Contributed by Tom Rosenstiel, author of The Next Journalism: How the Press Must Change to Serve Democracy and co-author of The Elements of Journalism. From redefining news as a service rather than a product, to embracing transparency, to harnessing AI responsibly, Rosenstiel in The Next Journalism provides a bold, practical framework for rebuilding a press that empowers citizens instead of alienating them.Â
Teaching the next generation of journalists has never been more challenging—or more critical.
Most of us gravitated to this field from a simple impulse: the idea that possessing more accurate information about the world makes society stronger and our neighbors more empowered. That impulse also makes another idea possible—the notion that people can self govern.
Today, however, trying to teach students how to produce journalism that will fulfill that mission, we stand on radically shifting ground. We convey the enduring intellectual and ethical principles that make journalism trustworthy; and prepare students for an information ecosystem that is changing so quickly, any predictions about are likely to be wrong.
How do we do that? This is what The Next Journalism is designed to help with. It does not predict the future. Rather, it has two other goals I consider more valuable. The first is identify and assemble in one place many of the innovations occurring in journalism today and to place them in conceptual framework so they are more than just a confusing collection of disconnected experiments.Â
The other goal is to clarify how some older or more conflicted ideas in journalism, such as the debates over objectivity, the confusing decline in trust, charges of bias, or the challenge of correcting false information, can be approached more effectively. I’m sure we have all confronted students with questions about the future of the industry, or how to treat false information by elected officials or whether truth is a subjective concept. A big part of providing better answers to those questions can come by learning from other fields who have confronted some of the same problems. What, for instance, can journalism learn from psychology and neuroscience? What does making journalism a continuing conversation with a community actually look like in practice?
I hope you will find various chapters in the book that address these issues important, thought provoking, new and valuable. Whatever classes you are teaching, I hope you will give it a look.
Interested in teaching The Next Journalism? Click here to access resources for incorporating the book into your curriculum.Â
