Description:

News Literate Journalism

The construction of a theory of News Literate Journalism means an opportunity to interrogate the educational system that would then foster and build toward supporting the framework. While not every journalist who collaborated with me on this project had a journalism degree or even spent time in an internship or student media before their professional career, it became clear in the survey results and more explicit in the interviews that journalism education needs to evolve. The desire to change or improve journalism education is familiar, however. As noted previously, scholars and professionals alike have criticized journalism education for being slow to respond to technological innovation, not reflective of the obligations or critical thinking necessary for ethical practice or considering the importance of the stories of those who have been marginalized or left out (Fowler-Watt, 2023). This new way of seeing, framing, and understanding journalism gives credence to the importance and role of scholarship in informing teaching practice. The theory of News Literate Journalism I have outlined, explained, and argued throughout this dissertation is not simply an intervention into journalism studies or news literacy scholarship. It is also not merely a theory that implores more critical scholar-practitioner connections, improving journalistic practices. This theory celebrates journalism education and attempts to push journalism education in new and innovative directions. Based on the research presented in the pages of this dissertation, I can construct an ideal data-driven curriculum that embodies News Literate Journalism. This curriculum is one of the most applicable implications of this project. What follows is an explication of a News Literate Journalism curriculum. The explication provides structure and function, meaning I share the purpose of developing a curriculum that aligns with the premises and outcomes of the theory of News Literate Journalism.

The foundation of a News Literate Journalism curriculum is a liberal arts tradition. As noted throughout this dissertation, being news literate in journalistic practice means understanding the systems journalism is produced within. For some journalists, those systems would be the foundations of a liberal arts education and the liberal arts-like foundations in journalism school curricula (NL20). Therefore, in their initial experiences with journalism education, journalism students should be required to take a series of two to four courses, depending on resources. If separated, these courses would include principles of journalism, history of journalism, media law/freedom of expression, and journalism ethics; the courses can also be combined to support staffing resources. For example, in Teaching Media Ethics, Katy Culver (2023) shares that law and ethics courses can be connected to provide students with a more holistic look at two of the most critical components of a journalism student’s education. As a unit, these four courses provide the basis of the first premise of News Literate Journalism. Within them, students understand the importance of news literacy to journalism, journalism in cultural and social places, and the roles and values associated with being a journalist.

For principles, journalists believed that news values are core to journalistic practice, and to know them means to build a foundation for decision-making in daily work. Experience with journalism history is necessary to understand the roles of journalism. These include roles like watchdog, service, and civic (Mellado, 2017), but also roles that are responsive to human rights and marginalized populations, such as solidarity (Varma, 2019; 2023), care (Robinson, 2023), and anti-racist approaches (Wenzel, 2023). Historically, these roles are linked to values naturalized in journalism education. For example, Vos (2012) found that objectivity was mythologized in journalism education. The legitimation of objectivity led scholars like Carlson, Robinson, and Lewis (2021) to reevaluate the value’s purpose and journalists like Lowery (2020) to call for its removal entirely. Identifying journalistic values and debates surrounding their use in journalistic practice would be the crux of a journalism ethics course that centers on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and needs (Johnson, 2023a, 2023b). In this course, students would practice the tenant of critical process-based thinking that News Literate Journalism demands. Not only should students know what these values and loyalties are, but they would be working to explain how they apply them in different practice-based situations. Several journalists identified libel, slander, and copyright as core to journalism practice. This also included performing specific skills, such as submitting a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request, reading court documents, or navigating specific knowledge points, such as privacy, Sunshine laws, and defamation. For law and ethics courses, students would be focused on the process and explaining how and why they did what they did.

As a collective, the four core courses in a News Literate Journalism curriculum push students first to understand the whats of their profession and the process of those “whats.” As I previously shared, journalists are very good at identifying the “what” in their practice. For example, journalists know what it means to be a watchdog. Journalists are also good at identifying the “what” that would be the outcome of that practice. If journalists know what it means to be in the watchdog role, they also know what the output may look like – an investigative story, for example. Journalism principles and history courses are where journalism students learn what it means to be a part of the profession (Folkerts, 2014). While the law and ethics courses also help students know what it means to be a responsible journalist, they are the beginning of training future journalists to be news-literate journalists. In these courses, students are introduced to what this dissertation found is lacking most in the profession: explaining the how and why. In many interviews, journalists shared that courses in ethics and law need to be introduced to students before they move forward in the curriculum. For example, one journalist shared that to write a story, a journalist needs to think about how they will navigate securing an interview or collecting information. Furthermore, how one goes about this information gathering must abide by ethical and legal parameters. Another journalist said he consistently FOIAing information from companies to write his business stories. He felt that knowing what a FOIA was and how to do it needed to be taught before a new journalist even gets to the writing stage. The newsroom reconstructions revealed that although journalists identify journalistic principles, ethical values, loyalties, and laws, they struggle to explain how and why these impact their work. They lack news literacy in and, more importantly to this framework of their work and, therefore, a relative inability to translate that to their audiences and stakeholders–a news literacy behavior unique to News Literate Journalism. Addressing News Literate Values in a law and ethics course would be the most opportune time to build a common normative vocabulary. As I have noted, this disconnect is where educational implications can have the most impact. By grounding journalism curriculum in these four courses, students can begin their journey not just to know what journalism knowledge and skills are but also to be able to explain the process of doing them to themselves and others. News Literate Journalism reflects a metacognitive approach to practice.

