YSU students are hands-on in journalism project

Night, Camera and Action

We rolled into downtown Youngstown on Friday night like a television production team from MTV or TMZ.com.

Video cameras, audio recorders, big microphones with fuzzy sound mufflers on them and reporters with notebooks.

The story was about the personal lives of Valley residents, but the people with all the gear were journalism students from Youngstown State University.

We captured the sights, sounds and bustling nightlife that is downtown Youngstown. If you haven’t been downtown after 10 on a weekend night, you’re unaware what I’m talking about. But turn to The Vindicator next weekend, and you’ll see the fruits of this effort. The stories, videos and photos will look at the downtown scene from the perspectives of the artists, the workers, the patrons and the business owners shining in a new downtown scene.

Friday’s reporting project was just the latest step in a unique journalism teaching partnership that started last September between YSU, WYSU radio and The Vindicator. The effort seems to get stronger with each project, and this venture into late-night downtown Youngstown was our latest.

In some ways, it’s still just an experiment — tried in Boston and New York City among other places. And we’re trying it here in Youngstown.

The News Outlet is its official name. (Check out newsoutlet.org.)

The staff at YSU, led by Dr. Gary Salvner, Tim Francisco and Alyssa Lenhoff, desired a way to give students in the YSU journalism program a more hands-on, real-world journalism experience.

The Vindy and WYSU are those experiences.

The students are paired with guys like me, Vindy Managing Editor Mark Sweetwood or veteran Vindy photojournalist Bill Lewis, or with guys such as Gary Sexton and David Luscher at WYSU.

Since September, more than 20 stories have worked their way into each group’s news formats. Before this, the student work would have remained traditional classroom-only efforts.

The program looks to add more regional media groups in the coming semesters as our current baby steps become a good walk — and then eventually a smooth run.

“We wanted to give our students a more hands-on experience with area media professionals,” said Francisco. “We also want them to become more involved in their communities. We think that a vibrant media makes for a vibrant community.”

Vibrancy was at hand Friday night as 20 or so students crisscrossed the downtown nightlife. We used Rosetta Stone as a makeshift newsroom of sorts.

One of them was junior Doug Livingston of Vienna. He was doing sound and video recording for the downtown stories.

He also has a neat story set to run this week on three South Avenue businesses (Frank’s Auto Parts, Denny’s Auto Sales and Ware’s Automotive Repair) scraping out a living amid Youngstown’s hardscrabble retail setting.

“This partnership allows students to step out of the classroom and into the real world,” said Livingston.

“I like the independent-learning style of the projects. There’s no textbook to fall back on — just 60 edits from your editor.”

That last comment was a jab at me regarding the many rewrites on his South Avenue business story.

He’ll have a 61st edit Monday.