Mizzou's Unique Journalism Program Offers More Than Your Average Media Studies

When I traveled down from somewhere in Iowa to Columbia, Missouri, who would've thought I would find such a unique journalism studies program as what I am about to describe, especially since I'm even considering going into such a program?

Turns out that great surprises do come around in the most unexpected places, whether expected or not. And the prestigious school of journalism at the University of Missouri at Columbia, one of the first - and what I may soon consider one of the all-time greatest - in the entire world, is just one of them.

For it is here, at the college facility nicknamed "mizzou" (don't ask me why), that IK found one of the most special of all journalism programs I have ever heard of.

Although I was unable to access one of the classroom facilites of the so-called "J-school" at this ewxtra-special university here in central Missouri (and besides, I wasn't even surprised considering that it's graduationj day at the school), my old childhood friend Dominique Renoit (roughly pronounced "ron-watt") described the facility, located in Gannet Hall, as a professional journalism training facility with plenty of computers and having nice facilities for use by the program's students.

And why not, especially considering the age of the J-school itself?

That's because Mizzou's journalism programs are not only the oldest in the nation, but also the oldest in the world. Founded in 1908 "to strengthen the effectiveness of public communications in a democratic society," the Missouri School of Journalism holds as its mission an effort to prepare its students for carrers in journalism "through an education that combines practical experiences and the study of the liberal arts."

In addition to these excellent facilities for the J-school's students, the university maintains what may be "the only university-owned commercial television station in the United States utilizing its newsroom as a working lab for students." Local NBC affiliate KOMU-TV, owned directly by the university itself, is one of several real-world media outlets operated directly by the university itself.