MEDIA CONTACT: Charles R. Loebbaka at (847) 491-4887 or at c-loebbaka@northwestern.edu

September 2, 2003

Medill, Law Offer Two-Degree Program

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Five graduate students enrolling in law courses this fall will become the first class to participate in an innovative two-degree program offered by the Northwestern University School of Law and the Medill School of Journalism.

The unique program is the only one in the country where students who recently completed bachelor's degrees enroll in a two-degree journalism-law program.

The program of study begins and ends at Medill (and includes a stint as a working reporter in Medill’s Washington, D.C., newsroom or an international residency through Medill’s Global Journalism Program). Students this summer took a Journalism Methods (reporting and editing) course and an Ethics and Law (for journalists) course at Medill.

The students now will take two semesters of work at the law school in the first year of the program, studying torts, criminal law, civil procedure, legal writing and electives of the student’s choice. Upon completion of the program, students will earn both a Master of Science in Journalism and a Master of Legal Studies. The degrees will enable them to examine and report legal nuances involved in many news stories today.

“Understanding the law and being able to explain it well are skills increasingly essential to many of the issues journalists cover -- from government to sports, business to civil rights. Medill has always been dedicated to turning out exceptional young reporters, and this partnership with Northwestern's law school enables us to raise the bar on that commitment,” said Loren Ghiglione, dean of the Medill School of Journalism.

“The degree program is fashioned to provide journalists with intensive immersion in legal thinking so that they are better able to educate their readers, viewers or listeners,” said David Van Zandt, School of Law dean.

The joint program is not designed as a stepping-stone to a professional law degree; MLS degree recipients are not eligible for transfer into Northwestern law school’s three-year JD program.

The five students in the first class are:

David Eggert of Jackson, Mich., who holds a bachelor of science degree from Medill, has served a Hearst Newspapers Journalism Fellowship and worked as a general assignment reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Michelle Meyer of St. Louis, Mo., who has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri at Columbia and served as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She spent this past summer reporting legal affairs for a newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Itir Yakar, a native of Turkey, now of Oakland, Calif., who holds a bachelor’s degree in international relations and French from the University of California, Davis, and has served an internship with the Atlantic Council of the United States.

Eric Martin, of Berkeley, Calif., who has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley and worked as a staff writer and editor for the Chile Information Project in Santiago, Chile.

Lauren Etter of Missoula, Mont., who holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Montana and served as a research administrative intern for the International Crisis Group in Washington, D.C. She attended a symposium on negotiation and conflict resolution at the Institute for International Mediation and Conflict Resolution at The Hague, Netherlands.