure, the opportunities are there year-round, but are students able to take advantage of them? For the overwhelming majority of students, no. (And it’s not as though the SF Bay Area is bereft of media anyway.)

Even if they were, is this marginal advantage during the school year important enough for someone to turn down the #1 comm department for Mizzou, USC, etc.? No, that would be stupid. [I’m not saying there aren’t reasons to turn down Stanford for these schools if you’re interested in journalism - just that this particular factor is relatively useless.]

Where have I said that? I’m merely countering the notion that a journalism degree confers an advantage over a comm degree from Stanford simply because the former is ‘journalism.’ That’s simply not the case, considering how industry views the journalism degree (dime-a-dozen).

What is your basis for believing this? Or are you just guessing, based on your own biases?

sally305 · July 23, 2012, 5:16pm

^^As a hiring manager in both editorial and marketing/advertising organizations since my mid-20s, I have had literally decades of experience selecting writers, designers and editors for jobs. Where someone went to school usually only matters for the FIRST job, and in almost every entry-level case I will favor someone from a program whose quality I know–preferably with actual media experience and at least a small portfolio of published work–over one I don’t, regardless of how prestigious the institution is that they graduated from.

There is not a “marginal” benefit to having a three-month full-time job as a reporter or writer in college, as Northwestern offers its journalism students during the academic year. It is a significant differentiator and a launchpad for many to get their first jobs–as well as a way to enable them to refine their interests before they graduate. The same can be true on a smaller scale for a student who spends 10 to 15 hours a week writing for a local paper or website. Experience is experience. And it can make it easier to get a summer job, potentially one with actual pay and more substantive work than some internships offer.

You say, “I’m merely countering the notion that a journalism degree confers an advantage over a comm degree from Stanford simply because the former is ‘journalism.’ That’s simply not the case, considering how industry views the journalism degree (dime-a-dozen).”

What is your basis for believing this? Your own biases that Stanford is better for everything?

Also, I don’t want to hijack this thread but the question of whether research excellence at the PhD level “trickles down” in a meaningful way to undergrads is one that has not been settled conclusively. Stanford having the “#1 communications department” when a lot of the metrics center around graduate-level work is not a compelling benefit to most 18- to 22-year-olds who want to do hands-on work in small classes, develop close relationships with professors, and wind up with a four-year degree that leads to a job in their field.

Please, help! Journalism in Stanford.

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