I posted our session about The Journalism of Inclusion on our blog at The Journalism of Inclusion – How to get Youth and Minorities instant access to the media, and reproduced it here>

Participants
Bill Densmore
Stephen Silha
Mary Kate Douglas, journalism student
Alexia Crane, journalism student
Andrew Matranga, journalism instructor, DU

At Journalism That Matters conference at the University of Denver this week, one of our missions was to support the journalism of inclusion: how to get more youth and minorities easy and instant access to media distribution. We believe journalism education’s role is to support the massive expansion of a citizen journalist class that will be far more prolific and closer to the news than what exists today in the fourth estate. One of JTM’s board members, Mike Fancher mentioned to me: “Journalists still hold onto the belief they are gatekeepers for reporting news. If we could rebuild the structure of news reporting anew, it would not be a structure in which a group exclusively controlled news distribution, it would look more like a system where those who understand the process of news reporting and distribution would teach everybody else on how to do this.”

Thursday morning, a group of University of Denver journalism students attended the conference. We immediately offered them access to our Media Amplification Program so they can use Twitter to distribute their community news stories to over 12,000 followers of our 14 Denver area Twitter feeds. For journalism students, this instant access to relevant community media extends their study outside the classroom into the real world.

Next we worked together with two of their instructors, Lynn Clark and Andrew Matranga to set up a new Breaking News platform for the University of Denver called DUBreakingNews.com, with associated Twitter and Facebook feeds. Our admin team, experienced in curating media and blog sources for University of Denver put this system together in 3 hours, just in time to unveil at the conference’s closing. With the DUBreakingNews platform, journalism students can easily post DU news and information using social media sources and see it published instantly. We believe giving students the power of media access creates engagement; with our Media Amplification Program, students now can interact with 12,000 readers in their community and get real time feedback no classroom can provide. And with the assistance and oversight of their instructors, this facility makes their study of journalism instantly practical.

We’ve built Breaking News for colleges before with MizzouBreakingNews.com for the University of Missouri Columbia. Now after our enthusiastic conversations yesterday with journalism educators and their students at DU, we’ve decided to open up Breaking News for colleges and, in particular, their journalism departments. DU’s Professor Clark also works with high schools to develop their media capabilities, and we’ll support her efforts to bring Breaking News as laboratories to high schools too. If you’re interested in helping us build more college breaking news, please contact us at thebreakingnewsnetwork@gmail.com

Related article: How we give teens who support DoSomething.org instant media access to help their communities