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The bachelor’s degree is the main credential in journalism. It is awarded as a BA or BS in Journalism, and at many schools as a journalism concentration or sequence inside a communications or media department. Either structure can be fine – what distinguishes a strong program from a weak one is not the title on the diploma but how much reporting you do and whether someone edits it.
This page explains what the coursework covers, what to look for in a program, and how to judge whether a given degree will leave you with a portfolio a newsroom will take seriously.
Yes. Journalism is offered online as a BA or BS, and also as a journalism concentration within an online communications or media studies degree. Confirm that reporting courses are actually taught online rather than listed in the catalog but offered only on campus.
Usually general education requirements rather than journalism content. A BA typically carries more humanities and foreign language requirements; a BS often substitutes additional social science, statistics, or technical coursework. Compare the required journalism sequence, which is where the real difference lies.
Approximately 120 semester hours, typically four years full-time. Journalism-specific coursework is usually 30 to 40 of those credits, with the remainder in general education and electives – which is why many programs recommend pairing the major with a subject minor.
It is worth strong consideration. Beats are subject areas, and a reporter who understands accounting, public health, criminal procedure, or statistics covers those stories better than one who does not. Economics, political science, a science field, or a foreign language are common and useful pairings.
The clips. Newsrooms evaluate candidates on published reporting first. The degree matters as the structure that produced those clips, taught you media law, and got you an internship. A program that graduates you with no publishable work has not done its main job.
A bachelor’s is the standard entry credential for reporting work. A master’s in journalism is generally pursued by career changers who studied something else, or by reporters going deep on a specialized beat, rather than as a required second step.
For a full map of this program area, start here: Journalism Program Guide
Every school list on this site is ordered by the BOC Score, computed from the most recent school-level data published by the U.S. Department of Education (College Scorecard and IPEDS). To qualify, a school must be currently operating and accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. Each eligible school is then scored on five measures, percentile-ranked against schools at the same credential level:
Schools without enough outcome data appear after ranked schools, without a score. Advertising never affects these rankings. Read the full methodology.
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
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Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
Source:IPEDSCollege Scorecard
A dedicated BA or BS in Journalism gives you the largest number of required reporting and writing courses, a defined sequence from introductory news writing through advanced or specialized reporting, and usually a required internship or capstone. This is the most direct structure if you know you want to report.
Many schools house journalism as a concentration inside communications or media studies. The journalism sequence is smaller, and you take more of the department’s shared theory and research coursework alongside it. This is a reasonable structure – it gives you a broader base and an easier pivot into adjacent fields – but check that the concentration includes enough graded reporting assignments to build a portfolio. See the communications program guide for what the broader major covers.
Whichever structure you choose, the elective space in a 120-credit degree is worth spending deliberately. Beat reporting rewards subject knowledge: a business reporter who can read a quarterly filing, a health reporter who can read a study’s methods section, or a courts reporter who understands procedure will out-report a generalist. Programs that formally recommend or require a minor are signaling that they understand how the job works.
| Course Topic | What You Learn |
|---|---|
| News Reporting & Writing | Story structure, ledes, attribution, and writing accurately on deadline |
| Interviewing & Sourcing | Finding and cultivating sources, conducting interviews, evaluating credibility |
| Media Law | Libel and defamation, privacy, source protection, copyright, and public records access |
| Journalism Ethics | Conflicts of interest, anonymous sourcing, corrections, and contested editorial decisions |
| Editing & Headline Writing | Line editing, fact-checking discipline, and preparing copy for publication |
| Multimedia Production | Audio, video, and photography for news, plus publishing for the web |
| Data Journalism | Working with spreadsheets and public datasets, basic statistics, and visualization |
| Internship or Capstone | Supervised reporting producing published or publishable work |
This is the part of the degree that determines your first job, and it deserves more scrutiny than the course catalog usually gets.
Ask each program three questions. Does it operate a student news publication, and can online students contribute to it? Is an internship required, and does the program help remote students find one in their own city? Does the capstone produce a publishable piece, or a research paper about journalism?
The answers vary widely, and they matter more at a distance than on campus, where a student newsroom is down the hall. A well-run online program has a plan for this – a virtual newsroom, remote editing workflows, arrangements with local outlets – and will describe it specifically when asked. A program that answers vaguely is telling you something.
Transfer credit can substantially shorten a bachelor’s, particularly for general education. Rules vary by institution, so confirm:
See Affordable Online Journalism Degrees for more on managing total program cost.
Verify that the institution holds accreditation from a recognized institutional accreditor – such as HLC or SACSCOC – through the U.S. Department of Education database.
For most people the bachelor’s is the degree that matters, and the master’s is optional. A master’s in journalism makes the most sense if you studied something else as an undergraduate and want structured entry into the field, or if you are already reporting and want depth in investigative, data, business, or science journalism. It is not a standard second step for someone who already holds a journalism bachelor’s.
Compare degree options:
Data verified: August 11, 2026. Salary, employment, and tuition figures on this page are sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (OEWS May 2025; Employment Projections 2024–2034) and the U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard (2023 cohort). The source agency and data year are cited inline with every statistic.
Back to Online Journalism Degrees: Programs & Careers (2026)
