During the Fall 2024 semester, students enrolled in Dr. Patrick Johnson’s “Principles of Journalism” class created a series of podcasts focused on news literacy. This course provided a comprehensive exploration of journalism, covering both mainstream and alternative media outlets. For their final projects, the students worked in small groups to create five podcast episodes addressing interconnected domains of news literacy (context, creation, content, circulation and consumption) to demonstrate how these concepts are essential to ethical, diverse and compelling journalism.
Through this project, students demonstrated their understanding of theoretical concepts and practical journalistic skills such as research, scriptwriting and audio production. The final podcasts illustrated how the five domains of news literacy are interconnected and crucial for creating informed and ethical journalism, particularly within the context of alternative press.
In their final reflections, students used terms like “passion,” “grateful” and “meaningful” when discussing their experience and projects. They noted changes in their own understanding and behavior related to news consumption.
One student shared, “Something that has also changed drastically in my news habits is that now I occasionally read articles from the opposite perspective of what I believe in. This is something I would not consider prior to taking this class. But I now see the value in allowing the opposite perspective to inform your own personal beliefs.”
The students also recognized the value of producing a different kind of final project than what is typically found in a college classroom. One commented, “This is not a style of project that I have had in coursework before, but it definitely enhanced my understanding of the course content in a way that I will be able to take with me once the semester ends, which is extremely important as someone looking to get into the journalism field.”
You can follow along as the Diederich College of Communication releases the episodes, one each day, during the spring semester under the title of “Ink and Airwaves.”
