Discussion on the Journalism Workforce Pipeline : CSPAN : May 31, 2024 3:25am-4:04am EDT : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive (2024)

the owners of the institutions, will they succumb to pressure, many think biden will threaten them. right now it's trump threatening these owners. while they succumb to pressure or will they stand strong? today i'm feeling optimistic, i think they will stand strong that that's what i will watch in the media reporter, what are the owners doing when the pressure comes? >> thank you for a fascinating 40 minutes. and somebody help me up. [applause]

ies in the importance of early investments in talent. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome leah, rachel and steve. [applause]

great folks on the panel talk a little bit about what their group does, just super briefly, because everyone is coming at this from a slhtly different angle. >> thank you, i run a program called student reporting lab, it's from the pbs newshour and we work with high school and middle school across the country to do journalism programs. some of it is broadcast journalism, journalism programs that are starting to do social media and digital journalism, and then even some of the teachers that participate are science teachers or english teachers, so we have created a whole curriculum called story maker as a platform use. teachers come in and lead these programs across the country.

and we have 7000 educators registered in story maker and 100 thousand other educators who use our resources, so reaching around 70,000 students every year or two in broadcasting journalism in high school and middle school. >> i work at the scripps howard fund, you may remember us as a scripps howard foundation. we support journalism education program for college students. we really look at how do we think about with the industry will need 10 to 15 years from now. i think about what support students need now. we have a variety of different programs so our crown jewels are the howard center for investigative journalism at arizona state, the university of maryland. they are like grad school programs that prepare the next generation of investigative reporters. they do incredible work, they would national awards against students and professional journalists and they had a

professional project they partnered with apn frontline called lethal restraint. it was a whole host of programs like that as well as our own internship program, one piece of that is internships and nonprofit newsrooms and underreported communities across the u.s. rachel: i think i could be brief, i'm the dean of the moody college communication here at the university of texas at austin. one of our schools and school of journalism and media in film and television, advertising and pr. >> let's talk for a second on a high level with all your interactions of people with high school and college grad level, what's your assessment of the spirit, the motivation and the skills of this generation, what they have and what they might be missing to face the journalism world that we have out there? >> i'd be happy to answer that,

i'm completely bullish on the talent that you would expect from the dean of a college but coming out of the panel discussions we had today, that's an important point to make. the most questions from people about two things. what are the writing skills of students, are they learning old-school reporting, shoe letter reporting skills that i learned when i was a journalism student and what is the journalism marketplace? the good news is they are coming in with a set of skills we don't have to teach. how to use your iphone to capture video, how do you capture your own audio. we don't have to teach that anymore. if we had time for fundamental skills that they are not getting in high school, critical thinking, really thoughtful click writing, the kind of reporting. also you are dealing with the corporation, some. they are not voting, but they

are civically engaged. they want to make a difference in the world. it's a really powerful conversation for why entrepreneurs are going to be and how they will exist in journalism organizations. >> one of the stereotypes of young people is, they are uncomfortable with the term objectivity and have different definitions of what fairness said intellectual honesty look like from previous generations definitions. what's your assessment of that and what are the implications of that for this general task of rebuilding trust? >> i see a real openness. when we start to talk to students about what it means to tell someone else's story, and a lot of our curriculum we have journalism ethics. but also opening up these are the ethics the pboc's hour but what are your

ethics? what is it mean to do honor to someone else's story? i find they are really excited about finding untold stories and people who were not represented in the media and being able to go out and tell those stories and then seeing them publishes the exciting thing at a high school level and seeing the response from an audience that you actually have the power to tell someone else's story and you can have some really sophisticated conversations with teenagers when they have gone out to the field and done an interview and look for soundbites, then edited it and knowing the power they have a storytellers to do that brings them to a whole another level of understanding the media that they see when they are scrolling through their feet are talking to someone about what's going on in the news. you have created that media, you really understand what you are seeing and what's happening in the media landscape at large. >> i think it will be fascinating to see over the next 10 years or so how this

generation is coming out of journalism schools right now change and reshape the industry when it comes to things like objectivity and what we share about us as individuals. their lived experience is a part of what they bring to the workforce every single day and they don't want to hide it. they don't want to keep it in. if it's something that affects them, they want to share that. and i think if you think about the trust challenge and the things that we grapple with, why the audience doesn't trust us, my hope is that this group of young journalists can help us figure that out. one of the things that they are bringing forward and that they are tossing out there as something for consideration is the fact that when we say we are objective we are telling the audience we don't have biases and we are making this claim we are not biased. the reality is every single one of us is human and we all have biases, some we are aware of and some are unconscious biases.

