Journalism

It is essential to understand the evolving relationship between the news marketplace and its consumers, which will be the focus of Multimedia Marketplace. Readings, guest lectures, and instruction will attend to industry trends and innovations with regard to mass communication organizations and business models both in India and globally.

A foundational course for all future skills classes introducing students to essentials of “good” journalism. This course covers the basics of reporting and writing, including researching and gathering information, organizing and structuring a story, and writing effective and engaging prose. Students will learn how to conduct interviews, verify facts, and use various storytelling techniques to create compelling articles and reports. Students also learn to appreciate how reportage is different from “PR writing”.

Based on their respective backgrounds, locations and family histories, students have a very different understanding of contemporary India. This course aims to bridge that gap by focusing on the social, economic and cultural trajectory of India since independence enabling students to understand the country more holistically in order to become journalists here.

The objective of this course is to equip students with an appreciation of why journalism matters in a modern society. Its role in both western and non wetsern democracies will be emphasized. The course will also cover a brief history of journalism and its evolution with social change. Finally,the class will emphasise why journalism still matters when ordinary citizens can create and disseminate news and information.

Students will begin their exposure data and social science research. They will focus on how to read the relevant academic literature, evaluate its quality and contribution, and interview researchers in a manner that contributes to more relevant, sensitive and contextual communication.

In Media Law and Policy, faculty will work with students to develop a framework for ethical decision making and practices, which students will utilize throughout their time at Jio Institute and also in their professional careers. Additionally, this course will focus on cyber law, copyright, and the application of Indian law, while considering the global context.

Expanding on what they learnt in Multimedia Marketplace, the goal is to provide a sophisticated analytical framework that will be applicable throughout students’ careers regardless of the state of innovation in the field. We will focus on how and why individuals consume or avoid media experiences, and how channel-specific experiences influence reporting, storytelling and revenue opportunities. We will develop a sense of the rapidly changing communication industry, including attention to the evolving business models, as well as the intellectual tools for students to adjust and lead as that industry changes in the future. It will also familiarise students with the tools to assess and analyse audience-related datasets, to understand and segment audiences in traditional and digital media, and learn how to use such data in order to make informed decisions.

Students will get hands on with different data techniques. This course will focus on data quality and sourcing, and basic concepts and techniques of analysis including percent change, inference, correlation, causation, polling, and probability. In addition, students will be trained to discover insights through data analysis and how to effectively communicate those stories to lay audiences across channels. 

This course will prepare students to produce ‘text’ content across channels like print, digital, magazine, etc., and determine which media are appropriate for each story and audience. This class will involve classroom instruction and extensive lab work.

This course will prepare students to produce ‘text’ content for audio and video channels like broadcast, podcast, YouTube, documentary, etc. Students will be exposed to a state-of-the-art studio and sound lab as part of this course. This class will involve classroom instruction and extensive lab work.

Students will be exposed to a fully functional studio as part of this course and learn technical as well as nuances of video development including shooting, production, post-production, etc.

Students will be exposed to a fully functional studio as part of this course and learn technical as well as nuances of audio development including recording, production, post-production, etc.

To ensure that communication is always thoughtful and in keeping with the highest ethical standards, students will undertake the course - Sourcing and Fact Checking. Additionally, this course will focus on the questions and quandaries that communicators face related to verification.

Students will learn and implement best practices across popular social media channels for publishing, but also be exposed to lessons that will inform decision making for future enterprises.

This will prepare students with the essential skills required for journalists in conducting interviews. This involves roles in on-air live news broadcasts and also for other digital productions.

This course will introduce students to the basics of photography in journalism. They will learn the principles and tools of photography and apply them through the equipment at the inhouse studio.

The course will equip students to cover Indian daily politics and elections in original, lively and sophisticated ways. It will combine instruction in the subject matter and structure of Indian politics with material on specialized reporting and writing methods. It will also educate students on how to best cultivate and work with official and unofficial sources.

This course will introduce students to reporting and writing for science & health. Students will learn to find sources, evaluate information, write science & health news. They will also study and explore prominent science & health pieces and relevant journalists.

This course will provide a basic understanding of business and economics which is essential for conducting a more informed business reporting. Through analysing economic and market data, as well as emphasising contemporary national and global issues, students will learn how to present business stories incorporating business vocabulary and numbers.

Journalism is often accused of focusing excessively on the centre and ignoring the peripheries. Yet for most people it is local news that drives relevance. Thus, local outlets need to decide a right balance of local vs national stories and cover each differently. This course gets into the nuance of reporting and writing differently for local audiences, incorporating nuances of language, form, and content

This course will introduce students to world of sports journalism. They will learn to develop sources, cover sports stories, interview athletes & relevant authorities, and perform on deadlines in the fast-paced environment of covering sports.

