By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING – College students engaged in academic reporting partnerships with professional news outlets in Michigan and elsewhere are producing thousands of stories a year that provide crucial information to the American public, potentially reaching tens of millions of readers, according to research from the Center for Community News.
The center’s analysis “found that student-reported stores were often more in-depth and complex than the coverage produced by professional journalists at other local news outlets and were meeting critical information needs in their communities.”
Student reporting helps fill major gaps in news coverage at a time when many local papers have merged, shrunk their professional staffs, been acquired by mega-corporations or gone out of business, according to the center. At the same time, local broadcast stations across the country have also cut their staffs.
That dearth of credible, reliable professional reporting contributes significantly to the proliferation of misinformation, disinformation and manipulation of public opinion, experts say.
The center’s findings draw in part on interview and survey data from Capital News Service based at the Michigan State University School of Journalism.
CNS students report on state government, public policy and politics for more than 40 print, broadcast and online outlets across Michigan.
In another learn-by-doing enterprise, MSU students also write for Great Lakes Echo, a regional news service run by the Journalism School’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism.
They cover environmental issues in Michigan, seven other Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces with stories that are republished by other news outlets, government agencies and nonprofit and industry groups.
The center has identified 120 college-led student reporting programs in the United States that produce local news.
A new study from the Center for Community News analyzed stories by student reporters at 38 academic-news programs. It found that the vast majority focused on statewide and local issues and filled such “critical information needs” as health and welfare, education, economic opportunities, environment and political life.
“There was evidence of programs attempting to play accountability/watchdog roles and connect people in the community, two roles of local news media found to be important to democracy,” according to the study’s authors, professors Andrea Lorenz of Kent State University and Richard Watts of the University of Vermont, where the Center for Community News is based.
“Coverage was mostly thematic, not episodic by nature, suggesting that students are engaging in enterprise reporting rather than covering one-off events such as meetings or crime reports,” they said.
The center’s related survey of 73 academic-news reporting programs found that 2,874 participating students generated over 17,228 stories appearing in more than 1,311 professional outlets between June 1, 2023, and May 31, 2024.
Center researchers Dominic Minadeo and Jocelyn Rockhold reported that those articles received more than 13.6 million online views with a potential reach of more than 23.5 million readers.
The actual amount of student reporting “is almost certainly greater” because the researchers were unable to “reach all producers of student news or capture the breadth of their exposure,” they said.
Eric Freedman is director of Capital News Service and the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at MSU.