they affect our work but the differences as journalists, we are professionally tp our biased check and we have checks and balances and newsrooms to keep it in check. by starting off with the premise that we are just robots that doesn't have feelings or think about these things, i think that dimi trust with our audience. they are thinking of things of a standpoint of, why don't i just communicate who i am and then you can make your own judgment about whether trust or believe my journalism. ■ó>> the reality of what it meas to go into journalism now as a young person, this changed a , there seems to be no shortage of people who want to become journalists. i don't know if that has been your experience. but the last cycle i believe they said they had a thousand applicants for about 60 slots. are you seeing that at your school to? >> absolutely. >> so despite all the

difficulties out there, there seems to be no dampening of enthusiasm amongst people who want to become journalists, to be curmumy age, is there an arge are producing too many in the sense that we are producing all these great young journalists and there aren't enough jobs for them? >> i'm willing to take that argument on because my responses i don't think you could produce too manyfactual information with critical thinking skills, know how to write and write quickly. that's my response if you're paying for your child to go to journalism school. deans have to deal with that question but i honest response thinking about it in the context is journalism schools have a new responsibilityhelp students understand the entrepreneurial skills to work in this environment. i love my graduate degree and got a job at the arizona republic. i often say a top 10 newspaper, i think it was 11th on the list at the time but it's easier and sounds better to say top 10.

i think it's important to understand that is not likely the path for the typical school graduate today. we think about the skills we are teaching so that they enter the workforce with the skills not only to participate and how existing news organizations create funding, think about events, thick about other revenue streams, but they will potentiay go into their own businesses in a variety of different ways. i think that's the piece that changes. but i am a big believer -- i'm not currently a practicing journalist but i benefit from being trained as one. i think i am pretty hot on there is never too many journalists in the world. >> journalism school has a different role than they used to in terms of changing the ecosystem of not just training the journalists? >> it's a great question, i think about it a lot. i came to texas from northwestern university where i was on the faculty. i think about it in terms of being at the university of

texas. if you're at a public institution is important as this when you play a role in what does journalm look like in this state. that has been a reframing device that i thought about differently at northwestern. so how does the university of texas play an important role in the news and information that circulates in the state whether it's about the border or whether it's about what's happening in el paso, austin or dallas. and we talk about program that get us there. we talked about this this morning siin about programs where we might do loan forgiveness for students who stay in this day and practice their journalism here where it benefits our community. i do think journalism school plays an important role in thinking about the ecosystem and i think that's an easy way for state institutions to think about it. some of the private journalism schools have to do thinking about what their role is but it's clear the university of texas plays a role. glaciers from the perspective of the project i'm working on now, which is about public policy, journalism schools and

universities are playing important roles, not just in the formation of public policy but implementing. in new york city there is a policy that got the city to put half of its advertising money towards -- it was created and launched in watchdog by the community graduate school of journalism. california decided they wanted to put $25 million in two local reporting, they went to journalism school to administer it. there's a comfort call with state legislators towards universities. it is a different now because i think people are realizing you cannot just train reporters, you have to make the jobs there. let me ask about a really practical thing we have not -- we have been reluctant to talk about, which is how low the salaries are for starting reporters. at report for america we were

shocked when we get applications in for newsrooms and routinely there would be 23 thousand, 24,000, something like that, and not necessarily an area with low costs of living. we had to establish a higher minimum. increasingly we hear that as a real issue, that even the people who want to be doing this, you can't imagine having a life in a family that way. how big of a problem is that? >> i have known journalists who had to work at target or starbucks after they finish their 40 hour week journalism job just to pay the bills. it's that difficult in some places. and then if you think about these more rural areas that simply don't have the finances to support higher salary, it's a huge problem. you might come out of journalism school with 80 to $100,000 of student loans and then you get a job for $24,000 a year does not

