PUBPOL 2400

Journalism and Public Policy: Navigating Washington in the Digital Media Age

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2025-2026 Catalog.

The U.S. capital offers a wealth of storylines for curious journalists, but finding and bringing those stories to light requires a familiarity with the available research tools and the quirks of Washington’s institutions. This course provides a week-by-week survey of the busiest beats in D.C. paired with practical newsgathering methodology, including working with open-source data, tracking federal lawsuits and mining federal regulations and legislation for newsworthy information that drives impact journalism. Understanding the headwinds facing the journalism industry and the evolving formats and presentations that news organizations have developed to adapt will be a theme throughout the course. Within that shifting landscape, the course will focus on how to approach and interrogate a variety of Washington institutions and separate news from the noise. It will explore how to translate information gleaned from Congress to courts to federal agencies into reporting built for the digital era.

Enrollment Information Enrollment limited to: First-year undergraduate students participating in the Cornell in Washington, Brooks DC Start program.

Last 4 Terms Offered 2025FA

Learning Outcomes

• Discuss and evaluate common formats of news writing, including day stories, profiles, news analyses and explainers, and produce publishable works.
• Examine the mechanics of the main coverage areas in Washington, including Congress, the executive branch, the federal court system, the Pentagon, think tanks and nongovernmental organizations, the Federal Reserve and the intelligence agencies.
• Appraise the complexities of the current media environment, with the rise of digital platforms, the consolidation of media companies and the loss of local news.
• Manipulate and apply tools for newsgathering, including PACER, public records databases, and the Federal Register.

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