This course will build on the earlier course Data Journalism, taking the students to more advanced techniques involved in analysing and reporting data-driven stories. The focus will be more on algorithmic and programming methodologies of data sourcing, analysis and visualisation.

The course will examine global issues such as climate change and migration, and also address the dynamics of collective behavior including emerging situations of ethnic conflict, resurgent nationalism and populism.

The course will explore the immersive space (cinematic virtual reality, and augmented reality), journalism's newest reporting and storytelling tool. This course will teach 360-degree video production and postproduction, and explore best practices and methods in this emerging medium. Students will produce an immersive short film project in this course.

This course will deep dive into the area of development studies. This will cover ‘development’ across societies, geographies, and timelines. Students will go into the depth of understanding ‘development as a process’, the intellectual history, the paradigm shifts and the contemporary relevance. It will also cover aspects of development policy and practice.

Students will be open to take electives from DM&MC and Sports management programmes, which will be running concurrently on campus.

Jio Institute shall invite industry experts for guest lectures, hands-on workshops, and networking for the students. In the title Journalism for ‘X’, the letter ‘X’ refers to the vast areas across which journalism can be explored. This includes politics, governance, health, technology, business, finance, sports, agriculture, education among others. The students are expected to engage in these sessions and make full use of it.

Every student shall be required to work on a major project termed as ‘Capstone’ and submit it towards the end of the programme. This is equivalent to a thesis submission of a Masters programme in terms of rigour and output expected. Through Capstone, students will be able to bring together their learnings from the programme and translate it into a major news documentary, feature-length writing piece, podcast, or any other immersive journalism project. It can also be a live industry project, an entrepreneurial venture or a scholarly research. Each Capstone project shall be guided by a mentor. 

All students would be required to complete an internship with one of the news & media organizations. This will be on-site internship, conducted at the location of the respective organization. The duration of the internship will be around 4 weeks. This would carry academic credits for students, and they would be required to submit a report/ presentation on their internship to the faculty in-charge when they are back on campus. 

The Journalism program student cohort will run a campus newspaper that covers some of the latest news from across India and the world in addition to campus news. 

To develop a holistic knowledge base and inculcate a culture of reading among students, a book reading module shall be run throughout the year. As part of this, a curated collection of books shall be shared with students. They will read the books allotted to them and give presentations to the batch on the review of the books.

A student club focussed on current affairs shall be developed. The club will conduct events and competitions which disseminates and celebrates knowledge in current affairs. Some of the activities of this club shall include – Quizzing, Debates, Extempore, Model United Nations.

A national level Journalism Conclave shall be conducted during the programme. This would be in line with a technical fest – bringing leading journalists & scholars together, discussing latest trends in the field and disseminating knowledge to the larger community.

Students are expected to keep themselves up-to-date with the relevant live projects, inter-college & intra-college events, and industry events, and actively participate in them. Jio Institute shall also share details about such events and mini live projects from time-to-time.

Jio Institute shall conduct various capsule courses to prepare students for placements. This shall include resume building, mock interviews, test prep, soft-skills training among others.     

In the Study Abroad module, tentatively scheduled during Quarter 3, students shall travel to study at campus of one of the partner universities in a foreign country. This shall include an academic module, industry immersion & cultural understanding. 

Media Studio is designed with state of the art equipment used in newsrooms for students to gain extensive practice in the technology and process of content creation. Students will get hands-on training in the audio, video, and social construction of media and the associated best practices in audience research.

Audio Editing Bay comprises acoustically treated rooms that will be equipped with sound-mixing consoles, associated software, surround sound, and amplification. These rooms will allow students to record and edit podcasts, and voice-overs for films and AR/VR applications.

Video Editing Bay includes state-of-the-art audio equipment and is also be outfitted for HD, Ultra-HD, and 4K video editing including Adobe Creative Suite software, a playback interface, a color console, and a professional reference monitor. In these rooms, students will be able to refine and edit video shorts, news pieces, feature-length stories, documentaries, and AR/VR content.
 

Production Control Lab will complement the media studio to mimic the environment and technological standards of the live creation of digital media and longer feature programming. Students will become skilled at lighting design, reading from a teleprompter, managing multiple audio and video inputs, in-ear communication and monitoring, robotic and person-operated cameras, pacing and voice, and collaborative construction of media at this lab.