College newsrooms help student journalists practice their craft
By Sally Renaud
CMA President
I loved to write. And I was lucky to have teachers throughout grade school who with great spirit and high expectations created class newspapers, which encouraged me to combine my curiosity and love of talking to people with my love of writing.
By the time I finished the sixth grade, I already had worked with enthusiastic advisers and had experienced the thrill of seeing my byline in ‘newspapers.’ The stories were, well, elementary, but I just kept going, asking questions, talking to people, writing. I continued writing throughout high school and college.
And that seems to be the most important thing the collegiate media newsrooms provide: the environment for staffers to practice – with the benefit of advisers who enthusiastically or curmudgeonly provide guidance and careful feedback.
Sometimes I hear advisers bemoan a lack of curiosity or news judgment in their staffs, but providing a safe and regimented place to practice their craft can be the very thing the students need to improve. These student journalists already have the news bug; after all, they have ventured into your newsroom or your classroom. But they might not know what to do with it. It is not refined.
Sometimes I show my students the writing I did in college and in my early career: sports stories, personality profiles and school board coverage. I point out to them that it was OK, a bit pedestrian but generally acceptable, but it got better as I practiced. After all, few people are really good at journalism when they are 18 or even 21. But with advisers who had high expectations for me and demanded a better level of performance each time (often expressed by frustration, disappointment or pleasant surprise), I got better.
As a journalism historian I read stories of famous writers and journalists who reminisce about their first years in newsrooms, and their tales are full of false starts, mistakes, challenges … and their mentors. These professional ‘advisers’ opened the journalism door for their novice writers, and they created an atmosphere of expectation and exhilaration. The young journalists learned from each writing assignment; they practiced.
Our students will have both successes and failures. They may fall a bit, pick themselves back up and keep going. They have to learn about the process of journalistic writing, about researching, about the business of journalism. They have to learn about its role in their community and the responsibility created by its permanence and power.
As advisers we have to help our young writers navigate this profession, teaching them about the nuances of news gathering and reporting. And then we help them do it all over again the next day and though their collegiate careers, getting a little bit better each time.
