Hello, my name is Barbara, and I’m addicted to teaching journalism.
Perhaps more accurately, I’m addicted to mentoring journalism students.
As luck would have it, through a grant from the Charles Koch Foundation, I was able to spend the fall semester of 2021 doing just that: mentoring students as they investigated a pressing campus issue.
The process started in the spring, where we asked student leaders of college media programs to submit an application that outlined an idea for a campus investigation.
Dozens of student media outlets applied, and seven were eventually selected for the program.
The schools, their student media outlet and their projects are as follows:
- Texas A&M University San Antonio: Students at El Espejo magazine examined how the pandemic impacted student groups at this relatively new campus, which is largely commuter and serves a population of mostly Hispanic students. The PDF of their fall 2021 magazine is here.
- The University of Alabama: The Crimson White set out to create a COVID-19 dashboard that would track student, faculty and staff infection and vaccine rates. When the university was uncooperative with records, the team pivoted to cover other COVID-19 stories on campus throughout the semester.
- The University of Miami: In 2020, the U made national news when it was accused of using facial recognition software on its students, which officials there denied. Independent journalism students at The Hurricane and UMTV thought otherwise, and launched a three-part investigation into what constitutes facial recognition, how it’s being used at Miami and the implications for other campuses across the country.
- Penn State University: The Daily Collegian examined the lasting impact of the Jerry Sandusky indictments a decade after they were handed down. The result was their “Sandusky’s Imprint” website and a special print section PDF.
- The University of Montana: Students at The Kaimin were prepared for a semester of open carry before a court stopped the action. They examined Montana gun culture and law, and looked toward the future at the possibility that guns would be a reality across the educational environment they studied and worked in. The result was In the Crosshairs (website) and this special section PDF.
- The University of Wisconsin-Madison: Students at The Daily Cardinal investigated the long-term implications of gentrification and how the uptick in student housing construction impacts the city of Madison. Their final projects were The Student Living Issue (PDF) and their Choose Your Impact website.
- Hofstra University: Students here wanted to create a nonprofit student media group that would examine the most pressing issues on campus. Their investigation for The Hofstra Clocktower specifically looked at educational disparities in Long Island public schools.
Each school received 8-10 hours of custom training before the investigation started, and then received ongoing support from Poynter personnel and a slate of high-profile speakers. They included four-time Pulitzer winner David Barstow, Atlantic staff writer Ed Yong and Sara Ganim, who broke the Jerry Sandusky story as a young reporter.
If you subscribe to my newsletter Alma Matters (designed specifically for journalism educators), you may recall that I spent several weeks this summer and fall traveling the country by car as I visited all seven schools for training.
The experience of visiting new places, proselytizing in different campus newsrooms and repeatedly pushing students to achieve will remain one of my fondest lifetime memories.
Over the next two weeks we’ll be publishing individual stories about each school and project. In those pieces, I’ll discuss challenges student journalists faced, how they overcame them and their advice for other students attempting major projects.
I hope you will come away from these stories interested in their narratives, impressed by their efforts and inspired by the work ethic of a new generation of journalists.
I know I did.
