LISTENING TO THE STORYS OF A CITY
Asking questions, examining issues affecting the world, and understanding how those complex concerns shape everyday life are all key skills of journalists. In Reporting the City led by Ellen Berkovitch, visiting associate professor in the Humanities and Media Studies department, students from across disciplines develop reporting experience by conducting interviews, attending public events and hearings, and writing investigative and human interest articles. Through this hands-on work, they discover how the techniques of journalism can inform their practices.
While the course in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences had been offered in previous semesters, fall 2022 was the first time for it to be held in person since 2020. The most recent class included students majoring in writing, industrial design, film, fashion, painting, printmaking, graphic design, and more, all bringing their individual perspectives to in-class conversations about the many applications and needs for reporting skills.
“There’s more overlap between journalism and industrial design than I thought there was,” said Theo Hall, BID ’24. “When you’re researching a project in industrial design, you want to talk to the people who will use what you’re designing. There are a lot of similarities in the gathering of data, interviewing, and learning.”
“Graphic design has a lot to do with talking to people and messaging, which is related to journalism,” said Milli Patel, BFA Communications Design (Graphic Design) ’24. “Being able to report on the city itself is really helpful because it’s what is around us and we’re not reading something or just writing about it; we’re experiencing it and thinking about our own experiences and our own biases.”
Their reported stories ranged from interviews with migrants who recently arrived in New York on buses sent from Texas, to the state of the subway system, to local voter registration campaigns. They also looked into Pratt’s own history as it related to the city, such as its footprint in Brooklyn and how it expanded over time. This included researching how past students reported on these issues, such as delving into the archives of The Prattler student newspaper at Pratt Libraries.
International Conference on Communications and Media Studies
3rd Edition COMMS | 27-28 March 2023 | Malaysia
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