The Journalism program aims at preparing a generation of highly skilled, ethically-grounded Arab journalists who are both aware of contemporary social changes and equipped with the ability to operate successfully in multiplatform news environments. The program focuses on technical and professional journalistic skills and emphasizes journalistic principles of neutrality, independence, accuracy, and fairness. Program graduates will also acquire research tools and skills and broad understanding of issues in media studies, the social sciences and humanities. Coursework emphasizes newswriting and reporting for print journalism, writing for new media, multimedia storytelling, data journalism, and video production, among other areas.
The Journalism MA program is to be completed over two academic years, and consists of a total of 42 credit hours. In all, students register for nine 3-credit Journalism program courses (for a total of 27 credit hours). As outlined below, these nine Journalism courses include seven core program courses and two program elective courses. In addition to these nine Journalism courses, students register for three 3-credit extra-disciplinary courses (for a total of 9 credit hours), and either a 6-credit MA thesis or a 6-credit journalism capstone project. Students are also required to complete a non-credited 70-hour summer internship at a media institution located inside Qatar. Most of our students complete their internship at Al-Jazeera, which is situated near the Doha Institute, but several other options are available for students wishing to focus on other kinds of news production. The internship is completed in the summer between students' first and second years in the program.
Journalism Program Learning Outcomes:
1. Demonstrate sound news judgment and an appreciation of news worthiness.
2. Apply journalistic and ethical principles to original news reports.
3. Understand key journalism theories and be able to apply them to primary journalism research.
4. Apply research methods to an original journalism problem.
5. Analyze large datasets to produce original news reports.
6. Apply the techniques and skills of gathering and writing news, selecting sources, and interviewing.
7. Create multimedia storytelling projects.
8. Produce video news reports.
