A European Atmosphere

By Emily Brown

After three years of taking classes in the journalism school at the University of Missouri I can tell you one thing I have learned for certain: J-schoolers are a proud and close-knit clan.  We walk in packs to the J-Café for coffee, proudly display Missouri School of Journalism apparel, and can frequently be heard boasting of going to the best school around.  Many critique these behaviors, but I ask why shouldn’t we be like this?  The journalism school at Mizzou, often revered as one of the best in the nation, provides us with a phenomenal education, no matter your emphasis, and offers fantastic opportunities that other majors can only dream of.

One such opportunity is the Europe Tour study abroad program.  Students from each journalistic sequence get to experience the sights and wonders of Europe while getting a taste of daily life and work abroad in their emphasis.  Various visits to media outlets and agencies allow students to not just feel pride in their own major, but also to appreciate all the other sequences that their journalistic comrades are involved in as well.  As a strategic communication major, I was much more enthusiastic about tours and lectures from advertising agencies like McCann-Erickson and public relations firms like Hill+Knowlton, however, upon entering various news outlets and getting the chance to be a fly on the wall for a couple hours gave me more appreciation for my fellow journalists in their respective emphasis areas.

Each agency or news organization was unique with its own characteristics and mannerisms, however, after visiting a handful of places I began to notice a pattern.  Each sequence of work has similarities in the type of people that work there, the speed of duties carried out, and the overall atmosphere.

Vítejte! Bienvenue! Welkom! Benvenuto!

By Amy Simons and Kevin Wise
Professors, Missouri School of Journalism


Let us be the first to welcome you to our blog!

In early 2012, a group of students from the Missouri School of Journalism will spend two weeks in Europe, touring some of the finest capital cities, media outlets and museums.  It's a short-term study abroad program designed to expose the students to international systems of journalism.

While abroad, the students will make stops in Prague, Paris, Brussels and Rome.  They'll meet with editors, reporters, producers, account executives, educators and religious leaders.  They'll learn, firsthand, how their jobs are the same -- and how they're different -- in different cultures.

They'll visit newspapers, magazines, television stations and advertising agencies and observe the influence of the European perspective on journalism in various cultures.  They'll see how journalism is consumed in those cultures and about the relationships journalists have with their audiences.

And, they'll have a little bit of fun along the way.

They're journalism students, so you can be sure they'll have a lot to say about what they see and do!  Soon enough, this blog will be full of their reflections.  We can't wait for them to share their observations, reflections and predictions about the future of journalism here and abroad.

To give you a taste of what's to come, we invite you to read through the observations and reflections from the 2011 class on its blog, Europe or Bust 2011.