Encouraging community engagement as journalism students prepare for a changing profession

Abstract

For the UC project, students network with a community group, identify one person who they will co-create a story with and then work with them over a couple of months to complete their story. Before embarking on the project, students learn the fundamentals of journalism research and writing, ethics, civics and local government reporting, but in our experience, need extra scaffolding to enter communities that are different from their own. Most of our students are not from the communities with which partner and have a tendency to rely on email and social media to engage with people rather than the face-to-face interaction that is necessary to initiate and build relationships and trust, especially in indigenous and ethnic minority communities such as Māori and Pacific communities.