Actors, producers, directors, filmmakers, and television writers all know that Los Angeles is the place to be to launch their careers. But as long as Hollywood has been a center for film and television, so too have journalists been covering and participating in the industry. Now Columbia’s journalism department is joining in this excitement through the college’s Semester in L.A. program.

Journalism students in the program will take four classes, five days a week for the first five weeks. The rest of the time they are “encouraged but not required to do an internship,” said Nancy Day, chair of the journalism department, who noted she has been working to get students from her department in the program since 2003. Day said there will be opportunities in “everything having to do with journalism,” from daily news to magazines like Entertainment Weekly and People. Some of the top professionals in L.A. journalism will be teaching in the program, including Andrew Wallenstein, deputy editor for the Hollywood Reporter, and Nina Zacuto, a recently retired producer for NBC Universal.

The new journalism program is “another way to take advantage of the connections we have in L.A. and give Columbia students a leg up on the competition,” said Jon Katzman, director of the Semester in L.A. program. Semester in L.A. began with a producing concentration and has grown to include 12 areas of study ranging from production design and television comedy to music composition.