The student media staff I advise got scooped this semester by a local television station. I was not a happy adviser.
It wasn’t the scoop that bothered me most. The station didn’t have a lot of details on the story, and I’d still like to think my students covered it better.
What bothered me was that my students missed a story that outsiders reported.
My students learn, work and live at the university. It’s their home turf. They’re journalists immersed in the community they cover. No one should know it better or more intimately than they do.
The idea of being an active part of your professional community is a central topic of a book I’m reading. In Think Like a Rockstar, my friend Mack Collier wrote about why rock stars have fans. In fact, it’s the books opening line.
Perhaps the biggest reason why rock stars have fans instead of customers is that rock stars are fans themselves.”
Rock stars, according to Mack, are members of the audience with whom they are trying to connect, allowing them to have a deeper level of understanding of their fans.
Student journalists should connect with their campus community because they are part of it. They share reasons for choosing the university above others, a pride in attending, a love of mutual benefits, and disdain of common annoyances.
They should celebrate the university’s successes and provide information necessary to assist their peers or administrators in correcting problems.
In short, student journalists should aspire to use information to make their university community the best that it can be because they love it and they truly want it to be wonderful. Anything short of this is just doing it wrong.
