J219 Frontline Associate Producer 1/29 – 3/19

This course will train students in the basic skills needed to work on a professional Frontline production for national broadcast. With Frontline’s high journalistic and production standards for documentaries, these would be skills that students could take into any newsroom or independent producing project.

Class will consist of quick turnaround assignments, paired with real world examples and guest speakers. The skills will be broken down into four different roles that an associate producer can play: Researcher, Travel Agent, Assistant Editor, and Paralegal. Students will be introduced to the basics of how to research potential characters and write producer-ready memos, plan and book travel for large crews, organize and maintain media databases, as well as handle licenses, research archival footage, and fact-check scripts.

The course would begin during the last week of January and run up until Spring Break, and is open to both first and second year students.  At the end of the course, students will be invited to apply for a limited number of paid internships on current Frontline productions. These positions could continue into the summer, and would count towards the Jschool internship requirement.