By Lauren Milideo
At the University of Washington, journalism students are required to take Media Responsibility in a Diverse Society, taught by Andrea Otáñez, Associate Teaching Professor in the University’s Department of Communication.
The course is designed to “help students get outside the processes of journalism and examine them and think about them critically,” Otáñez said. And the course has a service focus, partnering with local non-profits.
Most recently, Otáñez has collaborated with Chris Bennett, editor and publisher of The Seattle Medium, which together with three other newspapers comprises the African American-owned Tiloben Publishing Company, Inc., of which Bennett is also the CEO. Service in Otáñez’s class takes the form of writing stories for a publication with a small staff and deep roots in Seattle. The Medium was founded in 1970.
“We work together to develop the story ideas, and the students who are not Black students have to think in different ways,” she said. “There's lots of discussion about asset framing, microaggressions, objectivity and implicit bias. White students wonder if they should be telling these stories. ‘Are these their stories to tell?’” Such self-questioning, Otáñez said, leads to “fruitful conversations” on how to work ethically in communities that may not be your own, but also how to recognize the intersectional identities that make up different communities.
The partnership with Bennett is critical to help students think deeply about these issues, Otáñez said.
In this class, students realize: “‘I've got a publisher in a known community and a known publication… with a long history that is interested in my story, who believes I belong in this space.’ So that partnership is really important,” Otáñez said. A student journalist knows, “‘Chris knows what I'm working on. He wants this story.’” This knowledge, she said, creates “partnership and permission to be in this space” for all students in the class. The fact that sources are also willing to speak with students for a story in The Seattle Medium is another crucial factor; students realize their role in getting these stories told and heard.
Many local community news organizations have only one or two people on staff.
“So that means we faculty do a lot of that work to help the news outlets, which is great for someone who's been in the newsroom a good part of her life,” Otáñez said. “I love being in that editing and story-shaping position.” Otáñez handles all of the initial editing of students’ stories to ensure they meet partner papers expectations.
In some iterations of the class, the students write and report but also spend time working with local nonprofit organizations, volunteering at food banks, voter phone banks, or in tutoring programs, for example. The goal is to help students learn about communities by serving them rather than extracting stories from them. Otáñez pairs this community service with self-reflective writing assignments and lecture content on “rituals of journalism” that may do more harm than good in communities that don’t trust mainstream media.
Looking forward, Otáñez would like to see more funding to pay a local news editor or public interest communication practitioner to co-teach in these types of community-facing classes.
“But the goal is to get students doing public service journalism for small publications – niche publications that don't have huge staffs – and do stories that are organic to those communities as best they can,” Otáñez said.
Andrea Otáñez is Associate Teaching Professor in the University of Washington’s Department of Communication. Otáñez’s career has included working as an associate metro editor at the Seattle Times and as an acquisitions editor at the University of New Mexico Press.
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