JCamp provides students with workshops, field trips, and hands-on instruction from professional journalists in a variety of areas, including writing, photography, broadcasting, and more. Originally founded in response to a shortage of diversity in the media, JCamp emphasizes multicultural perspectives. Open to all current freshman, sophomores, and juniors, JCamp admits around 40 students each year.

You know how to write a basic story. You know to get the facts right and the names spelled correctly. But now it's time to move to the next level. In the Advanced Writing class, award winning adviser Jack Kennedy will share with you what he has learned through the years about story-telling, including the difference between articles and stories, how to turn a mundane story assignment into something special and how to organize a major narrative project. Come prepared to do some writing and have some fun.

Our sports writing course brings together writing, social media and the skills to make you great at both. You'll get guidance on how to conduct interviews, cover live events, write effective briefs, game previews, personal profiles and recaps. Dive into some of the best sports reporting available to uncover what tips and techniques were used that you can apply to your own coverage. You'll also get a chance to practice these new found skills and conduct Q&A sessions with practicing sports reporters.

Whether you’re new to photography completely, looking to take your skills to a more advanced level or eager to understand why some shots turn out better than others, this class will meet your basic photography needs. Participants will get hands-on training with their cameras — whether it's a fancy DSLR, a smartphone camera or anything in between. We'll learn about exposure based on shutter speed, aperture and ISO while turning good photos into great ones.

The class will be led by Aaron Manfull of Francis Howell North in St. Charles, MO, and give advisers an overview of advising publications in 2020. We will discuss everything from editorial policies and staff organization to introductory journalism courses and training editors. Our goal for this class is to send advisers away with a grasp on effectively managing their journalism classroom. This course is meant to be more of a survey course to give advisers a taste of each of the areas they’ll likely be working with in their converged newsroom. If instructors would like a little more focused direction in one specific area (such as videography), they are encouraged to enroll in one of the other Media Now courses.

Already have a good understanding of shutter speed, aperture and ISO? This class will help take your photography skills to the next level. Participants will work on a variety of skills that go beyond the basics from using light and creating a photo story to advanced compositional techniques and tips for making great photos. Campers will need a DSLR camera to take this course.

This class will be led by Chris Snider has spent his career telling stories in innovative and creative ways.

The Editorial Leadership classes will reinvent the way you see your digital newsroom and yourself as a leader in it. Students will learn how to run that growing and changing digital newsroom. Plug into this editor/leader development track and gain skills to manage today’s digital newsroom with exposure to new tools that will help infuse the news and information into coverage and workflow. Leave with a knowledge and structure for your own newsroom or section along with at least two practical and applicable digital media elements to implement for the upcoming school year.

If you want to be a successful communicator in 2022 and beyond, you need to develop strong multimedia communication skills. This course will teach you to create audio and video content for your publication. We will explore how to reach your target audience through short-form video, traditional video, live video, audio podcasts and live audio rooms. Students will create content in these formats in class and they will build a plan for how they can use these tools in the upcoming school year. Editing will be done on both phones and computers.

Geared toward all types and sizes of yearbook programs, this track will help students take important next steps for successful yearbook production. While moving forward with verbal and visual elements to develop the book’s concept, participants also will plan coverage strategies and activities for building a positive, student-centered staff culture.

This class will be led by Eric Adae, an Assistant Professor of Public Relations at Drake University, where he teaches in both undergraduate and graduate public relations programs.

Since 2004, Student Leaders has been part of our ongoing commitment to youth employment and economic mobility. Preparing a diverse pipeline of community-minded young students with the leadership training they need to be successful in the workforce is vital to our approach to responsible growth and helps to build thriving communities. Through our Student Leaders program we connect more than 300 community-minded high school juniors and seniors from nearly 100 communities to employment, skills development and service. They're awarded paid summer internships with local nonprofits such as Boys and Girls Clubs of America and Habitat for Humanity and participate in a national leadership summit in Washington, D.C. The Student Leaders Summit focuses on skill building and creating a more civically engaged society. If you or someone you know have a passion for improving the community, click here to see where the Student Leaders Program operates and learn more about our eligibility criteria. The 2020 Student Leaders application will be open from November 4, 2019 – January 31, 2020. Click here for FAQs on our Student Leaders program.

Looking to get a strong foundation of journalistic writing? This is the class to take. Learn to write like a journalist. In this class you'll go through everything from how to come up with strong story ideas and planning stories to getting great interviews and writing a strong journalistic story. This class will help you get all the tools you need to be a great reporter on your staff next year.

Whether you’re new to designing pages or want to take your skills to the next level, this course is for you. All levels of designers from any print publication type will benefit from learning the concepts and design principles while gaining practice with the premiere desktop publishing program Adobe offers. This course will include both the basics of InDesign as well as more advanced tools to make your job on staff a bit easier. Good design isn’t really about the software, though — as you learn and practice, you’ll be exposed to important concepts to build your skills and take your ideas to the next level across every aspect of your media program.

Do you watch "Scandal" and find ways Olivia Pope could do a better job? Are you more intrigued by the politics & communication on "House of Cards" than the murders and mayhem? Do you watch "The West Wing" on Netflix and wish you could be C.J. Cregg? If you can picture a life in politics that gives you the chance to use your communication skills, come spend time with us learning about and doing Strategic Political Communication. We'll spend our time talking about how candidates communicate with voters, what tactics and strategies are used to advocate for policy issues, and learning from political experts about how politics and the media can work together.