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| OUR STRENGTHS | The Missouri Method - an integration of conceptual and practical training - distinguishes this school from many others. The Missouri School of Journalism is generally ranked top in its field. Why go to school for photojournalism education? Certainly it is possible to get a lot of experience by going it on your own and making pictures - and in many ways becoming a better photographer is a personal process. But a college or university offers a good environment for development of essential skills, quality instruction, valuable feedback and criticism and presents new ideas. As with all five sequences in the Missouri School of Journalism, we require students to have a broad and solid academic foundation in the liberal arts, including corusework in the humanities, arts, social sciences and physical sciences. Knowledge in these fields and how they are interrelated will inevitably contribute to your perspective and judgment as a future photojournalist working with diverse people in a variety of situations. | PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMS | The University of Missouri hosts the annual Pictures of the Year and College Photographer of the Year contests, which present incredible opportunities for learning about creating successful individual images and picture stories. The Missouri Photo Workshop is perhaps the nation's premiere photojournalism workshop - where a dozen photographers and editors teach documentary story-telling to dozens of young professionals during an intensive week of planning, shooting and editing in small towns throughout the state. Students at the school are given the opportunity to work on these programs in both staff and volunteer positions. Students awarded one of these opportunities are able to get a truly distinctive look at the workings of the profession.
A distinct advantage of a relatively small department is that we have a strong sense of community. Comfortably-sized classes encourage class discussions and faculty members are able to track and encourage each student. Our photojournalism faculty represents the spectrum of the profession - including faculty with significant experience as working newspaper and magazine photographers, picture editors, multimedia journalists and historians and critics of photography, and our faculty is sometimes augmented by visiting professionals. Students are able to work in a media-rich environment, often as a part of coursework. The University of Missouri-Columbia, through the School of Journalism, publishes The Missourian, a daily newspaper, Vox, a weekly full-color newspaper magazine, The Digital Missourian, and various other publications to which our students have the opportunity to contribute. The Missourian (which started publication the first day the School of Journalism was founded in 1908) is integral to our program and its staff includes photojournalism students who work on deadline, gaining real-life experience covering news and sports and features and editing and preparing that work for publication.In addition, our students do a variety of internships - from small to large papers, during the summer and sometimes during the Fall or Winter term. This summer we have students on internship at newspapers, magazines and websites, from small towns like Jasper IN, to large cities like Phoenix and Washington, D.C. and many points in between. Our recent graduates are at all sorts of publications - newspapers and magazines and wire services or sports agencies.
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