make financial sense. of course they will jump to p.r. or something else if that's the salary you will pay. we are connected with the scripps company and they are actually overhauling the way they think about their reporter and producer roles and realigning the resources within the newsroom to give substantial pay raises for entry-level positions and positions all up and down the chain. in some places they are increasing salaries by $10,000 to $15,000 a year because otherwise it will just be a revolving door of people coming out for a two-year contract before they do something else. >> we have to recognize how this generation views careers. we see a lot of our students starting their own businesses in high school. they become wedding photographers, they film events and get paid as freelancers. our newsletter we are putting out the opportunities or fellowships to do that.

i think we just get picture her as joining the information and stay there. this generation sees doing this for a while and i'm building my skill so that i will be employable no matter where technology goes or where the journalism industry goes. that's what's really exciting for us is that we are working with middle school and high school talking about journalism, journalism, giving those experiences and we look forward to working with them in the future to see what those news products are going to be or when they are in a news organization and they are social media editors. what that can do for a news organization to reach younger audiences. it's really about, for me, investing in them and supporting them through their careers. we have a really active -- and that's one of the most important things we do, having this community of youn who understand and believe in journalism. it's amazing when we have a

story produced by a student that runs on the news hour and we put it on instagram, all these people we have -- they have met are cheering them on. we need to give them the path to survive. >> another positive area, it seems like a lot of journalism schools have made progress in recruiting a more diverse pui think it's almost half journalists of color now. i think your school is similarly diverse. some progress on that front. how are we doing in terms of viewpoint diversity? recruiting children of conservative families to become journalists? >> it's a great question. 90% of our students are in-state, so much of our

diversity reflects the state of texas and we benefit that way. ideological diversity, many college students don't identify ideologically. they might comeks from a conservative family but if you ask about their viewpoints they don't necessarily think about it that way. i know everyone in the room thinks you were wildly politically active at 18, but maybe not everyone in the room. we have the diversity of students who have been exposed to parents and communities that have different kinds of perspectives. when you have 90% of the students from in-state, you are going to have students that come from conservative backgrounds. the challenge is and it goes back to the salaries, students tend to be attracted to fields with a little more flesh. i think students want to do something in the space that's not necessarily going to change

the political news we see in this country. one of our challenges is how do we take a spot from someone really excited about music or sports journalism, and in texas we have a lot of students interested in sports -- how do we take that and say what if you wrote about public financing for stadiums? how do we think about that as a story really relevant to how you vote and think? that is something we are working on all the time. how do we take the spark and make sure you have a full journalistic experience? >> i think anything you want to do that involves getting different people to the table, you have to be intentional about it. there have to be inroads made to bring folks who have a more conservative background or come from rural areas or whatever it is, to bring them in and engage them and try to get them interested in journalism. the premise of doing better when

it comes to diversity, i think we are doing better, but that bar was low. we are improving but the bar was low. with the supreme court ruling on affirmative action last year, it's changing a lot of the ways the journalism school i work with operate into think. i just went through some do and last year when i went through those applications from professors, administrators, etc., almost all were talking about diversity. this year about 20% talked about diversity. it's changed the way people are thinking and i think it is the incentive to bring diversity to the table is not there at every university now because of the the state level.ling into t >> great point. how are schools adjusting and responding to maintain diversity? >> is different at every school, every state is interpreting

things different, every school interprets things to really. they can't measure diversity and any scholarships, job applications, anything. maybe in practice they operate the same way as they do right now and the scholarship still goes to diverse students, but what message is it sending to people who are students of color and considering journalism if they are not specifically being recruited and saying we want you here at the table? >> and on the more conservative, we are really supportive of the educators especially in conservative communities, we know they face pushback, we know there is censorship or they feel pushback. but if we focus on the core of what journalism is, this is our community, we looking into the issues our community cares about, looking for solutions and

