Journalism & Mass Communication Educator

As the journalism profession continues to reinvent itself, journalism professors struggle to keep up with technological advancements that provide their students with industry-relevant skills. This study seeks to understand how journalism professors find information about online tools for teaching, to learn about the efficacy of their current strategies for navigating the fractured information landscape. The diffusion of innovations perspective is applied to in-depth qualitative interviews with journalism professors. The study finds that early adopters are the most adept at seeking information about, and using, online tools. Consequently, they experience the least stress around information seeking about online tools.

Researchers collected and analyzed data from 85 undergraduate communication majors enrolled in a one-credit technology and coding course. Instructors offered various out-of-class supports to determine which ones students used and valued. Student behaviors clustered: One group preferred interpersonal support; another, content support. Most support types were not related to student success, at least as measured by course grades. Video support was negatively related to student success, suggesting that procrastinating and expecting last-minute help from extra resources is ineffective. The article includes a discussion of implications for faculty workloads.

Relying on theories of journalistic ideals and critical discourse analysis, a case study was conducted to investigate how journalism students (re)define journalism ideals in the era of social media. Data were gathered from focus group interviews with European and African students participating in a joint journalism program. The results indicate that the renegotiation of journalism occurs in the discourses of open and collaborative journalism, accountable digital journalism, and challenging and contextualized journalism ethics, where an autonomous journalism profession moves toward collaboration with citizens. An accountable and transparent news process and public awareness of the need for journalism ethics are vital.

Conducted in 2012 to 2013, the current national survey of Kenyan journalists (N = 504) examines major characteristics of journalism and mass communication training in Kenya. Findings show that training in journalism or mass communication is a prerequisite to practice as a journalist in Kenya. While 45% of journalists were trained at the level of associate degree, 91% said they need to get further training. Kenya Institute of Mass Communication is the most popular institution of journalism and mass communication. Moreover, 65% of respondents perceive the quality of journalism training as good—Though in contrast to this favorable evaluation, local colleges face a litany of serious problems.

Journalism as a field has been revolutionized toward online, interactive, and immersive storytelling experiences. Multimedia storytelling requires adaptive journalists who are always learning new skills. While many universities utilize student-led news organizations to train students, this article explores the added value of a journalism class website to further encourage students to develop their multimedia skills. It shows how Eric Newton’s teaching hospital vision can be brought to the classroom in clinic form by smaller, liberal arts colleges. This two-part case study showcases how a class website can spur deeper reporting and multidimensional storytelling at the introductory and senior levels.

Journalism schools are under pressure to look beyond traditional teaching methods to prepare students for the post-Internet, rapidly evolving news landscape. Heutagogy is a net-centric teaching method in which learners are highly autonomous and self-determined. In this article, Participatory Action Research theory was applied within a heutagogical framework to the redevelopment of a social media course for journalism students at AUT University, New Zealand. The findings form the basis of recommendations across the wider journalism curriculum, and there are also implications for other areas of communication studies, public relations, and online or broadcast media.

Electronic media accessibility has come a long way since the Telecommunications Act of 1996. In 2010, the Communication and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) mandated closed captioning many online videos and called for making video blind accessible through audio descriptions. The Department of Justice (DOJ) ruled Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) applied to the virtual world. Since January 2015, there have been over 240 online-accessibility lawsuits. As educators, we need to prepare students to understand what accessibility is and how to make electronic media accessible. This article outlines accessibility issues across the curriculum, including closed captioning, audio descriptions, and online documents, and calls for better integration of accessibility into the electronic media curriculum.

In this essay, we describe modular production of television news, established at the University of Georgia, one of the leading journalism programs in the United States, in the scope of its experience-based learning efforts. The new method of producing television news assumes the innovative way of combining live and prerecorded segments of traditionally “all live” television newscasts to encourage proficient dissemination of the news content on multiple platforms and focus journalistic work more fully on the editorial process of news production. The findings are discussed in light of situational learning theories and Parkinson’s Law of time management, as well as benefits for student learning.

This article is an essay exploring the unique pedagogical challenges of an approach to journalistic writing instruction which not only allows—but actually might even encourage—students to consider using a first-person narrator. While some of the pitfalls of the technique are discussed, the central argument is that the first-person voice, rather than being off-limits in the classroom, can be both appropriate and persuasive. Specific instructional examples are also provided.