The News and Sports Media degree prepares future journalists and media professionals to share nonfiction stories ethically, professionally, and creatively on any media platform. Students develop essential skills in storytelling content creation and distribution such as writing and reporting, broadcasting, social media news strategies, podcasting, sports journalism, and digital photo and video. Students are exposed to journalistic storytelling tools such as social media platforms, drones, streaming video and other developing technologies. Students further specialize their degree by pursuing a concentration in a specific content area such as news, sports, photography, or others in which they develop advanced skills. They also personalize their degree with an outside concentration that enables them to pair their knowledge of news and sports media and journalism with a particular support area. The hands-on nature of courses prepares students to pursue careers such as photojournalism, media production, sports broadcasting, news reporting, data journalism, and more.  

Becoming a major

A student must successfully pass the nine-hour JMC Gateway, which includes the three, one-hour JMC Writing Academy courses (MC 130   Media Writing Conventions and Mechanics, MC 131  Media Writing Styles and Platforms and MC 132   Media Writing Perspectives); MC 110   Mass Communication in Society (3 hours); and three of the six one-hour Foundational Skills modules (MC 191   Audio Production Foundations, MC 192   Pixel Foundations, MC 193   Video Foundations, MC 194   Social Media Foundations, MC 195   Vector Foundations and MC 196   Web-CMS Foundations). Students must earn C or better in the JMC Gateway classes.

Students may take restricted courses and advanced courses only if they meet the prerequisites. Students who expect to fulfill one or more prerequisites in a current semester may provisionally enroll on the expectation they will be eligible to take the course the following semester.