Journalism Students Cover Local News

By Zach Jevne

The University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism announced it would be teaming up with public broadcaster KQED to create the Bay Area News Project. It also features a full-time staff and the project will be funded by a $5 million donation from F. Warren Hellman. The project begins next year and promises to offer "high-quality, original coverage" of the San Francisco and Oakland region.

The dean of the journalism school, Neil Henry, says the school signed up to figure out a way to give local communities when the industry is losing its ability to do that kind of work. Many courses include assignments require students to become "immersed in the local region providing journalism...but haven't been able to because of cuts in the industry."

The project will rely on 120 Berkeley students to cover 7,000 square miles and several million residents. They will serve as "foot soldiers for local news", Hellman said. Students won't be required to participate but the project is hoping that the grad students will be eager for the experience and be willing to work for free to get it.

Some don't see it as all positive. While the project may create a new model for the industry, it may do so at the expense of suppressing full-time, paid positions.

"They're giving themselves an unfair advantage by relying on unpaid labor," Robert Gammon, a longtime Bay Area reporter, said. He referred to the project as "slave labor".

While the project may help students now, the practice may undermine them in the future.

"The new venture promises to be bad for the public over the long term," Gammon said. "The public will be forced to depend on inexperienced, unpaid students to inform them about what's happening in the region."

Henry believes that nonprofit newsrooms like the Bay Area News Project is the best prospect to create jobs for laid off professionals and recent graduates. He feels that giving students job training while still in school will help news organizations across the country.

Stephen Shepard, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, likes the idea and it doesn't bother him that the work is being done for free.

"If they weren't doing the work for free, I don't think some other paid journalists would be doing it," he said.

Photo Credit: (UC Berkeley)