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Coming soon, to a field near you, could be one of the recent graduates from the University of Regina’s School of Journalism.
Each year about two dozen graduates leave the campus and head out into the real world of journalism.
Some have ended up at The Western Producer – nine of us to be precise.
Others will work for small weekly community papers, large dailies, radio stations and television networks.
And some will have taken a class from me.
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For one semester in each of the past three years, I have taught an elective class in agricultural reporting. This year, 15 students chose to take the course.
It’s impossible to cover the intricacies of prairie agriculture in a class that runs once a week for 13 weeks. But we’ve talked about cows and canola, food and farm income, production and politics, rural health care and highways, agribusiness and the agricultural policy framework.
Guests have kindly shared their expertise, recognizing that the more the students know and understand the better their reporting will be.
We’ve discussed ways to cover agriculture, the decline in the number of agricultural reporters in Canada and around the world, and how farmers and their industry are portrayed in different media.
Students are often surprised at the latter.
One of their assignments in the term that just ended was to look at an agricultural or rural issue and analyze how it was covered. Some students examined international coverage of Canadian issues, others compared print to electronic media, and several looked at how this newspaper
handled certain stories.
The Western Producer did not escape
criticism – and that’s a good thing given the temptation there may have been to try to earn points with the instructor.
So what do I get from teaching?
Once a week I get to step back and look at both journalism and agriculture from the students’ perspective. Some come from farms and others grew up in large cities in other provinces or even other countries. Their opinions vary widely.
They remind me why I chose to become a reporter. Their curiosity is catching, their enthusiasm inspiring and they’re fun to spend time with.
They want to know everything and they’re not afraid to ask.
Like the people I interview, sometimes I just don’t know the answer, and that’s a good reason for me to keep learning, too.
