Theoretical models used in journalism education have been accused of being distanced from the reality of news production. The article by Christopher David Tulloch and Luis Mas i Manchon of Universitat Pompeu Fabra reports a teaching experiment which addresses the dichotomy of theory versus practice.

The article presents a training model and discusses The Catalan News Agency (CNA) experiment.

The training model addresses both the “old school” values of journalism as well as the demands in contemporary workplace. It 1) creates a fusion between the challenges of digital journalism and training techniques and the demands of media companies, 2) bridges the perceived divide between classroom simulations and real-world environment and 3) creates a role-changing effect for students.

In the news agency experiment, students provided professional-level English-language content for an official news agency. The article goes through the phases of this experiment in a case-study thoroughly.

The article “The Classroom Is the Newsroom” was published in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator and is available online (free abstract).

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