NewsBeat

May 2023 NewsBeat 14 By SARAH VASELLO How journalism training programs are empowering homegrown talent W hen Bernardo Motta started the Neighborhood News Bureau at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg 17 years ago, he knew he want- ed to involve the community. As in many major metro areas, he felt the mainstream coverage was lacking representation from all communities, and stories were going untold. Through the bureau, his students worked on a variety of projects in St. Petersburg's Midtown area including a partnership with a local middle school to test lead in the wa- ter and a partnership with Hack4Impact on preserving the history of African-American neighborhoods. His students learned the benefits of col- laborating with communities to provide a service, rather than extracting information. "A lot of them went to community news organizations (after graduation), and they changed some of the places from the in- side," Motta said. "They brought different approaches to (report on) the communities they were covering." Now, he's building Communities of Hope, housed at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, which aims to teach people from marginalized communities to produce news, features, investigations and media art "to improve their quality of life and bring them into the decision-making process involving their communities." Journalism students bring solutions jour- nalism and journalism education to K-12 students, teachers, community members and media professionals. "Rhode Island is a very small state with separated commu- nities — many immigrant communities," Motta said. "How can we experiment with the transformative approaches to journal- ism to have engaged, solutions, participato- ry journalism?" He wants students to learn how to change the journalism that has traditional- ly harmed marginalized communities into something useful for them. "What we chose to do was on purpose, to be able to serve people who don't have access to the univer- sity," he said. Communities of Hope is one example of a growing movement that seeks to strengthen the journalism and documenta- ry skills of community members in order to better meet that community's information needs. This movement is building at a time when the journalism industry is reckoning with its failings in adequately covering the complex forces at work in small towns, mid-size cities, rural areas and pockets of urban areas, in particular communities of color and poor communities. A four-year journalism degree hasn't always been required to be a local news re- porter or photographer, but it's become the most accepted route into the profession. With the decrease of journalism graduates from four-year programs and the rising cost of tuition — and the increasing conver- sation about journalists carrying significant student loan debt — it's more relevant than ever to consider more pathways into jour- nalism work. Benefits/limitations Benefits: These programs all have a simi- lar mission in common: Training those who are interested in expanding who covers the news, outside of traditional journalism education recruitment. Many community members are able to find paid positions, for however long of a term, creating cover- age that benefits civic life. These programs often bring in voices that are underrepre- sented or ignored in traditional media Limitations: As often is the case with new projects, launching comes with a steep lift. Especially at the community college level, leaders can feel undersupported. Overworked facilitators take on four or five extra roles of fundraiser, program coordi- nator, educator and more to complete their mission. Certain programs have further red-tape constraints, especially at the col- lege or university levels. For the news-spe- cific organizations, similar limitations exist: As these organizations are often small the bandwidth to run these programs in addi- tion to covering the news is limited. There is excellent community program- ming being done at three levels: • Curricular programming, in which students follow a course of study and earn the professional capacity to enter the field after community college or transfer to a four-year program; • Third-party partnership, in which stu- dents in a community college program are able to submit their work more widely to a larger media ecosystem in exchange for clips and payment; • Programs in which news organizations bring community college students into coverage. The other path to more journalists in the field is through direct training in communi- ties offered by a news organization. The most well-known example of this is the Documenters program, which trains community members on how to cover a public meeting and then pays them to do so. Founded by City Bureau in 2008, the Chicago-based program has now expanded to six additional locations across the U.S. with the help of the Stronger Democracy Award, which came with a $10 million dol- lar prize. When asked if he had a dream for local news, Motta was hopeful. "I'm actually watching it happen," he said. "(The pandemic) really worked as a catalyst (for news outlets training and/or working with the communities they cover) and you see the movement moving a lot faster now." This story is republished under a creative commons license and was originally written for the Center for Innovation and Sustain- ability in Local Media at UNC-Chapel Hill." With the decrease of journalism graduates from four-year pro- grams and the rising cost of tuition it's more relevant than ever to consider more pathways into journalism work.

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