A unique new program is coming to the Missouri School of Journalism in the fall. Documentary journalism will be added as an emphasis area, giving students the opportunity to learn from professionals in the field and create their own documentaries.
Documentary journalism is a quickly growing creative field. With the strong presence of the True/False Film Festival in Columbia, it’s no surprise that journalism students at MU would take an interest in it.
Stacey Woelfel and Robert Greene have taken the reins with the project, fleshing out courses, plans for students, and other important logistics. They have also talked about the impact of the new program and the new opportunities they hope it will bring to students and to Columbia.
Woelfel is an MU professor and former news director at KOMU. He stepped down from that position to become the director at the Jonathan Murray Documentary Journalism Center, where the new program will be taught.
Woelfel’s goal with the program is to help students use the Missouri Method to create their documentaries, he says. There will be six core documentary journalism courses as well as the other required courses for the journalism school.
Another goal Woelfel has for the program is internships. He says he is working on setting up a good network of internships for students and creating more opportunities for experience outside of the school. When there is enough equipment, Woelfel also wants students who study abroad to take a camera with them in the hopes of creating some international documentaries as well.
Greene, a writer and critically-acclaimed documentary filmmaker, will be the program’s “filmmaker-in-chief” and brings the view of someone working in the field.
“I am not a teacher,” Greene says. “The idea, I think, is to have a filmmaker presence in the program, and not just a sort of professorial one.”
His title is one that has never been used before, something that he and Woelfel came up with themselves. Greene says that the uniqueness of something as simple as his title really showcases what the program is about.
“We want to consider our program like the pirate radio station of the journalism school,” Greene says.
Greene says his main goal for the program is to help students create great movies. He wants to help the students in the program, and people in general, expand what they think of when they hear the word ‘documentary.’
The energy from True/False is something that Greene thinks is really going to help the program, saying that he’s not sure the program would exist without True/False.
Greene says the fest will allow students to take the reputation and high standards of the journalism school and produce good movies. He notes that documentary film is a hybrid and that the best documentaries are not always the best journalism, but also that the best journalism may not make a good documentary.
Greene says he wants to help students create artful products while making movies that the journalism school can be proud of.
The documentary journalism program at the School of Journalism will offer many new opportunities for students. Greene and Woelfel are excited about the program and have a lot to offer students when sessions start in the fall.
“Good storytelling is something to fight for on all levels,” Greene says.
The courses for the program will only be offered once per year. Woelfel hopes that this will create a tight-knit group of students in the program who will be able to have close relationships in the documentary filmmaking community.
There is still some work that needs to be done for the program, like getting more access to equipment and space, but for now, Woelfel says they are concentrating on getting equipment for the first year and then purchasing more as they continue.
Woelfel says the program, enabled by a $6.7 million gift given by alum and TV producer Jonathan Murray, is based on a need for more longform visual journalism.
Documentary is a type of journalism that Woelfel says will give students new opportunities and help “see people through their own eyes, without the judgment.”
Students in the program will have the chance to graduate with a fully completed documentary as well. The summer and fall semesters of students’ senior year will be spent shooting, and the spring will be spent editing. By doing this, Woelfel hopes that every student will get to create a feature-length or short documentary by the time they graduate.