What Journalists Can Learn from Teachers
Teachers and journalists have more in common than a surface level examination of their professions would make it seem. Both face significant challenges levied by the government and the public and both are generally low-paid for the amount of time they put into their work. Both are also facing uncertain futures, particularly in the United States, as antiquated systems come into conflict with modern problems.
And what teachers and journalists do in their work lives are actually, not all that different, argues broadcast/radio journalist Ryan Wilson. "[Teaching and journalism] are both about taking ideas that are complex, multi-faceted and have lots of grey areas, and trying to explain that in a way that is clear to people who may not be that interested," he said to journalism.co.uk, drawing a link between his experiences as a journalist and his nearly two decades of teaching.
WHAT SKILLS DO JOURNALISTS AND TEACHERS HAVE IN COMMON?
Here are some skills to take note of:
Being able to engage an audience. Teachers must command their classrooms and journalists must command their readers’ attention.
Understanding how to ask questions. Teaching involves a lot of conjecture and therefore involves asking more questions, depending on method, rather than necessarily giving more answers: Socratic questioning inspires thought and engagement, and journalists use a form of Socratic questioning in their processes.
Building community. Both journalists and teachers strive to become a part of and strengthen their communities by playing active roles that will better them in the long run. Journalists make sure information becomes available — teachers do exactly the same.
Creative conceptualizing. Sometimes spelling out data in black and white terms doesn’t help your audience understand it. Teachers and journalists alike are forced to come up with creative ways to deliver information and fill in the blanks in order to help their community grasp that information more readily.
WHAT ARE THE MAJOR ADVANTAGES THAT TEACHERS HAVE OVER JOURNALISTS?
The answer to this varies depending on the type of journalism we’re talking about, but the most common differences are:
People-facing Positions: All teachers are working face to face with students and parents and administrators all the time, so they are constantly engaged in their work and community (for better or worse). Journalists, depending on the nature of their position, may not be engaging with the public at a frequent rate — and therefore must make time to check in actively with their communities rather than organically.
Materials, costs, and environment. Both journalism and teaching require their own sets of materials, but teaching requires a staggering amount of materials that may not be apparent at the outset. Teachers must buy their own writing supplies and sometimes even bring their own markers or chalk. These costs add up quickly and go back into the community. Often, that money and those materials are aimed at building the environment in which their particular brand of information is communicated. Journalists don’t have a classroom to curate, and newsrooms and classrooms are very different working environments that operate at their own pace.
Immediate feedback. Teachers get to see the impact of their lessons in real time. Most journalists will not see this happen — and therefore getting feedback about how to grow and change their process won’t be as immediate. Teachers learn pretty quickly if what they’re doing is or isn’t working.
Direct contact with diversity. Again, the nature of a teaching job is that it will bring teachers into contact with a very large amount of people. If one teacher has a class of 30 children and every child has two parents, that’s 90 people involved with one classroom. This means that the likelihood of being exposed to people from different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds is much greater. Journalists have to seek this out, often, as newsrooms are filled with other journalists.
Journalists have a job to do and the way teachers interact with the world actually raises salient points about how journalists can improve their work and their relationship with the general public. Accepting and incorporating these differences is a challenge, but journalists have an opportunity to boost community engagement with their work and improve the quality of the work they produce.
