Student journalists deliver cause for optimism about the news industry
If you are reading this, you are part of a diminishing group: those who still read newspapers as part of their information consumption regimen.
According to a November 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center, only 38% of Americans say they follow the news closely. That’s down from 51% just eight years ago. Despite demands for accountability, fairness and balance, Americans are largely drawn to the equivalent of fast-food, information drive through, otherwise known as social media “news.”
An October 2023 Gallup poll makes this picture even more bleak. Of those surveyed, less than one-third (32%) expressed a “great deal or fair amount” of confidence in full, accurate and fair reporting by news media outlets.
As a journalism professor for more than three decades, these statistics alongside other ample evidence of rampant global misinformation campaigns are enough to make me occasionally look back wistfully at my first full-time job at Waldenbooks. Selling books to people who wanted to read them was an easy proposition by comparison.
So, what gets me out of bed in the morning? The next generation of journalists and the promise they bring to a field that needs them.
The students who populate my classes right now are mostly Gen Zers, born after 2000. I never mastered the art of the video games they play. We mostly listen to different music, though we can muster mutual respect for the generational icons we each point to as “the greats.” Their lightning-fast texting skills elude me. That I get up at 5:45 a.m. and read three newspapers before work every day confounds them. My coming-of-age backdrop was Watergate, the AIDS crisis and calls for civil rights. Their coming-of-age backdrop was an insurrection, a global pandemic and calls for civil rights. OK, maybe we’re not that different after all.
As the stats that began this piece indicate, I have fewer students these days who walk into my classes with the unshakable conviction that they will be the next Nellie Bly, Bob Woodward, David Halberstam or Ida B. Wells. Truth be told, most wouldn’t recognize those names.
But there are some who are genuinely open to asking the hard questions about the world around them. They are more likely to pursue those truths wielding tools like audio, video, and graphics very different from those aforementioned journalism titans. But they know well how people choose to consume news and are better positioned to reach audiences where they are in this digital age. They are also innovative at filling community information gaps before they even graduate.
An example of that innovation: Iowa doesn’t yet face the same news desert problem that neighboring Nebraska faces. According to the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University, Marion is Iowa’s lone county without any local news outlets. Next door, Nebraska has 11 in the same boat. But it’s the edge of that desert that is most concerning. Iowa has 20 counties with just one news outlet; thus, at any point, news desert creep is not only possible, it’s likely. According to the same 2023 report, between 2005 and 2022, Iowa lost 50% of its journalists.
How are students bridging that reporting gap? Earlier this month, the University of Iowa’s student news organization, the Daily Iowan, announced it had purchased the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun and the Solon Economist, two nearby community weeklies. The plan is that student journalists will staff the papers under the mentorship of seasoned editorial staff. Presumably, without the sale and the student reporters it ensures, local coverage in those communities might well have dried up.
Student journalists are also offering their digital expertise to community newsrooms as interns and producing content across platforms to meet the diverse needs of audiences. Their multimedia news platforms not only buzz with vital, interesting stories about their campuses, but experiment with dynamic ways to tell them. As a result, I learn from the stories my students choose to report and how they report them. For example, recently, one of my seniors, Joshua Tigges, explored the complex reasons for diminishing deer herds in Iowa using audio to tell the story. He knew that our mobile society who consume more scientific stories tend to gravitate to audio. I am no scientist, but his great sourcing, insightful questioning and outstanding audio production skills helped me better understand a problem I knew little about.
And so, I celebrate Student Press Freedom Day on Feb. 22. Today’s collegiate journalists are the future for American journalism. And ensuring they have the freedom to do the work is definitely what gets me out of bed in the morning.
Andrea Frantz is a professor of digital media at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake and executive director for the Society for Collegiate Journalists.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Cause for optimism about the news industry: Student journalists
