{"id":2335,"date":"2022-10-06T20:26:11","date_gmt":"2022-10-06T20:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2022\/10\/06\/journalism-writing-community-college-teaching-audience\/"},"modified":"2024-10-21T20:17:10","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T20:17:10","slug":"journalism-writing-community-college-teaching-audience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2022\/10\/06\/journalism-writing-community-college-teaching-audience\/","title":{"rendered":"A better way to teach writing? Try journalism"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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First there was Nathalie, an English language learner who whispered that she\u2019d never done well in English, never liked it, but this course was different. <\/em>And her writing was getting better. Then there was Nseandra, who avoided the news because it was depressing and paralyzing. Yet Nseandra became one of my strongest reporters, covering how Amazon\u2019s planned move to Queens (since abandoned) threatened gentrification that would push out local residents. Melissa interviewed elderly and disabled riders on the Q27 bus, which runs between campus and town, and the need for better access to priority seating. Toussaint came to class focused on sports but rapidly stepped into an editorial role, then a paid internship at the New York Amsterdam News<\/a>, which covers issues affecting the Black community.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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These were among the highlights of the decade I\u2019ve spent teaching journalism at a community college. And they made me wonder: Why journalism? What was it about this form \u2014 often disdained as non-literary \u2014  that engaged students more deeply with their research and writing?<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Full disclosure: I\u2019m no expert in journalism. I\u2019m an associate professor of English who has a doctorate in women\u2019s studies and contemporary literature. I fell into teaching journalism back in 2008, after I agreed to advise the student newspaper when the liberal arts college<\/a> where I taught was in a pinch. (My role as advisor mostly consisted of attending biweekly production nights to eat Oreos and chat with the editors who probably would have been fine without me.)<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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A few years later, when interviewing at Queensborough Community College<\/a> \u2014 one of the consortia of colleges that make up the City University of New York, or CUNY \u2014 the department chair raised an eyebrow, cocked his head and said: \u201cSo you review books for the Christian Science Monitor \u2026\u201d I do!<\/em>  \u201c\u2026 and you advised the student newspaper at your last job \u2026\u201d I did! <\/em>\u201cWould you be interested in teaching journalism?\u201d I stifled a laugh of surprise. Was he kidding? I\u2019d love to!<\/em><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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This even though I had never taken, let alone taught, a journalism course. A friend in broadcasting was supportive:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cYou\u2019ll be fine,\u201d she said. \u201cJust start with the inverted pyramid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cThe inverted what?\u201d I asked, reaching for my laptop.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cOh, wow,\u201d she said. \u201cYou are in trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\"Writing
Elizabeth Toohey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div> \n
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That was in 2013. I spent the next decade teaching journalism to myself and my students while advising Queensborough\u2019s newspaper, the Communiqu\u00e9<\/a>. Our students don\u2019t have much time for extracurriculars, so the previous instructor baked the newspaper into the journalism course. The textbook I inherited highlighted media convergence and \u201ccitizen journalism\u201d as buzzy new trends; no mention of Twitter or Facebook or even \u201csocial media.\u201d Beyond explaining concepts like ledes and the inverted pyramid (I learned as I taught), the book didn\u2019t seem to offer much, so I created my own lessons on the fly. I drew from the Guardian, The Cut<\/a>, \u201cOn the Media\u201d<\/a> and the like, often jotting notes from whatever NPR was airing on my commute to campus. By 2016, I built in significant time for disinformation \u2014 how to identify it, what incentivizes its production, how it proliferates, its distinction from bias or slant.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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All this time, as technology and social media were exploding the journalism landscape, there was one constant: Students loved the class. And, they said, it taught them to write. They wrote it on their course evaluations, but they also brought it up unsolicited at the end of the term, confessing they hadn\u2019t liked English before \u2014 they were \u201cbad\u201d at it \u2014 but our journalism class was different.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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I kept this to myself for a while. It would be humble-bragging to talk about how much my students loved me, er, my class. But over the years I realized that students from my other classes weren\u2019t rushing in at semester\u2019s end to say how my class had changed their lives or their writing.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Perhaps it wasn\u2019t my teaching that fueled the rave reviews of the journalism class. Perhaps it was something about journalism itself.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Community colleges could save us<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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Community college students are a huge and diverse swath of our population. There are 1,044 in the U.S., awarding 878,900 Associate degrees in 2018-19<\/a>. More than 40 percent of undergrad\u2019s that year attended \u201cCCs\u201d (as I\u2019ll abbreviate them) and almost 40 percent of all first-year college students were enrolled at CCs.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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When it comes to journalism classes, community colleges are all over the map. Some are housed in communications departments and others in English. Most exist as a lonely elective floating in a sea of courses in media, literature and creative writing. Some CCs offer no journalism at all; others offer it as a cycle of courses, like at Kingsborough CC,<\/a> another CUNY campus, but these are rare.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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However journalism fits in a particular program, it\u2019s important to note that it often is taught in a lab-like model; I think of it as \u201cimmersive journalism.\u201d (EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: Toohey refers to an immersive approach of teaching journalism, not necessarily the the kind of immersion done by a journalist in the field.)<\/em> Los Angeles CC offers an Associate of Arts in Journalism<\/a>, with publication laboratories that produce the student newspapers. At Bunker Hill, Massachusetts\u2019s largest CC, the catalogue is pretty explicit: Journalism \u201ccombines class discussions of journalistic principles with practice in writing news stories,\u201d then \u201cshifts emphasis to field work for the student newspaper.\u201d In the Community College of Rhode Island\u2019s \u201cMedia Writing\u201d course, \u201calmost all assignments are designed to get published,\u201d says Professor Holly Susi. In \u201cFundamentals of American Journalism,\u201d Susi\u2019s students write opinion pieces that get sent to professional media outlets; one had a piece published as a letter-to-editor in a Rhode Island daily newspaper.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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It\u2019s important to note that it often is taught in a lab-like model.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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This is partly pragmatic: It\u2019s hard to produce an extracurricular news site at a commuter college where students are already stretched thin by financial and family obligations. But there\u2019s also a pedagogical side: Reporting is a remarkably effective way to teach students how to research and write. It\u2019s also way, way<\/em> more applicable to the world outside college. A third plus: Learning the basics of journalism while producing a student newspaper is the glue that holds the class together; students bond through their collaboration and become invested in their campus community. This is no small thing: Community is notoriously hard to cultivate at community colleges, which are rarely residential. There\u2019s no dorm life, and two-thirds to three-quarters of the students work<\/a> at paying jobs.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Professor Sharon O\u2019Malley, who teaches journalism at Anne Arundel CC in Maryland has taken note of the way her students stay in touch with each other, even going on to room together at four-year schools. \u201cI have my journalism students all the time telling me that they\u2019re doing better in English,\u201d she adds. \u201cThey\u2019re doing better in other classes when they write papers, because they\u2019re writing directly to the point.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Several journalism instructors echoed this, from other CC professors to former New York Times editor-in-chief Jill Abramson, who teaches \u201cIntroduction to Journalism: Workshop\u201d at Harvard and stays in touch with her students long after they graduate.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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If it\u2019s such a good way to cultivate community and strong writings skills (not to mention news media literacy, which I\u2019ll get to later), why aren\u2019t we all teaching first-year college students journalism?<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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It\u2019s not the 1960s, so why are we still teaching like it is?<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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The principles of journalism run counter to the philosophy that has shaped the writing curricula of American colleges for more than 50 years. This field is known as \u201ccomp,\u201d short for \u201ccomposition.\u201d Comp classes are widespread throughout CCs and four-year public universities as gateway courses. They introduce students to college writing through:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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