Sourcing the News: Teaching Journalism Students Different Approaches to Sourcing Practices

Abstract

The experiences of a group of Australian university journalism students from diverse backgrounds are explored as they become involved in producing five editions of a new newspaper for the isolated community of Blackall in the Queensland Outback, 1500km north-west of Sydney. During this learning experience, non-traditional journalistic sourcing methods were trialed. This paper documents the exercise, compares the alternative methods with existing practices identified in the literature, and examines the effects and consequences of the exercise.