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Journalism Program Courses
Please note that the course information below is subject to change. For the most up-to-date information, please reference JOU course sections in Workday. Course sections for Spring 2026 will be published in Workday on Friday, October 17, 2025.
JOU 270 A/B/C
Introduction to Journalism (3 credit hours)
A: MWF 10:00-10:50am – Prof. Ivan Weiss
B: MW 12:30-1:45pm – Prof. Michael Venutolo-Mantovani
C: MW 3:30-4:45pm – Prof. Michael Venutolo-Mantovani
The gateway to a minor in journalism, this rigorous, skills-based course emphasizes how to independently find stories, select sources, verify information, conduct interviews, strengthen observation skills and write compellingly in journalistic styles. We will learn and apply Associated Press Style. And along the way, we consider vital questions about objectivity, the media landscape, equity, bias, facts and Truth. We develop our cultural competency – how to relate to and understand people different from ourselves so that we can convey their stories truthfully. This course is foundational to all other courses in the journalism minor.
Class size: 16
JOU 278-A
News Literacy (3 credit hours)
Prof. Maria Henson
TR 11:00-12:15pm
The mission of the course is to teach students to become informed and discerning consumers of news in a media landscape that is flooded with both information and misinformation. Students learn how to evaluate news coverage; how to read for bias, fairness, integrity, and accuracy; how to use new media to increase their knowledge of world events; how to research their own facts as a way to check the accuracy of the media outlets they rely upon; what happens when governments and media owners try to control news coverage; and the dangers of both censorship and media outlets run amok.
Class size: 18
JOU 322-A
Prof. Phoebe Zerwick & Prof. Mark Rabil
Investigating Innocence (3 Credit Hours)
R 4:30-7:30pm
Learn to write like a journalist and think like a lawyer by investigating and writing about an ongoing case of a wrongful conviction under review by the law school’s Innocence & Justice Clinic. Law students and undergraduates work together with instruction by professors in law and journalism. For Spring 2026, also listed as LAW 385 & CDS 790A. Permission of Instructor (POI) Required.
Class Size: 16
JOU 331-A
Prof. Abē Levine
On the Air with WFDD (3 Credit Hours)
MWF 10:00-10:50am
In this hands-on course students will learn the foundations of news radio, including: creating sound-rich stories, training your ear to recognize “good tape,” interviewing, writing for broadcast, and getting experience in a local newsroom. Students should come with topics and stories they’d like to investigate. Your pieces, if up to snuff, will be aired on 88.5 WFDD, Winston-Salem’s local National Public Radio member station based on the Wake Forest campus. All curious minds are welcome.
Course meeting location will be WFDD Studio 118.
Class Size: 12
JOU 340-A/WRI 344-A
Prof. Barry Yeoman
Magazine Writing (3 Credit Hours)
M 1:00-3:20pm
Students in this class will learn and practice the skills needed to produce magazine stories for publication. Focusing on a single topic of their own choosing all semester, they will be encouraged to write creatively and often. They will learn advanced principles of interviewing, document research, story structure, character development, and explanatory journalism. They will also read and analyze some of the best magazine stories written over the past thirty years.
Class size: 12
JOU 375-A
Prof. Ivan Weiss
Truth and Authenticity Lab (3 Credit Hours)
MWF 11:00-11:50am
In the era of fake news, AI, and social media, many of us are finding it increasingly difficult to figure out what is real and who we really are. The Truth and Authenticity Lab is a course unlike any other. Co-located between Philosophy and Journalism, students will learn aspects of both disciplines as a way to cast a unique lens on how to understand truth and authenticity today. Also listed as PHI 280.
Class size: 12
JOU 375-B
Prof. Brendan Greaves
Special Topics in Journalism: Art Writing/Writing Art (3 Credit Hours)
T 3:30-6:00pm
If, as artist Terry Allen has joked, “talking about art is like trying to French kiss over the telephone,” then writing about art arguably constitutes an even more desperate act of mediated translation and communication.
This seminar will explore why—in an era of attention economies, doomscrolling, and the erosion of critique through recursive loops of AI regurgitation and user-generated feedback—we can and should write about art (including our own), artists (including ourselves), and expressive and material culture more broadly (including music and other media). Student coursework will focus on how to do so thoughtfully and intentionally, honestly and artfully, through deep looking and listening and careful attention to language.
Students will read and discuss milestones of art writing to inform exercises in the observation, description, and analysis of objects; unpacking contexts; understanding and writing around personal taste; reviewing exhibitions and performances; interviewing and profiling
artists; and writing artist statements. Also listed as ART 286.
Class size: 12
JOU 380-A
Deep Dive: Photojournalism
Prof. Justin Cook
R 3:30-6:00pm (1.5 Credit Hours – 1st Half of Term)
This 1.5-credit independent study takes students through the fundamentals of photojournalism: basic photographic skills development and review of more advanced techniques as well as consideration of how journalists develop story ideas, cultivate sources and create their ultimate published reported project. A 35mm camera is not required.
Class Size: 12
JOU 380-B
Deep Dive: Race, Class, Culture and the Media
Prof. Allen Johnson
W 3:30-4:45pm (1.5 Credit Hours)
This course, taught by a visiting journalist from the Winston-Salem Journal, will challenge our beliefs and assumptions about race and media and press us to venture outside of our comfort zones. It will be based on readings; critiques; occasional insights from guest speakers; and, most importantly, candid and informed classroom discussions. We’ll delve into racial, social and economic disparities and how media has covered them over the years, for better and for worse. We’ll also consider how media can approach matters of race, class and culture more honestly and completely. We’ll talk about language, ethics, resources, technology and social media. Also listed as AAS 370-C.
Class Size: 12