Tomorrow, the Michigan Press Association’s winter conference begins, and I am one of four panelists addressing the issue: What are you teaching these kids? The panel’s description says, “Editors and educators will discuss how prepared our journalism students are for the real world. Are we doing them any favors in those hallowed halls, or should they just be getting their shoes dirty chasing stories for local/school papers? Audience comments will be welcome. What is expected of today’s communicators and where can they best learn and grow?”

I am representing the community college instructors on this panel. There is also a four-year college instructor and two editors (a daily and a weekly).

I am very interested in the discussion that will take place. I know when I worked as a reporter, I experienced first-hand editors hiring reporters right out of school without trusting them to do their job. As the veteran reporter, I would be assigned to do things outside my regular beat instead of the newbie because I was a trusted entity.

When I was going to school for my journalism degree, I was also working part-time as a journalist. I think my education was enriched because I had real-world experience that allowed me to apply what I was learning as I was learning it.I specifically remember that not long after I learned about the Freedom of Information Act, I was in a situation that required me to use it.

Personally, I feel the journalism education has to really emphasize ethics and making a reporter aware of everyone impacted by a story. I learned a lot while on-the-job, but it only enhanced what I learned through my education.

I recently read something written by an editor about the 10-things journalism teachers should be teaching their students, and one of the 10 items was grammar. I don’t teach grammar in my journalism class, and I think few courses in college teach grammar unless the student requires development courses. In my feedback to a specific paper, I will identify common types of errors and provide a resource and/or explanation to help the student fix the typical type of error. My goal is to help students identify the types of mistakes they typically make and devise strategies for finding and correcting those mistakes. For instance, I know that I used to frequently misuse affect/effect, and I still review how to correctly use these terms whenever I use them. I also review lay/lie/lying/laid whenever I use them because I recognize this is a weakness of mine. So teaching students to self-edit their work is what I teach rather than grammar specifically.

As a journalist, I didn’t get a lot of feedback about what I tended to do wrong. Each week my work was being edited, but few editors took the time to provide me with specific feedback or to even let me know about the types of mistakes I tend to make. The one exception was Rick Mills, editor of the Mt. Pleasant Morning Sun. He frequently sent out memos bringing issues and common mistakes to the attention of the entire staff. I still have copies of many of his memos and refer to them. Sometimes the errors were from other papers, but it was a chance to discuss and bring up the issue and help his staff learn. I think it is important everyone realizes that you never stop learning and improving. It is important students and journalists know where the resources are located that can help that process happening.

I would recommend every working journalist and student journalist regularly read Romensko’s news and many of the articles available from Poynter.org. This is where you will find great discussions about current news coverage in terms of what went well and what went wrong and how we can do it better next time.

I think newspapers need to do a better job of not just pursuing the story but considering the impact of the story and be very concerned about reporting entertainment as news. I think editors and educators need to be focused on improving the dismal public trust. With that in mind, I think a good read is the Elements of Journalism. I think improving the public’s trust is THE big issue editors and educators need to address when talking about what students should be learning. It may mean educating the readers as much as educating the students.