To newsroom

Estonian runner Rasmus Magi gets off to a hot start in the Men’s 400 meter hurdles at the Prefontaine Classic at Stanford on June 30, 2019. Caption by Luke Jackson/photo by Aaron Diggdon.

What happens next is magic. We believe that journalism education works best when students are covering real stories for a real audience. So every afternoon, students learn by doing. Working in small news teams, students on campus during our regular summer program visit and learn from experts at the Cantor Art Museum, the Hoover Institution and the Archive of Recorded Sound, among other campus landmarks. They cover sports events such as the Prefontaine Classic and street life in Palo Alto.

Online, the same thing can happen but in a different way. While coronavirus may make field reporting difficult during summer 2020, we expect that students will report, analyze and contribute insights from where they live. Now more than ever, partnerships between students — a photographer in Palo Alto, a coder in Chicago and a writer in Beijing — will be even more amazing. Separated by distance, students become foreign correspondents for each other, producing and publishing stories using digital tools that bring them together. On campus or not, they’ll practice the spirit of the newsroom — the ability to learn together, make ethical decisions together, support each other in the work, and experience the laughter and fun of true collaboration.