highlighting what great people in our community are doing before we start to is not done by people out to get you. i remember walking with a student from a small town in kentucky and he came to washington, d.c. and we were in the field with our t-shirts and he said this is wild because people are coming up to me and saying what are you doing? i'm working on a project with pbs. he says at home he was told, why would you want to work for the enemy? he has a great program at his school and my hope is you would change the parents's minds or just the understanding of why journalists do what they do. and to help the community. >> i've had professors say that as well, that students will sometimes confide that they have kind of betrayed their families by becoming journalists. does that come up? >> it does, but the biggest

concern from students and parents is the longevity of the career in the space. many parents just want young people to have a successful career and they can support themselves. the biggest gap i see here in the state of texas that we've been struggling to fill is a spanish-language journalism i consistently meet parents who speak spanish at home. the students are not comfortable enough with their own language to take spanish line which reporting. they feel comfortable using it with mom and grandma but not in the classroom or for reporting. when you think about some of the reporting gaps at the border and west texas, that's an area i would like to seth but it is a challenge. some young feel comfortable with vernacular spanish that not what you would need to be a spanish line which reporter. >> you work in high schools.

let's go one step younger. you made a comment earlier that you thought what you do in journalism education is very valuable even if they don't become journalists. what do you mean? >> we did a study early in the program where they did a pretest and posttest and we saw a real growth in critical thinking. confidence, being able to go out in the community to interview a stranger, an adult, be prepared. teamwork. we see they are engaged, following the news, we saw a shift in what they understood what the news was and where they got their news. for us it was about whatever you're going to do, whether it is business or art -- i remember early on we had a student said i was going to go to med school but i discovered journalism and

now i'm going into journalism and i was like ok. he did for a while, then he was a medical scribe and now he is in the medical field and he said i am a better doctor, i listen differently, i hear my patients's stories and it helps me understand how to help them. really we see these skills as critical life and citizenry skills. how do you look at your community? and identify the people making a better and how do you support them and tell their stories? what does the telling of stories due to the community's image of itself and its ability to change and work together to solve things? >> you mentioned empathy as something they learned. i so want that to be true. is it? >> yeah. the teachers themselves, and

that's why teachers are so important to the program, they see themselves teaching in the fee. -- teaching empathy. when and you are present in the interview and listening and asking follow-up questions and thinking about the story you are doing. me of these go back to, jim lehrer always talked about i respect the person i'm doing the stories about, i respect the audience, i am going to assume they are as smart as i am. students understand that. they understand also the skills you learn when you do that. when you prepare for an interview and do it and listen and are able to tell stories that would not otherwise be told. to see them on the news hour or local news organizations and you see that power, that connection

of the empathy to be able to tell that story and listen to someone and give honor to their story, and the power to bring that person's story to an audience and shine a light on it that otherwise would not be shone. >> i'm going to go back to the salary question. i know it's very nitty-gritty and not very aspirational, but it keeps nagging at me a little bit. sometimes i feel like we are crushing it with these great new ideas and programs and models, but at the end of the day, we might not be able to keep people in this profession if the salaries are not higher. maybe it's all the same business model questions we talked about earlier in the day, but you -- do you have any ideas about what to do about the problem? >> it's a huge question and i

think it is the fundamental question we've been talking about all day, the business model. there's always going to be attrition. we are always going to lose people. we've had a lot of conversations about what is an acceptable rate of attrition? used to be a lot of times journalists and they had eight or 10 years of experience, they would leave the industry when they had kids and would be more busy with their family life. i don't know if you are seeing this, but i am seeing students jumping after two years, they are out of the industry. to me that is a loss, weight earlier in their career than before. the biggest thing we have the internal conversation, the regrettable great journalists who are passionate about and they still lea.i've cs out there who should have been journalism rock stars but they are out in two or three or four

years because salaries are low, the hours they are expected to work do not align with what they are interested in, they are not given opportunities to challenge or fulfill themselves. no one goes to journalism school and says they want to be a journalism because they want to do night cops. they want to do and cripple storytelling and if you don't get to do that for two or three years, i think this generation is less willing to sit in the job and pay their dues for 10 years than people were 20 years ago. they will find some thing else. >> back. you can leave, do other things, maybe enter fields where you can make more money. but if you have that love of journalism and you want to see it succeed, i've seen some of our alumni start media organizations. some of it is first getting

clients and starting it, but they want to in the end be impactful journalists and do those stories. we are just gettingi'm excited e able to do because they want that too. they are the ones that will be able to i think feel that out for their generation. >> from a college perspective, we talked about low salaries in journalism, and as i mentioned, we have the idea, television and film department. your first job, you are likely to and be an assistant. get the internships earlier so theirst job out is not very entry-level job? i think that is one. the second piece is validating the expensive places you can do journalism now. it might not be a brand name your parents recognize.

