The Boston Globe and the College of Communication are pairing up for a program that allows some journalism students to get published.
Students in the selected Newswriting and Reporting II classes that participate in the partnership, which was announced on Oct. 12, write for the “Your Town” section, a section that splits up local news by neighborhoods.
“Your Town” is The Globe’s method of delivering specialized news coverage to different neighborhoods throughout both Boston and Greater Boston, according to the site.
“The purpose of the program is two-fold,” said COM Dean Tom Fiedler in a phone interview. “For our students, this is an opportunity for them to practice the skills that they’re learning in the classroom. In doing that, we are providing news information that’s of value to real consumers, to real people in neighborhoods where this type of information will be valuable.”
Associate Professor Fred Bayles, director of BU’s partnership with The Globe and the State House program, said he thinks hands-on opportunities help students become better journalists.
“You are doing classwork but you’re working with a professor and the stuff gets published,” he said. “The idea in learning how to report right is to report right. You could do so much in a classroom but going out there and doing it is better.”
Bayles said readers will also benefit because students in the program will be covering stories that typically would be considered too neighborhood-specific to be published.
“This is where journalism is going now, this hyperlocal situation,” he said.
Students in the “Your Town” program write about one or two stories per week, Bayles said.
BU is accredited at the bottom of each of these articles and that students have rights to the articles after The Globe publishes them, he said.
Although professors are enthusiastic about the new program, some students have expressed that it can be overwhelming.
“I think we’re learning a lot but it’s kind of like throwing a baby in a swimming pool and expecting them to learn how to swim,” said COM junior Erin Chack, whose beat for “Your Town” is the North End. “For a lot of us, it’s our first time going out there and interviewing people. I feel like we’re in over our head.”
However, Chack is optimistic that it will help in the long run.
“I completely see how I will be thankful for this experience but right now it’s a little stressful,” she said.
Other students said they have thus far had positive experiences with the program.
“So far we’ve only worked on one story with the program and I’ve learned so much already,” said COM junior Kayla Hamel, whose beat is Jamaica Plain. “How can having your name in The Boston Globe be a bad thing?”
Professor Judy Rakowsky, who worked for The Globe as a reporter and editor for 14 years prior to coming to BU, is one of two professors that are doing the pilot partnership with The Globe.
“When I was an undergraduate at the University of Michigan spending up to 50 hours a week at the independent student publication, The Michigan Daily, I could not have imagined being able to submit class work to a major metropolitan newspaper,” she said. “Try as we might with all manner of teaching methods, nothing focuses you or teaches you more about journalism than doing it for real.”
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