The Missourian method

By Erica A. Hernandez

Getting to work out of the Missourian’s news room this past week has been an inspiring and motivating experience. Unique among other journalism schools in the nation, the Missouri School of Journalism, created in 1908, is the oldest in the U.S. At Mizzou, students learn by doing.
Greg Bowers, sports editor at the Columbia Missourian, has been our host and liaison. Bowers has welcomed us into the newsroom and the classroom in Missouri. Seeing the journalism school was eye opening.  The nine journalism buildings, the libraries, the labs—there is no way around it, the school is impressive.

What may be more impressive is the quality of the professors and editors. A visual storytelling session by Missourian director of photography Brian Kratzer immediately inspired me to sign up for a photo class at Florida in the fall. He went over my favorite part of journalism: the human aspect. It doesn’t matter if it's sports, news, photography, graphics or any other mediums. It's action and reaction.

Joy Mayer, Missourian director of community outreach, took this concept even further. Mayer showed the class a new facet of journalism: participatory journalism. This idea has been touched upon in most of my classes at UF. It seems that it will likely redefine journalism, but never had I seen it so seamlessly executed as in the examples Mayer showed. The most notable example was the Guardian's idea of "open journalism." The concept is introduced eloquently by this ad: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2012/feb/29/open-journalism-three-little-pigs-advert. Open journalism, which allows the community to participate and further coverage, is exciting and something I see as crucial to journalism's survival.