What do my students think of the journalism course I teach?

I am very proud of this course which I developed for the minor Journalism at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences. I gathered some feedback and I anonymised some answers.

I liked that the Teacher provided lots of examples about ethical dilemmas and issues journalists face. It was very interesting for me and good to know for the future. I have never faced it before but I am guaranteed that when I will be working as a journalist in news outlet, I will face it mostly every day. I got a better understanding about communication models and in my home country it was such a boring topic and I didn't get them but here I think I understood them pretty well and was curious to know how they work in practice. Thank you!

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I liked that it [the journalism course] was nicely constructed and organised without a lot of pressure or bad scheduling. My favorite topic was the danger of the profession and censorship. I think it is very important to talk about the dark sides of journalism and how dangerous it can be to simply want to tell the world the truth. So may journalists get silenced or killed for trying to give a voice to the ones who don't have it and I think it is sad that in the world of ''free speech'' most people don't have an option to tell the truth.

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I really liked thinking of the basic question: "what is news?" You usually don't really think about that in the same way as you do during this course and it also opened my eyes a bit for this. I feel like I even read the general news different after this course, because I am way more conscious about what even is the news that I am reading.

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This journalism course i learned a lot about how media works. This for me was so interesting because I didn't know a lot about it. In my own studies we learn a lot about the importance of media for our future working field, but not how it really works. I was also really interested in how media is so different in different countries and placed in the world, the influence of the government and political parties. I never really realised how important it is for journalists to have freedom in what they do to provide news in an objective way. So the audience has their own freedom to decide what and how they feel about it. This is really important for me.

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I liked this course because of the many different ways of how to approach journalism. The ethical part is very interesting because nowadays news is always news, as it shows. When is something private? There is no sharp line, this is very personal for a journalist. The models showed also how journalism differs in medium and how you send your message, do you just want to sent? Or do you want to receive also? That is something I'm aware of now and looking for when watching tv or reading a certain article in the newspaper.

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I really liked the different models of the media systems. It's interesting how differently it works in other countries and how much power the governments can have [...]. And I think its really interesting how fake news can be "verspreid" [disseminated], it's dangerous how much fake news there is on social media and I think we need to be careful [about] what to believe and trust on the media [...].

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Within the minor journalism [...] I also learnt how to think more critically about information, which is a great skill to have in your daily and professional life.

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I've learnt a lot of new things and it's interesting to see how a journalist works, instead of being the audience. I like how we got to experience some in-depth cases. I think it's important to keep giving students examples, by letting them do things (such as; fact-checking, verifying and debunking by giving them a story).

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I found the Media Systems topic very interesting, as it described and revealed how media systems, even within the European Union, are still very different from each other. Next to that it also showed how the differences have an impact on readership and the quality of journalism. This is not something I would have suspected as I thought the level of journalism would be the same all-around the European Union, but it is not necessarily the case. It is important to me because that way you can also understand how citizens from other countries generally get the news.

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What I like most about this Journalism course is the variety of theories there are on Journalism. I did not expect there to be so many different views and models. It also surprised me that there is a thought and a theory behind everything that happens in the media. For example Agenda Setting kind of shook me. Of course I realised that there is some sort of agenda setting, but not this in depth. The media really does tell you what is important by showing the news that reflects on their news values, even though that maybe does not align with what I really think is important. Besides agenda setting, I am also fascinated by the concept of Priming. "To divert the attention of the public to a better/easier topic". To be honest I did not understand this concept at first, I thought that it had to do with diverting the attention from other news, to easier news. But it also has to do with making you, as public, think that you find a certain topic very interesting.

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This journalism course provides more understanding about the journalistic profession, which then can be used in practice. I strongly believe that you can not master a craft by only studying it, but the majority of learning comes from practice and experience in your desired field. The reason why I like this course is that the things we learn during lectures help us understand things more clearly during practice. The most interesting thing I learned is how easy it is to manipulate the news nowadays which has made me even more cautious about the news I read on a daily basis and the news outlets I follow.

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I liked that we got to know more about so many different topics, from the basics of journalism (journalism as an ideology from Deuze) to how media is regulated and which political models exist. That helped me to have an overview about the theoretical part of journalism. Also the topic about "Priming and Gatekeeping" surprised me, because I did not know how it worked before and it helped me to understand how journalists act and why specific events are published and others not. [...] I think the four models we have learnt about were really interesting and helpful to understand more about the communication between journalists and the audience.

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I liked this journalism course for the reason I have been able to know more about [...] new technologies and ways to get information, and also the history of the news theories [...].

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What I liked most about this journalism course is the fact that I get the chance to study, hear and explore about a subject that I've always had interests in, but never got the chance to delve into.

[...] I find the topic and discussion about how Politics and Media are interdependent very true and interesting. So personally for me, this is the one topic that I was always excited to sit and listen to during our course this bloc/semester.

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I really liked the 4 models of communication because I think of them a lot (especially the attention model and the encoding/decoding model). Also that we tried to talk about ethical questions in a very serious way - it was nice to learn it in theory before being confronted about it as a journalist in the real life. I also liked that we learned some "journalistic jargon" like beats or stringers. Even though it was quite a theoretical course, i think i can apply it to reality a lot.

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Many practical task in journalism helped me to gain the confidence in journalistic approaches, such as interviewing, researching or editing. The experience helped me to understand, how a journalist works in the field. But often I could not explain the theoretical factors behind the work. Being in the news theory classes helped me to gain more insights about the theories I have always seen in the practical field but could not explain in the theoretical context. I really enjoyed finally linking these two parts together.

Although all of the theories served many interesting aspects, the expression model of McQuail stood out for me. This model helped me realising, that journalism does not only function as a information source, but also that news can interact on an emotional level. I realised, that news can function as a social glue, bringing people together with the same shared values or interest. Besides that, many ritual behaviours can be linked to news, such as reading the newspaper at breakfast or watching news on television every evening. News can also be used to express ourselves by the things we consume. All those aspects can give people a sense of belonging. I was not aware of that, before attending the news theory class.

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I think the most interesting part of [this course in] journalism is its diversity. I find it surprising that in [this] journalism course, there is not only lessons about how to acquire news or to be a journalist, but turns out I learn so much about interviewing people. I learn the different angles and aspects of interviewing and how different angles, agenda and settings have different meaning in interviewing.

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Since the beginning I always felt excited about this journey, learning journalism has opened up my mind broadly [...]. In my opinion, the most interesting topic was when we talk about the news values[...].

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I think it was interesting to see how much theory there is in general behind journalism. This job is very practical, I think you can learn the most from "learning by doing", but there are still some theoretical things that are interesting to know for the daily tasks when you're working as a journalist.