Desperate times unleash digital creativity, flexibility for j-schools

Picture: pxfuel.com/en/free-photo-ibapa

By Sri Krishnamurthi, contributing editor of Pacific Media Watch

Desperate times call for desperate measures and so it is with journalism schools throughout the Pacific with each of them trying new and innovative methods in the age of Covid-19 coronavirus.

Faced with the global pandemic, they are following an overarching dictum, safety of students first and then looking at ways of teaching them – albeit remotely.

Without a doubt The Junction, a collaborative university student journalism publication covering Australia, NZ and the Pacific, is a highly creative and enterprising website – and it’s ahead of the game.

It cut its publishing teeth back in 2018 with the UniPoll Watch project covering the state elections in Victoria and then quickly took off with a national newsroom and live television presentation from Melbourne for the federal election last year.

The coverage was supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.

Some 24 universities, including New Zealand’s Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and Massey University, participate in producing The Junction and it has regularly published special collaborative team projects such as climate crisis – and now coronavirus.

The Junction is published by the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) as its first news website, although it has published a successful research journal, Australian Journalism Review, since 1978.

As pioneering editor and founder Associate Professor Andrew Dodd, director of the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advancing Journalism, says, “The Junction reflects the output of 24 universities”.

The website adds that The Junction “showcases the best university student journalism from Australia, [New Zealand] and the Pacific and allows universities to work together to produce impactful and creative reportage.”

It takes the students’ work to wider audiences and encourages those audiences to visit the publications of university journalism programmes.

Dr Alexandra Wake, journalism programme manager at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), says the current challenges are when innovation takes precedence. She is also president of JERAA.

“RMIT University transformed overnight from face-to-face teaching to a virtual teaching place. Some classes have required little change other than to the parameters of assessment, while others have needed to be re-imagined in light of new production techniques required in the COVID-19 era,” she says.

“Everything is now operating remotely, publications, radio and television programmes. All sorts of industry-based technologies are being used as well as normal teaching tools.

“My journalism teams are using a mixture of tools – including Teams, email, Canvas Collaborate Ultra, Skype, Slack, Trello.

“Some classes have become Covid-19 free zones, others are drilling down into life around the virus. It depends on the class and the learning outcomes.

“Looking after our student’s mental health is equally as important as their technical skills right now, and it’s important that for at least some of the week they aren’t being consumed by Covid-19.

“We’re finding huge engagement in our online classes, and requests for extra work to be done. We’ve happily obliged and suggested courses in coding, podcasts and books.”

A similar approach has been taken by Professor David Robie, director of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre, a postgraduate research and publication unit.

“I would describe this is as the biggest challenge to journalism schools in my experience since covering the George Speight rogue military attempted coup in Fiji in 2000, when our students at the University of the South Pacific formed a courageous unit and covered the crisis through their newspaper Wansolwara and website Pacific Journalism Online for three months,” says Dr Robie, director of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre, a postgraduate research and publication unit.

However, no such luck with first world problems in Fiji or the Philippines.

“Classes will be taught remotely while the nation-wide restrictions are in place. Internet connection in Fiji is not that fast, and quite expensive relative to the national income, especially for the students,” says Dr Shailendra Singh, journalism co-ordinator at the University of the South Pacific.

The school publishes the award-winning newspaper Wansolwara, that is distributed as a liftout in one of Fiji’s two daily newspapers, and the digital version Wansolwara News.

“We’re trying to work with the few students who are willing and able to volunteer, to provide some coverage, but it’s quite challenging because of cost and other logistical issues.

“In line with the restrictions in Fiji, and in order to safeguard students, we are not imposing on them.

“We are reluctant to expose them to any risks – safety equipment like masks, gloves, hand-sanitisers are both scarce and expensive in Fiji.

“Our coverage is focused on breaking news in Fiji and the region, telephone or email interviews, and media conferences/releases by government departments and other bodies. Given the circumstances, we have to put safety first, improvise, and curtail coverage,” he says.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE – https://asiapacificreport.nz/2020/04/15/desperate-times-unleash-digital-creativity-flexibility-for-j-schools/

*About the writer: Sri Krishnamurthi is the Pacific Media Centre’s 2019 Pacific Media Watch freedom project contributing editor. Originally from Fiji, Sri has worked in the media as a journalist and in communications in New Zealand for more than 20 years. Sri is a graduate of the Postgraduate Diploma in Communications (Digital Media) course at AUT. He also has an MBA (Massey University).