Teaching Undergraduate Journalism Students Foreign Correspondence: Can It Be Done?

Abstract

The University of Queensland has conducted five international field reporting courses in India and Vietnam since 2012,1 as well as three more courses based on similar work integrated learning principles (i.e., intensive, immersive and experiential) on campus at St Lucia in Brisbane during the same period. Previous research has found them to be valuable pedagogical innovations that have led to solid academic outcomes. The students themselves have also reported enjoying greater self-confidence, better reporting and technical skills, and increased employment prospects as a direct result of taking part in these courses. Some of that research is re-examined in this article but in a new light, given that the main focus here is on whether these courses in fact deliver on another important promise: to teach the core skills required of a foreign correspondent. To discover what those core skills might be, the researcher explored the extensive literature written by former and current correspondents about their experiences and their lessons learned. He also approached 12 former colleagues at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), all of whom have been high profile international reporters, correspondents and producers, and invited them to offer their unstructured reflections on this question. These insights have then been filtered and assessed through the researcher’s own reflections of working as a foreign correspondent for the ABC in London between 1984 and 1987. The results are both encouraging and challenging. They suggest that while the students and their teachers are largely satisfied with the reporting, technical and personal skills that have been taught and learned, many correspondents consider that their core attributes include extensive experience in senior reporting roles prior to heading overseas, where the basic skills have been honed to the highest degree. That, of course, is something that no undergraduate could ever claim to have achieved.

WIL-Power: Towards a Signature Pedagogy in Journalism

“…Much of undergraduate journalism education involves ‘learning by doing’—one definition of WIL (Moreland, 2005, p. 4)—whereby students produce their own stories and journalism products throughout their degree, from introductory to capstone courses; they engage in professional work experience and internships frequently. Now, specially designed WIL courses overseas and on campus offer them even more opportunities to ‘think like a practitioner’ (Woolley, 2014, 2015, 2017). It can be confidently asserted that these specific overseas WIL courses are indeed the Signature Pedagogy of journalism.…”

Models of Work-Integrated Learning in Journalism Education

“…He argues that, despite the difficulties associated with taking students into different cultures, students develop intercultural communication skills in the field. Both authors (Woolley, 2017, Duffield, 2014, Duffield, 2008 report positive employment outcomes for students who participated in these field reporting experiences.…”

“…Duffield (2008, p. 102) argues that the trips 'replicate journalistic practice of overseas correspondents encountering "high risk and high returns": more difficulty, more headlines and colour'. Building on this work, Woolley (2014Woolley ( , 2015Woolley ( , 2017) also argues for the educational benefits of taking students overseas and teaching them how to be foreign correspondents. He argues that, despite the difficulties associated with taking students into different cultures, students develop intercultural communication skills in the field.…”