Students should be encouraged to complement their first-year experiences in journalism school with other coursework in the liberal arts and sciences. One journalist said that to deal with issues related to school board budgets in her local community. She relied on coursework she had in economics. Several journalists said that a solid understanding of politics is more imperative to the field than ever. Journalists in specialized beats shared that having content knowledge outside of journalism helped them to approach the topics they covered. One journalist who covers space explained that her coursework in physics not only helped her know how to read and share information about issues related to space but also served as a framework to present information logically based on the scientific method. It also helped her to translate the jargon of physics to a more general audience. By elevating the importance of being well-rounded, a news literate journalist would be able not just to know what they know but have more tools to explain how and why they know it.

Following these experiences, journalists-in-training should take two final foundational courses: Information Gathering (Appendix H) and Media Writing (Appendix G). The two courses would build directly from the previous four and focus more on journalism skills than knowledge. For the curriculum to emerge from the theory of News Literate Journalism, we must offer students experiences that train them to know what skills are and how to explain how and why they use them. Information Gathering would be a course that would align with a more traditional reporting course. Instead of seeing reporting to a written end, Information Gathering provides students with the skills to build and mine databases, request information, interview, and crowdsourcing. These skills come from the News Literate Behaviors identified in this dissertation. Students would hone their craft of assessing credibility, staying current with technology and information, building relationships with community members and sources, and understanding their audiences more deeply to be more responsive to their needs and address what the audience needs to learn. The added layer of a News Literate Journalism framework would push students to think about how each of these methods of information gathering accomplishes their goals or achieves a purpose. It also would require students to explain their practices to their community members. A vital component of an Information Gathering course within a framework of News Literate Journalism is metacognition. Students should consistently reflect on and justify their decisions. For example, students would get and record an interview and transcribe it. However, the metacognition associated with News Literate Journalism would mean students would annotate their transcript to explain the quality of quotes, the ability to use them directly or paraphrase, and how the individual quotes fit the story’s angle.

The second course, Media Writing, introduces students to genres that journalists would engage with, such as news stories, news releases, and a news package. However, the difference between a traditional Media Writing course offered by many colleges and universities and an NLJ version of Media Writing is that students would be asked to be transparent and reflect more critically on their writing process. For example, students would discuss how and why they got to a story pitch. They may be asked to explain how they know it fits their audience, what the audience would then learn from the story, and why they believe this learning would occur. Students would then enter a production phase that includes more explanation about the methods they engaged in for producing the work. This may mean identifying sidebar or infographic-like context that serves as explainers for the content written in the story. These explainers assist with NLBs like assessing credibility, where journalists should learn to be more transparent about their source materials, and where and how they vetted them. After journalists explain, they should learn to reflect on the service implications of their story. How would what they write lead to more learning within the community? Is the story addressing community needs? How will the story target the community, and what engagement methods should the student use to connect the story to the audience? Throughout the reflection process, students should consistently ask and explain why. Why did I do this? Why didn’t I do this? The reflection stage of Media Writing brings the students to revision. It is essential to teach students to have a relationship with their writing that requires them to be responsive to the reflection. Media Writing should help train students that relationship building is not just an NLB they learned in Information Gathering. However, it is also a relationship they must build with their editors and themselves. A News Literate Journalism curriculum should begin with this core sequence. Students should be exposed to the practice of News Literate Behaviors and their understanding of News Literate Values in these courses and then build mastery in them in subsequent courses. When they leave the program, students should be experts in metacognitively approaching their work and being able to explain their processes – not just their products accurately. The end goal of a News Literate Journalism curriculum is for journalists to be more news literate in their institution and life.

Field:

Communication, Journalism, Media Studies

Duration:

Four Years

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