Newspaper Overview

The newspaper concentration prepares students to work in many fields, but specifically in writing, editing and design of newspapers. Some 1,500 dailies and thousands more weekly and community publications provide countless job opportunities to UT graduates looking for adventure and seeking to better society through thorough, fair, accurate and representative packaging of the events and issues of the day.

The curriculum is built around a liberal arts concept, requiring between 25 and 30 percent of your courses to be in journalism studies, skills and related background courses — all part of a national accreditation standard creating a balance found essential by the newspaper profession. This allows for many electives, particularly in social sciences — American history, government, anthropology, economics, geography, linguistics, psychology or sociology. A newspaper journalist must know something about how the world works and why. We strongly urge you pick these courses wisely, with an eye on developing critical thinking abilities.

Thanks to technological communication advances, the world is brought increasingly closer together. This makes newspapers more important than ever. The print concentration aims at developing in students a system that fosters several ideals. Through our courses, we attempt to teach the importance of reflecting diverse views, getting the facts (all of them), putting them in context, informing — and listening to — the public, and doing so reliably and consistently. As a result, we believe learning to be a newspaper professional is not just a profession; it's a privilege and a public trust. So we take our courses — and the task of training tomorrow's newspaper journalists — seriously.