OHIO journalism students shift gears to cover pandemic's impacts

In Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Communication, the COVID-19 pandemic has been both a challenge and an opportunity, as students and faculty shifted to online-only instruction and shifted gears to have students cover multiple news developments related to the crisis.

Covering COVID-19 was not just a priority for upper-level production courses and student-run campus media. Even the most entry-level course in the J-school curriculum mobilized students to report about the crisis both in their hometowns and in their home-away-from-home in Athens.

The course, "Multiplatform Reporting & Writing" (JOUR 2311), is part of the core curriculum in the Journalism major and a prerequisite for the program’s advanced journalism courses. With about 95 students enrolled in spring semester, each working in one of five smaller "newsroom labs," JOUR 2311 is built around exercises that require students to get out into the community and produce ready-to-publish news reports.

“We’ve always done ‘experiential learning’ in the Scripps School of Journalism, but students this semester got much more experience than usual,” said Bill Reader, professor of journalism and current lead instructor for the JOUR 2311 labs. “Even before spring break, many students predicted the COVID-19 pandemic would affect their assignments. By the time class resumed online after spring break, most of them were poised and ready to cover the pandemic from their hometowns.”

Usually, JOUR 2311 assignments require students to cover issues and events in Southeastern Ohio, giving each student an opportunity to practice community journalism in the region served by Ohio University. With in-person instruction suspended due to the pandemic, the JOUR 2311 instruction team encouraged students to instead write about how their hometown communities were adapting to the crisis, using whatever platform they chose: text, audio, or video.

Most students produced text-based articles laid out with photos and headlines, packaged for publication. A few chose to do video packages or audio podcasts. Each student chose a distinct angle. The result was a panoply of articles about how different communities are dealing with the same crisis in their own ways.

For example:

• Taylor Burnette’s podcast, “Chesapeake Village News Briefing,” focused on public safety efforts in her hometown along the Ohio River across from Huntington, West Virginia. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NVVSYiJ40Fts9fdjiyhoDmKQO6qT7qHd/view)
• Zach Zimmerman from Mount Lebanon, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, wrote about how officials in his community were mobilizing volunteer efforts, delaying tax bills, and monitoring public safety measures amid the pandemic in hard-hit Allegheny County (which as of May 6 had nearly 1,400 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 111 deaths).
• Margaux Augier focused her article on the cancellation of the annual Blossom Time festival over Memorial Day weekend in the Cleveland suburb of Chagrin Falls, Ohio. The event was to be the 64th annual installment and is a primary fundraiser for the Chagrin Valley Jaycees.
• Chloe Gee's video package, "Coronavirus in Gallia County," focused on challenges for her rural farming community in the Mid-Ohio River Valley. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJmJ2CfkJ6c)
• Rory Ball, from the Columbus suburb of Powell, Ohio, wrote about how that community is focusing on providing mental health and counseling services during the pandemic.
• In the rural village of Amanda, Ohio, Madison Bussert’s overview of closures in the Fairfield County community focused on how schools, churches, and businesses are helping to feed the bodies and souls of local residents.
• Maya Meade from Oxford, Ohio, detailed how the COVID-19 disruption has hurt local businesses, including interviews from a local dentist, a veterinarian, and a chef, some of whom went from seemingly secure careers to being unemployed and seeking government assistance.
• Dylan Theisen’s video package, “COVID-19 in Tallmadge, Ohio,” is about the closure of local parks and playgrounds in his hometown in suburban Akron (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HDd5k4kPVA).
• Several students focused their articles on the challenges faced by their hometown school districts. Lexi Lepof, a third-generation Ohio University student hailing from the Cincinnati region, wrote about how the Oak Hills Local School District made the transition to online learning. Kyra Young focused on how staff and teachers at Zanesville City Schools have volunteered to distribute meals to needy families in the community, interviewing school officials and local residents about the effort. Kylee Baranek of Wadsworth, Ohio, focused on how high school students were struggling with the loss of the social benefits of attending school in person.

In addition, many JOUR 2311 students changed their final project topics to address the COVID-19 disruption. The final project requires students to write in-depth, multi-sources news features about serious, current issues in Southeastern Ohio. Students pitched their project topics just before spring break; after spring break, many students had to significantly alter their project or change topics entirely. Some examples:

• Emily Crebs of Kirtland, Ohio, wrote about how the pandemic will delay decisions on a controversial, multi-million-dollar project to build mountain-bike trails in the Wayne National Forest north of Athens. (The article has since been published by The New Political: https://thenewpolitical.com/2020/05/01/how-the-coronavirus-pandemic-will-impact-the-baileys-trail-system/).
• Payton Szymczak, from the Cleveland suburb of Rocky River, interviewed high school athletic directors in the region and an official of the Ohio High School Athletic Association about the cancellation of spring sports and uncertainty about fall sports.
• Hanna Holman, from Kent, Ohio, wrote about ways Ohio University’s LGBT Center is using remote communication to continue its support services to Ohio University students since the conversion to remote instruction.
• Eli Feazell of the Cincinnati suburb of Wyoming, Ohio, wrote about concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic might curtail participation in the 2020 Census in Athens County, particularly with the switch to remote instruction and suspension of in-person instruction on the Ohio University campus in mid-March.

Students were guided through the process by their “newsroom lab” instructors (Scripps graduate students Michael Bediako, Bailey Dick, Satrajit Ghosh Chowdhury, Irma Omerhodzic, and Reader). Lab instructors served as managing editors, maintaining one-on-one communication with students and providing individualized feedback throughout the semester.

“The lab instructors are crucial to the process, and we are so blessed to have graduate students who also have professional journalism experience to run those newsroom labs,” Reader said. “I think the students appreciate getting guidance and feedback from such experienced professional journalists.” JOUR 2311 students also get mentorship from more senior J-School students by working for campus media such as The Post, WOUB, The New Political, 1804 Communication, Backdrop, and numerous other outlets.

Ultimately, though, Reader said the success of the “COVID-19 edition” of JOUR 2311 is due to the students themselves.

“We always have great students in the School of Journalism, but this group really stepped up and performed admirably over the past two months,” Reader said. “They didn’t let the pandemic and the shift to online-only deter them, not for a moment. If anything, most of them became even more driven to do their best possible work in the face of adversity.”