MGJR Volume 6 2015 | Page 5

There is a delicate balance between providing practical experience and protecting students, one that journalism faculty walk regularly.

Covering natural disasters, fires, protests, shootings, riots, war is as much a staple of our industry as reporting on the first day of school, summer festivals, Little League games and the zoning commission. Digging below the surface of a story to provide meaning and perspective is also at the core of journalism.

Training student journalists to do it all as safely and responsibly as possible is our job at the School of Global Journalism & Communication (SGJC).

In this issue of the MGJR, Professors Denise Cabrera and Karen Houppert describe the preparation, the work and the worry that went into two recent immersion experiences for our students.

Cabrera, director of the Digital Newsroom, had much to be concerned about as SGJC student journalists covered the disturbances following the funeral of Freddie Gray, a Baltimore man whose death while in police custody garnered national attention. While it was important that they learn how to cover such events, they are still students who must be supervised and protected.

A team of SGJC students and faculty collaborated this spring with a team from the Reed College of Media at West Virginia University to look at what happened in and to Selma, Ala., in the 50 years since “Bloody Sunday,” an event which became a key symbol of the Civil Rights Movement.

Houppert led the Morgan team of student reporters, who had to learn how to balance a storied past with a disconcerting present as well as find a working rhythm with strangers, as they produced a multimedia report about this community.

At the beginning of the summer, SGJC Dean DeWayneWickham led a delegation that included faculty and students, as well as professional journalists, to Cuba to report on conditions there as word of pending changes in the diplomatic relationship between the U.S. and the island nation were beginning to emerge.

In this issue, students Synclaire Cruel and Emily Pelland discuss what those experiences meant to them as emerging journalists.

The SGJC’s Multimedia Journalism Faculty have committed, formally, to making immersion training a major focus of the department’s curriculum and to seek the broadest possible opportunities – domestically and internationally – to ensure student journalists are more than just technically skilled.

The “global” in the School of Global Journalism and Communication is about depth and understanding just as much as it is geography.

Letter from the editor

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Jackie Jones

chair, Department of Multimedia Journalism