Should we teach non-journalists to do journalism?
Fostering in non-journalists reporting skills and values like accuracy, fairness, transparency and engagement advances the function of the profession, David Poulson, the senior associate director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, writes in the latest edition of SEJournal.
It also is an important use of the expertise of journalism instructors.
Poulson describes in “EJ Academy: Teaching Journalism Skills…To All Comers,” and published by the journal of the Society of Environmental Journalists, the value of teaching researchers and scientists to write.
Malawi journalists line up for editing by Knight Center faculty member David Poulson. Image: Flora Nankhuni
“Journalism is hard,” writes Poulson, who spent a month last summer teaching journalism to journalists and researchers in Malawi, Rwanda and Peru. “Teaching it is yet another kind of hard. If you can do both, you’ve got mad skills that are in demand.”