What is J-School?

A j-school or journalism school is a department or school within a college or university which offers training to people who want to be journalists. Historically, journalists learned on the job, starting out in low positions in the newsroom and gradually working their ways into the ranks of the journalists on the paper. Today, many attend j-school first, using their education as a way to get in the door at a newspaper and start work as a journalist, rather than needing to work a variety of lower positions in the newspaper's facility before being allowed to write articles. Some schools just have a journalism department, while colleges and universities with larger student bodies may have an entirely separate school for journalism, much like colleges have separate medical schools, law schools, and other professional schools for their students. In these cases, students must apply specifically into the j-school, rather than being allowed to select a journalism major at some point during ...  more