Although the lack of diversity in newsrooms and reporting remains a serious issue in the journalism industry, college journalism education and student media provide a critical opportunity for change. Yet prior research has found notable diversity gaps in both. This study analyzed the state of diversity at a Midwestern university student newspaper…

News literacy is an important part of journalism and liberal arts education. Adapting a tool called the Frayer Model, the activity guides students in developing a conceptual understanding of news by creating a definition, listing essential characteristics, and coming up with examples and non-examples. This activity is intended to set the stage for…

Broadcast journalism writing and reporting classes are designed to help students develop writing skills for multiple platforms, but many television news professionals think student writing and other necessary skills for the industry need improvement. Television news anchors, reporters, producers, and news directors who completed an online survey…

The author of this article describes an upper-level economics course where students learn to write economic news articles, which improves communication and audience-targeting skills. The course was created in partnership with a media outlet and designed around authentic assessments to provide students with a genuine experience based on academic…

A confluence of forces has brought journalism and journalism education to a precipice. The rise of fascism, the advance of digital technology, and the erosion of the economic foundation of news media are disrupting journalism and mass communication (JMC) around the world. Combined with the increasingly globalized nature of journalism and media,…

Objectively assessing student creative work in the fields associated with mass media can be problematic. Communicating expectations to students, as well as providing them with a clear yet flexible rubric for evaluation of copywriting, newswriting, audio production, video production, and web-design, requires examination of the relevant student…

Despite shrinking newsrooms, we have more journalism choices, in part because of freelance journalists. Freelancing creates workers who are particularly adaptive and creative; skills educators want to instill in students. I interviewed and surveyed more than 50 freelance journalists in several countries, including Turkey, Egypt, Colombia, Israel,…

This article is the first to describe the discoursal construction of an adolescent community of practice (CoP) in a non-school setting. CoPs can provide optimal learning environments. The adolescent community centered around science journalism and positioned itself dichotomously in relationship to school literacy practices. The analysis focuses on…

Objectivity has long been contentious in American journalism. Many practitioners call it essential to a news organization's credibility. Critics, however, hold objectivity is impossible and urge reporters simply to reveal their biases. For educators, teaching objectivity is challenging. Some, seeking a middle ground, instead urge fairness and…

In 2002, a study was published in "Newspaper Research Journal" that explored the preparedness of graduating journalism students to cover business news. In 2012, a follow-up survey of business editors at the nation's daily newspapers was done to see whether progress had been made in the training of journalism students for the…

Journalism programs working to stay current with industry practice often struggle to do so without forgoing traditional journalism skills and attributes. This longitudinal study involves content analysis of more than 1,800 jobs posted in either 2010 or 2015 by companies listed among the top 10 newspaper and broadcast journalism companies in the…

This case study examines a creative approach by two journalism professors to enhance experiential learning in separate skills-based newswriting and editing courses by collaborating to produce a live online news report from campus each week on a four-hour deadline. The study builds on previous research into how innovative classroom structures that…

In November 2012, 300 students came together in the Media School at Bournemouth University in the UK to report the US Presidential Election. Over the course of 10 days, students published 176 articles on a rolling news website, garnering more than 20,000 hits. On election night itself, students produced 10 h of live coverage on both TV and radio,…

This student newsroom ethnography examines the emergent culture and values of a group-created news and information content with a mobile-first focus. Using semi-structured interviews from 12 participants working on a mobile-optimized summer news project, the study provides insights on the work practices of the digital student newsroom. Validated…

This study examined introductory journalism writing courses and compared hybrid (part online/part classroom) versus online grammar instruction. The hybrid structure allowed for grammar topics to be taught online, with a pretest following, and then reviewing missed/difficult pretest concepts in class prior to a posttest. The quasi-experimental…