School of Journalism and Communication Dean Tim Gleason congratulates Professor John Russial, winner of the 1999 Jonathan Marshall Award for Innovative Teaching in Journalism and Communication.

Ask.

That’s what Professor John Russial, winner of the 1999 Jonathan Marshall Award for Innovative Teaching is Journalism and Communication, does.

He asks.

He asks students what they think. When they answer, he asks them to further clarify their thinking. When they make assumptions, he gently pushes them to reconsider their logic. When they give examples that illustrate ideas and concepts, he asks what other explanations might be available. And somehow he does it all without intimidating them, without making them feel as if they can’t learn it, without leaving them feeling as if they have failed.

Russial’s skill in bringing out the best in students may stem from his working with reporters for more than a decade.

Before he made the jump to academia. Russial was a copy chief at the Philadelphia Inquirer, which meant he worked on everything from daily news stories to Pulitzer-Prize-winning special features. With any given story, he had to negotiate the tension that can crop up between a reporter and an editor when changes are required. Getting the work edited and keeping reporters happy takes a particular touch and a willingness to listen. He has brought that touch to teaching.

“Working with students is a lot like working with reporters and other editors,” Russial notes. “The same issues arise. Probably the biggest difference is that students haven’t had as much experience with on-the-job conflict and haven’t been hardened into an us-versus-them attitude. Also, many are interested in both reporting and editing. So it’s more fun because they can see themselves in either role.”

Russial teaches in the news-editorial sequence at the School, where he has worked since 1992. He is highly regarded for his copy-editing courses that are designed to offer students hands-on experience and prepare them for work in a newsroom.

Two years after his arrival at the School, Russial and Professor Wayne Wanta started teaching Advanced Editing as well as News Design (they team-taught). Because of their individual interests, Russial wound up focusing on the advanced editing course and Wanta did design.

While originally intended for students who were primarily interested in editing careers, advanced editing has also appealed to some students who are primarily interested in reporting. Part of what students do in the advanced class is discuss relationships and the inevitable tensions that arise between editors and reporters in deadline situations. They also work through those tensions in the course of class editing sessions, allowing students the chance to understand that they have to work together.

Russial also teaches courses in media management and cyberjournalism. Under Russial’s guidance the cyberjournalism course has developed from an examination of on-line media to include hands-on assignments that require students’ writing, editing and designing a news-based web page. At the end of the class, the students’ work is posted on the web for surfers to see. To view the winter term class’s efforts visit http://jcomm.uoregon.edu/~russial/cyberj/netvolution/.

It is those kinds of experiences—putting students in the same kinds of situations they’ll find on the job—that Russial sees as a crucial part of building students’ skills.

“The advanced editing class is like a newsroom—warts and all,” Russial explains. “It’s also what I try to do in the media management class—bring in issues that managers face on a daily basis, ask why certain decisions are made and examine whether the decisions are good or bad ones.”

Russial’s approach is working. Since he began teaching the advanced editing class, his students have been accepted for prestigious Dow Jones internships as well as copy-editing internships at daily newspapers around the country.

But for Russial, his desire to improve the practice of journalism and, in particular, newspaper editing, goes beyond the University’s classrooms. Through workshops and seminars, he has had the opportunity to work with reporters and editors at several newspapers in the Northwest. He also served as a guest intructor at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

Those connections have, in turn, helped him educate young journalists. Many of the same journalists Russial has worked with in newsrooms join him for a yearly workshop that he directs for the School. The Summer Journalism Workshop is for high school minority students who have shown an interest in journalism. Participants have the opportunity to learn about journalism by producing a 16-page newspaper while working closely with mentors who know the business.

“There is no doubt that John’s strong ties to the professional community have had a tremendous influence on the success of the workshop,” says SOJC Dean Tim Gleason. “He is consistently able to bring in working journalists who are as dedicated as he is to showing young people the opportunities journalism has to offer.”

Russial sees the workshop as an important piece of an important overall program—making newsrooms more like the communities they cover. The workshop is supported by a grant from the S.I. Newhouse Foundation and The Oregonian. Producing a newspaper from design to completion in one week would not be possible without the contributions of Oregonian reporters, editors and photographers as well as those from newspapers throughout Oregon who come to work with the students. And although the details involved in organizing the workshop sometimes can be a bit overwhelming, Russial says it’s all worth it once the students arrive.

“I like working with bright students who want to become journalists,” he says. “And I really like it when we contact the students a year or two later and find out that they have kept in touch with a reporter or editor they met at the workshop or that the workshop helped them decide to pursue journalism studies in college.”