By Jocelyn Rockhold
The University of Arizona has a long history of providing community news. Nearly 50 years ago, Professor Emerita Jacqueline Sharkey started El Independiente, a bilingual student-produced newspaper dedicated to covering news in South Tucson. The newspaper transitioned to magazine format before becoming inoperative, but the School of Journalism has recently revived the magazine’s spirit.
“El Inde was one of the first bilingual magazines ever put out by a university media outlet,” said Pate McMichael, associate director of the School of Journalism. “So because we have a bilingual journalism program, we brand our student reporting wire service that our students are doing for their community as ‘El Inde.’”
Student work, including Spanish-language audio content, is available on the El Inde website, which acts as a stand-alone newsite and as a wire service. Local media outlets are encouraged to draw from this repository as long as they credit the student and El Inde.
El Inde hosts content created through multiple courses at the university, but many contributions come from the Arizona Sonora News capstone course. Adjunct professor Cathy Burch, one of the professors that teaches the course, works for local paper the Arizona Daily Star.
“If you went on the [Arizona Daily] Star site and you get past the paywall, you type in El Inde and you'll see hundreds of stories that Cathy’s students have published,” said McMichael.
One of these students is Vic Verbalaitis, a soon-to-graduate student who has 20 stories published in the Arizona Daily Star. Many of these stories were written in the Arizona Sonora News course. Verbalaitis will be attending NYU in the fall to obtain an M.A. in Magazine and Digital Storytelling and directly credits the program at University of Arizona for providing journalism experience.
“I'm going to take the skills I've learned here at the [University of Arizona Journalism] School and just go in headfirst and see what I can do in New York,” said Verbalaitis. “I feel very confident, though. I feel very prepared.”
In addition to providing content through courses like Arizona Sonora News, students can also apprentice at the Arizona Daily Star where they learn and write for a semester. Students meet weekly with staff from the newspaper to monitor progress and discuss potential news coverage.
“I'm an apprentice on the Health and Solutions desks. So I've been writing a lot of health stories around Tucson as well as some solutions pieces,” said Verbalaitis. “And then I also worked with them last summer as a cannabis apprentice reporter where I covered cannabis news with their designated weed reporter, and that was really fun.”
Though the apprenticeship currently receives instruction from staff at the paper, the college is looking to more closely advise the experience. Soon, the University of Arizona will supply the instructor to support their students as they continue to write for the paper.
“They will still do normal assignments or get assigned stories from the Star. What I will do is create an environment in class where I view it as being like a coach to them,” said McMichael. “I can critique their work, but I can also be a voice for them to the Star.”
Outside of El Inde and the Arizona Daily Star apprenticeship, students have other opportunities to publish community news–they also hone their journalism skills at AZPM (previously known as Arizona Public Media) which is housed on university property. Those who work with the south Arizona NPR and PBS affiliate receive internship credit.
“Many of our students go over [to AZPM] and get trained to be radio journalists. Some of them even do television,” said McMichael, “and that's a long standing partnership [that] goes back, you know, several decades at least. And we're continuing to make that experience better.”
The program at University of Arizona stresses the importance of hands-on journalism and getting out of the classroom.
“Personally, I see what we're doing is moving much more in that direction of partnering and making our curriculum a realistic experience, professional experience,” said McMichael, “and not a simulated journalism experience.”