Lessons learned, #1 to #5
Two years on from launching JesmondLocal (see previous post for background), here’s what we’ve learned so far:
Student journalists need real world, grassroots work experience. For obvious reasons, opportunities for gaining experience in established news organisations are increasingly scarce. There is no shortage of classroom-based teaching, but would-be journalists, professional or otherwise, need first-hand, on-the-ground experience so they can learn the basics of newsgathering and reporting. We give each student a patch (crime, sport, health, environment etc) just as any local newspaper would do and show them how to build up their contacts book, work up story ideas, pitch them to a news desk etc. Hyperlocal/local journalism may not offer the sexy, celeb-filled material many of our students prefer to read, but we impress upon them that Jesmond, like any community, can be a microcosm of the wider world. When you learn the basics of covering a local politics story in Jesmond, you’re learning the basics of covering a political story at Westminster.
News organisations want to recruit talent with this real world, grassroots news experience. Our students often tell us that when invited to interview with the BBC, Sky and other news organisations, the JesmondLocal experience on their CVs is what often gets discussed the most.
What student journalists need to learn is changing all the time. The best university journalism courses are refreshed maybe once each academic year, if you’re lucky. But the tools, techniques and skills journalists need in 2012 are being refreshed almost daily. We offer our students three “semesters of learning” where, at our weekly team meetings, we run through a constantly changing curriculum of the latest multimedia tools, techniques and skills – Skyping experts from around the world to bring our volunteers the freshest insights.
Print is not dead. Convincing an advertiser to spend even £5 on a local online ad is almost impossible. But as soon as you mention the word “magazine”, local advertisers begin to take notice, writing cheques for up to £600 per page. Before Christmas, we created a magazine around the Turner Prize in just 48 hours at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art. In the previous two years we’d barely sold enough online advertising to cover our domain fees. Yet in just a week, we sold enough print advertising not just to cover the costs of the magazine, but turn us a £1,000 profit (which we then foolishly donated to charity).
Projects accelerate learning and build community. The online news website remains the hub for what JesmondLocal does. But one-off projects, such as community radio shows and short films fast forward progress. For the same magazine project, we pulled in favours from a variety of creative professionals: illustrators, writers, photographers and film-makers. The chance to work alongside each other, including our students, gave everyone involved – professionals and volunteers - an opportunity to learn and explore new working partnerships.
Read the next post for lessons #6 to #10.
