Teaching News Terrifically in the 21st Century 2013 | Page 4

Page 4

Volume 2, 2013

First place, adjunct-faculty division

Impact journalism:
Learning from real-world
public service reporting cases
By Roy Harris
Emerson College
Types of courses the idea could be used in:
reporting
Target level: juniors, seniors or graduate students
in a professionally oriented program

Roy J. Harris Jr., who has
taught as an adjunct professor
at Emerson College in Boston,
has been a journalist for some
of the nation’s most respected
news organizations for four
decades. From 1971 to 1994 he
served as a reporter and editor
for the Wall Street Journal,
including six years as deputy
chief of its 14-member Los
Angeles bureau. He spent 13
years as senior editor of The
Economist Group’s Boston-based
CFO magazine and CFO.com. He
was national president of the
800-member American Society
of Business Publication Editors
from 2006 to 2007. He is the
author of Pulitzer’s Gold
(www.pulitzersgold.com), a
history of the Pulitzer Prize
for Public Service.

What is the goal of the assignment or
exercise?
The assignment’s goal is to allow each student
in a class to totally immerse herself or himself in
a case of public service journalism that is being
considered for a major prize – either a Pulitzer, an
Emmy, or an Online News Association award, for
example. The class first identifies finalists or probable candidates for the awards, and each student
chooses one candidate to learn about. Having
taken “ownership” of that project, she or he is then
responsible for explaining why the project won or
lost the contest in which it competed.
How does the assignment or exercise work?
The individual student presentations on the
journalism project works against a backdrop in
which the class has looked at the recent history of
award-winning public service journalism across
a variety of print and electronic media. Concentrating where possible on the school’s own area,
the entire class also has gotten to see and hear
reporters and editors face-to-face in the classroom, describing how one actual reporting project
was proposed, took shape, and was successfully
pursued to achieve a public service result. The students get to know the journalists and the projects
in which these journalists were involved. This may
take several class sessions, so that all the students
get to hear about the project inside and out.
Thus, the students have a “model” to use in
learning about the individual projects that are
up for national awards. They learn about their
candidate, and prepare a presentation for the class
– win or lose -- after the awards are announced.
This approach “personalizes” the project work of
newspapers, online organizations, or television or

radio news operations, and lets each student get
to know the reporters and editors involved. The
class benefits when it sees and hears the individual
presentations, and can compare and contrast them
with the one presentation, or the award-winning
local project, that all students see.
How is the assignment innovative? What makes
this idea good for teaching in the 21stcentury or
preparing 21st century journalists?
My observation has been that far too few
journalism classes take advantage of the investigation reporting resources in the area where the
school exists. Making these connections between
news organization and school results in a mutually
beneficial arrangement, since the news organization gets to use the classroom to review its successes. It is a natural outgrowth of this approach
that journalists stress the online aspects of their
print or broadcast journalism. Thus each presentation will have a cross-functional look.
How do you overcome pitfalls?
Students often are embarrassed contacting
local journalists. Thus, the professor needs to act
as a matchmaker – something that generally works
well, because local journalists are proud of talking
about their