S. Vishnu Sharma
Journalism or Mass Comm – The field of media has witnessed a vast expansion these days and so have the career options. As media field also offers bright career prospects, students willing to study courses related to media have also gone up.
However, many of them undergo a bit of confusion when they begin their search for courses related to media field. There are courses with many names, but their teaching content almost looks to be same only to confuse students as to what to choose and what to not?
Journalism or Mass Comm
This story aims to bring clarity for those students who are going to opt for courses in the media field. Most common names students come across are ‘Journalism’ ‘Mass Communication’ or ‘Journalism and Mass Communication‘ during their search, there is a good deal of difference in them. Students must keep in mind these differences and what they want to accomplish and then choose the right course. Journalism or Mass Comm – The differences are highlighted here below:
Journalism
This is all about news making. The news related to politics, sports, movies, business and other related fields of importance. This course would tell us about how to handle day-to-day news making operations. The operations like news reporting, news article editing, news presentation, prioritization of news for presentation are familiarized as a part of this course.
Journalism course is further specialized into TV news journalism, radio news journalism and internet news (online) journalism. This also includes new age media like Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, as these social media platforms too have turned into an effective mode for conveying news. This course is mostly about conveying news, scope for creative writing is less in this course. Those who study this course can find jobs as reporters, sub-editors in newspapers, television news channels, online news websites.
Mass Communication
This subject deals more with different medias that are used to spread news on any subject with a motive to entertain or inform or educate the general public. This deals with subjects like radio, TV, film making, public relations, advertising and also to a certain extent newspapers and television news channels also.
Journalism or Mass Comm – Students who study this course can go for jobs in the field of advertising, public relations, publicity generation and also in newspapers, magazines too. People who are more interested in creative writing can go for this course as this offers wider scope for those who wish to write in a creative manner, rather than reporting on regular facts in a precise manner.
Journalism and Mass Comm
This course is a blend of both Journalism and Mass Comm courses. Students who wish to study this course are exposed to nuances of both the individual courses and have a wider scope of choosing jobs in news industry or in the field creativity like advertising, public relations and publicity generation.
Courses offered
Courses related to the media field are offered at both graduate and post-graduate level. They are like BA (Journalism), BA (Mass Communication), BA (Mass Communication and Journalism). The same in post graduation are like MA (Journalism), MA (Mass Communication), MA (Mass Communication and Journalism) and so on. A few education institutions also offer diploma and post graduate diploma courses in journalism and mass communication, students can consider studying them.
Open Education
Many reputed educational institutions in India also offer graduate, post graduate level courses in Journalism and Mass Communication. Even diploma and post graduate diploma courses are offered through open university scheme. Working professionals in various fields including those in the media who cannot spare full-time to study in a regular college can study journalism or mass comm through the open learning stream.
Colleges for Journalism and Mass Comm
A few of the educational institutions worth considering for studying courses related to Journalism and Mass Communication are Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), Indraprastha College for Women (IPCW), Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Symbiosis Institute of Media And Communication (SIMC), Mudra Institute of Communications (MICA), Jamia Milia Islamia, Xavier Institute of Communications (XIC) and Makhanlal Chaturvedi National University of Journalism and Communication (MCNUJC).