DC: Summer Graduate Capstone
- Shelly Griffin
BDJ 675: Broadcast and Digital Journalism Washington Capstone
The Washington semester of the Newhouse broadcast and digital journalism graduate program is where students take all the journalistic skills they have learned and put them to the test. Students are required to spend the last six weeks of their graduate program in Washington, DC During this capstone experience, they apply the hands-on and academic lessons they've learned from their previous semesters at another level.
Students cover Capitol Hill and the federal government as reporters for television stations in markets as varied as Austin, Erie, Shreveport, and Fort Wayne. As credentialed members of the Washington press corps, they develop, research, shoot, report, and edit their own stories, which then air on their assigned stations’ newscasts. Students who are interested in producing the news work with a variety of organizations, such as CBS Newspath, Agence France Presse, NBC News, The Situation Room at CNN, and the Cox News Washington Bureau.
The capstone program is supported by faculty who bring to their teaching decades of experience covering Washington for local and network news operations. Students also benefit from the twice-weekly Speakers Series, in which journalists and Washington insiders share observations about their profession and the unique challenges of making sense of Washington and those who work there.