Public Affairs Journalism (PAJ) teaches you how to investigate and disseminate news. Our multimedia focus prepares you to integrate this training with the multimedia skills necessary for packaging news stories with word, still photo, audio and video.
As a journalism student, you also are taught to consider the context in which you will practice the field, including an understanding of the social, legal and ethical implications that all journalists encounter.
Curriculum
Public Affairs Journalism (PAJ):
Degree plan:
View the General Education requirements for the Bachelor of Arts in Journalism degree.
Additional Information
Our students focus on reporting, interviewing, news writing and feature writing, as well as more interactive journalism such as blogging, micro blogging, social media and multimedia.
To better allow for domain-specific expertise, students in our journalism program complete a minor in an approved area-such as political science, international studies, business, criminology, etc.--that best fits their interests.
All journalism students further hone their "real-world" skills by working on our pride-and-joy publication, The Lantern, named Ohio's Best College Newspaper, as well as by participating in a journalism-related internship.
The Lantern has been an institution at Ohio State since 1800’s. Since then, it’s grown into a central pillar of our efforts to educate and train student journalists. The journalism program here stands out from other schools’ because the Lantern is a part of it.
Many journalism programs are strictly academic and the student newspaper on campus exists as a private or non- profit entity. The students who go through this program learn through practice. Their stories are read by thousands of people who provide reaction and offer feedback. This experience goes well beyond the classrooms, giving students a real-world work product and a level of experience that helps them effectively compete for internships with professional news organizations. Those internships are key to developing a journalism career.
And the work that is done here is top-notch. In 2017, our new editor in chief won the national award for sports writing in the SPJ’s Mark of Excellence contest. That award was for a story he researched and published with the help of an annual endowment The Lantern is honored to receive each year to sponsor an investigative reporter.
In 2016, during the Nov. 28 terrorism inspired attack on the OSU campus, The Lantern’s news staff earned national attention and recognition for its breaking news coverage. The Lantern’s use of social media and multimedia journalism drew a record audience. Our videos were featured in national broadcasts on ABC and CNN, and our reporters and photographers’ work were appeared in some of the nation’s largest newspapers.
Kudos regarding the students’ achievements followed, including this write-up by the Poynter journalism institute.
Graduates leaving our journalism program are equipped through our extensive array of classes to enter the workplace as a multimedia journalist, ready to step directly from our classrooms into a newsroom.
Link to YouTube video: What does The Lantern mean to you?
[pdf] - Some links on this page are to Adobe .pdf files requiring the use of Adobe Reader. If you need these files in a more accessible format, please contact schofcomm@osu.edu.