there are wonderful places being fair salaries where students can do outstanding work. i think validating -- there is journalism happening in places that are just the wall street journal and the new york times and dallas morning news. i think that validation becomes important. >> this might be an are■(a where public policy will be important, the employment tax credit that passed the house of representatives. i know a lot of publications were going to use that to try to raise the entry-level wages. you have an alum in the audience somewhere. >> yeah. tyler came through the student portal last year, he was a podcast host. we were hoping we could pass the microphone and he could give the audience a sense of what it means to do some journalism in high school and take it to ut

and have it be part of his journey. >> can everyone hear me? thank you for having me. i wanted to talk a little bit about my experience with journalism. i remember that when we were planning for high school, our classes in high score, journalism was one of the first classes i signed up for. i signed up to do the newspaper all through high school and i thought that would be my elective. but i remember the first day in my journalism class was the last day i saw my journalism teacher and after that he quit day. i'm not sure what happened but i remember there was excitement and in energy about journalism that day that never returned to my school and it was very disappointing to be so excited about being able to do stories in my community and stuff like that that did not return.

we tried to get a newspaper started at our school and it did not work out for whatever reason. i think it was importantd that t made me realize not everything is going to be perfect, not everything is going to be an easy pass i guess. i found working through student reporting labs and it gave me expenses i probably would not have had otherwise, being able to be part of talks about team lth and working with so many amazing and talented young people really passionate about things that affected our generation. on top of that, i got to be a fellow for the newshour, another amazing experience. i go to cover affirmative action. even being at a school like ut, i love it here, but even being here and being able to write for a paper like the daily texan,

i've had an opportunity to interview people like bon jovi. i'm interested in entertainment and media journalism. to have a school that provides those resources is really important because it encourages me to keep going. there is stuff i can do and ways i can contribute to my community that i might not, i didn't have that experience of, or going through in extremes where the journalism program was shut down at our school, if i didn't push opportunities i could have, i might not be here. [applause] >> in the last minute and a half or so, i wonder if you each could have a closing thought. usually we start negative and and on a high note.

i would like to end on a down note. no. i would like you to think about, for the people in creating the models or funding the models, what is the thing they need to know? what is the thing that has to happen for the next generation to succeed? >> i will end on a happy note. if i were a funder in this space i would bet on this generation. the business models are complicated but if you have a conversation with people as passionate as this generation, find the people who inspire you to put your money where it belongs, whether as a subscriber, paying for the news you use, or as an investor. invest in the talent. >> i agree. i think this generation will be the one to figure it out. what's great is so many more -- we haven't really touched on this, students are finding ways to cover not just their campus

but the community. i think it's something like 27 statehouses have student journalists from colleges covering the statehouses, where statehouse reporting has been decimated.not only bet on the td innovation and creativity of this generation but also how can we foster that right now in college? >> and be intentional about it. there are ways to build connections between heico programs and local news organizations, working with documenter's, to hire high schoolers to cover school board meetings and pay them -- important. i think high school journalism can expand the capacity of local news organizations if done in an intentional way and building out of that network, that local network. that includes young people because when they are involved in the coverage, when they see themselves represented and see their issues, they become audience members.

if those local news organizations are going to survive long term, they need to build those connections early so they are also building their audience into the community that will support them long-term. >> building the demand. >> i'ms to end on a happy note. thank you everyone and thank you to the panel. [applause]

tv

TOPIC FREQUENCY

Us 6, Texas 1, America 1, Pboc 1, Scripps 1, Documenter 1, Tyler 1, Jim Lehrer 1, Deans 1, Steve 1, Rachel 1, Biden 1, D.c. 1, Washington 1, Kentucky 1, Etc. 1, California 1, New York City 1, Dallas 1, Northwestern 1

Notes

This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code).

info Stream Only