Study finds emphasis on conversation facilitation helps journalists re-engage communities

LAWRENCE — The profession of journalism is facing dual challenges of lost trust and relevance. A research project among educators, students, journalists and communities in six states has found that pairing student journalists with communities through structured conversation can help to rebuild trust while also teaching future reporters how to listen to and investigate on the needs of people who are often overlooked.

Researchers designing an intervention to build a new curriculum for journalism schools tested a conversation facilitation program where students and professors took part in a class using a syllabus developed in 2021 by Sue Robinson of the University of Wisconsin. The course paired the students with community members often overlooked, such as unhoused, LGBTQ, disabled, low-income, Black and Latino communities. The goal was to begin by learning directly from their experiences and concerns.

“The idea that schools have a class where students do the work with a community right away is not typical,” said Margarita Orozco, assistant professor of journalism & mass communications at the University of Kansas and one of the study’s authors. “Usually, we teach skills like reporting or ethics through assignments, and students propose topics. With this project we started in the communities and found something important to them, not to the professor or students.”

The project showed that students learned to immerse themselves into people’s lives and experiences, build relationships quickly and foster trust. They also gained experience in making people feel valued and in sharing informational power by giving sources more control over how their stories are shared. Orozco said these lessons can help produce more skilled journalists and more useful, representative news coverage, thereby improving legitimacy of and trust in journalism.

Funded by a grant from nonprofit organization Cortico and its Local Voices Network, the program was tested simultaneously in California, Oregon, Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Arizona. The funding provided technology and training in conversation facilitation. Media partners in each state worked with students to host and analyze conversations and produce stories on what they heard.

The effort resulted in 27 conversations involving 87 students and 135 community members as well as 16 published stories. It also generated a complete curriculum that educators can use to recruit participants, design assignments and develop lectures and supporting materials.

In the study, researchers wrote that journalism educators should help students unlearn extractive reporting practices, such as relying on rigid, pre-set questions, and instead allow communities to reveal what issues matter most. For example, students working with immigrant communities initially assumed certain topics would dominate. Instead, participants emphasized concerns about insurance access, affordable medical care and related challenges.

“They came up with strategies and ideas — perspectives journalists don’t heed often enough,” Orozco said. “The stories that came out of it focused not just on problems but on how communities believe those problems can be addressed together.”

The study, written by Robinson, Orozco — who is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin — and Lori Shontz of the University of Oregon, was published in the journal Journalism Practice.

As journalism education has evolved over the decades from emphasizing apprenticeship and craft toward theoretical reflection and journalism as a form of knowledge, the authors wrote that, in addition to technical skills, future journalists should be taught critical thinking, social responsibility and awareness of journalism’s role in democracy. 

Surveys of students after the course showed strong impacts: 91% agreed the class changed how they thought about the relationship between journalists and community members, and 82% said it reshaped how they understood journalism’s relevance to a thriving democracy.

Orozco also said that teaching conversation skills is increasingly vital for students raised in a digital environment, many of whom attended school virtually during the pandemic and are now struggling with in-person interviewing, finding sources and engaging directly with diverse communities.

The study provides recommendations for journalism schools on recruiting participants, preparing and facilitating conversations, and clarifying course goals through revised grading expectations and transparency. 

“Future doctors work in hospitals, while in medical school, lawyers participate in debates, teachers do student teaching,” Orozco said. “Journalism needs something similar. Students need get out of the bubble, go and work with communities and learn from them while also developing ‘traditional’ skills in their coursework.”