Publisher’s note: R. Kriesel, contributing reporter at Newsjunkie.net, is a recent graduate of the Emerson College journalism program.
Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree, undergraduate minor
Emerson College is a private liberal arts college in Boston. Founded in 1880 with an initial class of ten, the school today has 5000 students enrolled in 27 undergraduate majors and 17 graduate programs. The journalism department, housed in the School of Communication, offers a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and an undergraduate minor.
Experiential learning
Emerson emphasizes real-world reporting experience in its journalism program, favoring project-based classes over the traditional lecture hall experience. Classrooms operate like mini newsrooms where even freshmen are treated like real reporters.
“Our programs are super experiential,” said current chair of the journalism department, Professor Lu Ann Reeb. “You go out and do the story, and then you come back and we give you feedback.”
Adam Sennott, an Emerson alumni who now works as a Boston Globe metro correspondent, said that this focus on practical experience is crucial for journalism schools who want to prepare students for the modern world of reporting. He said his experience reporting for classes made him “a significantly better journalist” than before he attended Emerson.
Emerson’s journalism courses are also designed to address changes in technology, media, and the structure of the industry. Topics like reporting for the web, producing audio-visual packages, podcasting, and “interactive news” all make appearances in the course catalog. Undergrads also have the option to choose multimedia or freelance reporting for their senior capstone class.
Grad school caters to professionals
The graduate program has seen a complete overhaul in response to the changing landscape of journalism. It’s now an online program designed for professional reporters “who are looking to broaden their work for new media,” according to Reeb, as well as students straight from undergrad.
The new graduate program was developed by Reeb in response to what she described as the decline of jobs in breaking news and hard news stories. Jobs that used to be the core of the news industry have been rendered obsolete by social media. Long-form reporting in popular new forms such as streaming documentaries and interviews will form the core of the curriculum. “Storytelling” is the name of the game, with required courses instructing students how to craft compelling narratives that are meaningful within the context of community. The program will welcome its first cohort in fall 2024.
"People want to hear stories— true stories, good stories— and that’s not going away. It’s just human nature,” said Reeb.
Emerson is a relatively small college and, with most of its student body enrolled in the acting and film programs, its journalism department can feel especially tiny. But Sennott considers that a strength. “It’s such a small school, you can just wander into a professor’s office and they’ll give you a lot of time,” he said.
Sennott was able to form close relationships with his professors and still keeps in touch with some of them. He said that Emerson professors, who are mostly working journalists themselves, connected him with story ideas that led to career opportunities, even crediting his current position at the Globe to an assignment from professor David Richwine.
Covid's negative impact on program
But Sennott graduated in 2014, and the journalism world then looked very different to the one that greeted Aja Webber and the class of 2023. Webber also appreciated the support from journalism professors during her undergrad. However, her class was heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which exacerbated a lot of the issues that the program was facing.
“When I was doing online classes (during Covid), I felt so disconnected from the class and from the professors,” she said. “Especially with journalism, connectivity and getting out there is so important, so I felt like it was kind of a loss.”
She felt like the journalism department had not caught up to the evolving state of the industry during her time there. In Webber’s view, the connections with school and faculty, so helpful to Adam Sennott, were less relevant to the fully digital, post-pandemic world she had to navigate during her first year out of school.
Despite the pandemic and its fallout, Webber said she considered the experience she got at Emerson to be worth the time. She especially appreciated the chance to work with other students on creative projects for the student-run TV channel, Emerson Independent Video (EIV). Webber considers it a perk of the Emerson culture that journalism students are given plenty of opportunities to work in fiction as well as facts.
Student-run media
Emerson has a tradition of student-run media. Aside from EIV, journalism students can contribute to the radio station and the campus paper, the Berkeley Beacon. The Beacon recently gained attention for its coverage of Emerson students’ pro-Palestinian protests. According to Professor Reeb, the Boston Globe sought out the Beacon’s coverage of the on-campus student encampment.
The biggest drawback of attending Emerson College is the cost. Tuition has gone up every year since I began there as a freshman in 2019, including during the pandemic, and it now sits at $56,032 per year for incoming students. Emerson is ranked worst in the nation for financial aid satisfaction, as reported by the Berkeley Beacon.
After a 2023-24 school year disrupted by protests, rising tuition, and a battle over the tenure of president Jay Bernhardt, Emerson’s enrollment for fall 2024 landed below target. The school announced cuts; to staff and, potentially, faculty in order to compensate for the decrease in revenue.
According to Emerson’s exit survey of their 2023 class, 17.86% of journalism undergrads and 68.75% of grad students reported finding employment right out of school. Top employers of Emerson alumni include NBC Universal, the Hearst Corporation, the Walt Disney Company, and WarnerMedia.
Adam Sennott said that, if he was graduating from high school in 2024, he would still choose to go to Emerson for a bachelor’s in journalism.
“I literally don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t do journalism. To me, Emerson was gold.”
But he does have one gripe with his chosen profession.
“I wish it paid more.”
