Minor Requirements

The Magazine and Brand Media minor provides students with an overview of how to tell meaningful stories, deliver reliable information, and communicate effectively with an audience. You'll gain experience in basic magazine writing and editing. You'll also have the opportunity to select from several courses for magazine journalists including options such as web page design, video production, and feature writing.

The minor includes 21 hours of SJMC coursework.

Required Magazine and Brand Media Courses

• JMC 054 Reporting and Writing Principles – Information evaluation, fact-gathering methods and journalism style, with extensive practice.
• JMC 55 Digital Media Strategies – Digital Strategies will introduce students to the tools and best practices to cut through the digital din. Students will understand how to grow, engage and maintain a digital audience, creating effective native social content and email newsletters while also using analytics to drive and adapt a multi-platform plan. Students will also delve into the complexities of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), data journalism, and data visualization, as well as investigate the latest tech advances popping in Silicon Valley, on the Silicon Prairie, and from the world at large.
• JMC 070 Media Editing – Editing for newspapers, magazines and websites. Heavy emphasis on grammar, usage and Associated Press style. Also includes editing for accuracy, organization, structure, clarity, cultural sensitivity and fairness; headline and cutline writing; coaching writers; and law and ethics. Pre-req: JMC 54.
• JMC 104 Media Law and Ethics – Press freedom, ethics, social responsibility, pressures and problems; legal limitations, including libel, privacy, intellectual property and obscenity. Must be junior status. Not open to first-year students or sophomores.
• JMC 119 Brand Media Planning – Overview of the magazine industry includes its history, ethics, and social influence, including racial, ethnic and other demographic shifts; market considerations such as advertising, audience research, circulation, marketing, and ancillary revenue; and editorial philosophies and formulas, design principles, and production. Students put concepts to practical use in detailed business plan, including 5-year budget and 18-page prototype for a magazine they create. Pre-reqs: JMC 054.

Select TWO Upper Division Writing Electives (Pre-reqs JMC 054)

• JMC 103 Public Affairs Reporting – Advanced course in news reporting and writing focused on government agencies and other institutions that involve public life. Emphasis on textual and audio storytelling, with frequent practice writing and producing for the immediacy of web and mobile as well as with writing and producing with depth, context and perspective. Exposure to advanced reporting and writing techniques, including public records and databases; basic principles of audio storytelling; operation of audio equipment and editing software; technical and artistic fundamentals of gathering and editing audio; and preparation of packaged stories for web publication. Discussions of ethical, legal and other important current issues of the news media and society. Pre-req: JMC 54
• JMC 120 Magazine Freelance Writing – Article writing for specifically targeted media outlets, from print magazines to consumer websites. Includes intensive editing of student work in and outside of class; critiques and analyses of professional work; and strategies on targeting and pitching of potential outlets. Students research, write and rewrite multiple pieces, from profiles to features, essays to reviews. Pre-req: JMC 54
• JMC 161 Advanced Magazine Staff Writing – Professional approach to writing as part of a magazine staff includes story pitches, interviewing, research, writing, peer editing, rewriting, fact-checking, proofreading. Students identify an audience and develop an editorial philosophy and formula to serve that audience. Article writing includes briefs, blogging, profile, travel, features and multimedia production. Pre-req: JMC 54
• JMC 168 Advanced Reporting – A rigorous exploration of sophisticated newspaper-style writing and reporting for print and online media. Provides instruction on in-depth news writing forms, along with use of internet-specific functions such as audio. The course delves more deeply into a broad range of reporting and writing skills, including interviewing, sourcing, alternative story formats, journalism ethics and responsibilities. Student work is published online and in student publications. Pre-req: JMC 54.