Volume 9, No. 2

Volume 9, Number 2, 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE

by Cathy Strong

Journalism education first entered the university curriculum well over 128 years ago, with probably scant recognition of how much the discipline would evolve by 2020.

Similar to today’s courses, students learned the basics of Balance, Accuracy, and Readability.

It was 60 years before educators had to confront the new platforms of radio and photo journalism, plus a further 30 years before needing to teach television. Those first mass communication teachers couldn’t foresee that 100 years later their learning outcomes would include internet, social media, and 24/7 deadlines.

It is the same for most countries around the world. The global village of journalism educators share the same challenges and learning points.

This came clear recently when I talked to the first reporters on the scene to cover New Zealand’s only hate-mass-shooting. Most were fairly new journalists, and yet they ran towards the bullets, getting to the scene as people were still dying on the ground, and the shooter still roaming the streets.

I asked how they knew what to do so instinctively, especially when their journalism schools spend only a little time on it, and their newsrooms have no prior experience mass shootings.

They said that they have cut their journalism teeth on covering killer earthquakes, and devastating floods, hill slides, and volcano eruptions -- all for instant-deadlines.

But then they revealed that they had watched mass shootings so many times on America news outlets. Instead of watching the news for content, they watched for news reporting styles.

That is part of the global village of journalists. Students today are exposed to exemplars constantly. This modeling would be impossible 100 years ago when it was difficult to get a newspaper even from only the other side of the country.

The line up of articles in this issue demonstrate the evolving pedagogy, for example:

Using Online Tutorials To Teach Podcasting includes a link to the author’s instructional videos, which is in line with our global village sharing resources across countries and competing universities. At the World Journalism Education Congress in Paris podcasting pedagogy was a hot topic with professors from many countries.
Collaborative Journalism Project: Learning Hard and Soft Skills shares highs and lows of video conferencing to teach the same course to different universities at opposite sides of North America. This is an example of resource sharing not available in the early days of journalism education.
Experimenting with Experiential Internships: Using Iteration and Feedback in Digital and Social Media is part of a university’s aim to prepare more women for higher level academic positions, which is opposite to early day universities where women weren’t allowed to be journalism students, let alone the professors.
Factors in Leadership Development for Communication Students in Co-Curricular Organizations pushes out the degree’s learning outcomes from simply basic journalism skills to further up the career path to being a leader.

Teaching Journalism & Mass Communication is indebted to the authors for sharing their insights, and taking teaching analysis past the basics of being a reporter.

My genuine thanks goes specifically to the Designer Jon Bekken, Web Master Mitzi Lewis, and Social Media Manager Kim Fox – all university educators who teach as well as possess today’s skills. So give them a pat on the back whenever you see them.

Cathy Strong
Editor