Welcome to Professor Malcolm Gibson's International Journalism (JOUR 502), a seminar-style class that meets 1-2:15 p.m. each Tuesday and Thursday at Room 204 Stauffer-Flint.
     This is a research class, so it demands a good bit of discipline and initiative on your part. Your success in this class will be determined by how seriously you take on the assignments and how hard you work. 
     Its purpose is for you to develop an understanding of how international journalism works and how to make it as good as it can be. It is not a class to turn you into a foreign correspondent. (There are fewer and fewer of those, an issue we will discuss the first day and an issue that makes the point of this class even more relevant.) Nevertheless, it will help journalists and non-journalists to be more sensitive of their surroundings and to come away with a better understanding of events as they unfold before them. So, in the end, I believe those who take the class will be better observers of the world around them — which is important to all reporters, editors, communicators and participants on the world's ever-smaller stage.
    Now that I've told it how it really is, here's the official description of the course:

International Journalism (JOUR 502) is a seminar-style class that examines the dynamics of journalism, especially in the developing world, with Africa as a special focus. It allows students — both journalists and non-journalists — to chart their own courses to gain a better understanding of the world around them. Using journalism and its relationship to the developing world, particularly Africa, as a benchmark, participants uncover how the gathering and presentation of news affects the world around them. They discover how media touch — and are touched by — all aspects of the societies media serve. To lead students along that path, the course puts so-called “parachute journalism” — stories by journalists who are often ill-prepared to report from their environments — under the microscope. Ultimately, the class seeks to show what good journalism is, what its effects are, and how best it can be achieved in an international setting. A strong element of the class is an individually selected research project. Each student will select a particular event, issue or personality and explore media influence.

    Good luck. And don't forget to bring doughnuts!