Student Insights into the Saving Community Journalism Project
Q. What are the benefits of sending students into the community to work side by side with publishers and editors of small news organizations?
More than 200 students contributed to the research and reporting included in the book, Saving Community Journalism, and this instructional site. They brought the classroom to the profession and both parties benefited. The publishers and editors gained valuable insights and assistance from tomorrow’s journalists and media executives. In return, students were able to work side-by-side with editors and publishers, not only creating a strategy, but also observing first-hand how it was implemented.
Most of the students who were involved in the project were enrolled in an upper-level seminar class titled “Leadership in a Time of Change.” Several contributed articles or examples of proposed Web designs that are either incorporated into the book or this site.
In addition to traditional journalism majors, “Leadership in a Time of Change” has attracted a variety of students in other disciplines, including graduate students pursuing a Masters of Business Administration or a PhD in Mass Communication, as well as senior-level Army officers on a year-long fellowship studying organizational behavior. The course combines in-field experience advising news organizations with class readings and discussion of recent texts related to the issues surrounding leadership of organizations in the throes of “creative destruction.” To obtain a recent syllabus, click here.
At the end of the semester, students are asked to describe what they have learned. Most reflect on the very difficult, but noble, task of leading change during a time of significant disruption in news organizations. Here’s a sampling.
Masters of Business Administration student
Masters student and founder of a nonprofit news site
When you’re building a team to assist you with implementing a strategy, you’ll need specific types of people. You’ll need those individuals who will back up your ideas with the technical know-how you lack just as much as you need the constant critic who isn’t afraid to pick apart your ideas for the sake of picking them apart. Teams need strong outward personalities: people who understand others and can communicate with them effectively, and people who are not afraid to speak their minds to their own colleagues. It’s a difficult balance to create, let alone to maintain for extended periods. Yet by understanding the ways we variously and individually operate and interpret things, leaders can work to build teams that address their own shortcomings and also allow them to lift up and support the people they work with.
Senior, majoring in advertising
Leaders need to be able to simultaneously play the game and view it as a whole. Leaders cannot allow themselves to be “swept up in the field of action.” They need the perspective of being “up on the balcony” so that they can understand the context and recognize patterns. This notion of contemplation in action is important because it allows leaders to ask, ‘What is going on here?’, and also allows leaders to see themselves objectively. It seems that an important metric of a good leader is someone who can move between the two, action and balcony, making changes, observing their impact, and then moving back into the action.
Senior, majoring in journalism
It’s all about the people you are leading. From creating a new strategy, championing change, staying on track and creating a team-based culture, the success comes from your followers and how well you lead and motivate them to follow the new strategy.
Undergraduate international exchange student