A summary of the findings from an intensive three-year assessment of the impacts of CCJ's Traveling Curriculum newsroom training program. This assessment was conducted by Dr. William Damon and Brett Mueller.

Evolution of the Traveling Curriculum

Defining Features

Training Statistics

How We Assessed Training Outcomes

TRAINING IMPACTS/OUTCOMES

Characteristics of Successful Training Programs

About the Researchers

In 2001, with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Committee of Concerned Journalists launched a program of intense training workshops designed to bring new learning opportunities to journalists working in the field. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation joined in support of the program’s implementation and assessment in 2003.

The CCJ training takes place in journalists’ own newsrooms: for this reason, the program is called the “Traveling Curriculum.” Because the workshops “travel” to news organizations, entire newsrooms can experience the workshops together. All levels of staff, from managerial to reportorial, participate as peers in the workshop discussions. Indeed, it is a requirement of the CCJ training that all staff levels must participate.

The workshops consist largely of small-group exercises and problem-solving, with occasional formal presentations that convey the essential tools and methods of good journalism. The curriculum covers core ethical standards, but it is not limited to ethics; it covers the entire spectrum of good journalism practices, such as how to write interesting stories, how to ensure accuracy of reported information, how to expand a newsroom’s target audience, how to uncover information for an investigative report, and how to plan a feature series.

For print newsrooms, the workshop program takes a day-and-a-half. During that time, the program delivers three “modules” that have been pre-selected by the newsroom from a set of 12. Module topics for print newsrooms include verification, bias, conflict of interest, engagement (or making news stories interesting), proportionality, independence, and watchdog. For broadcast newsrooms, two abbreviated modules (news judgment and engagement) are offered in a compressed, half-day workshop.

The workshop format of small-group exercises and frequent interactive dialogues was chosen because it is known to foster critical thinking and deep understanding. The workshop exercises are implemented in a Socratic manner, with trainers asking thought-provoking questions and guiding the discussions towards solutions that emphasize the importance of key standards and demonstrate useful new strategies.

For a more detailed description of the Traveling Curriculum and the pedagogy that supports it, click here.

Defining Features of the Traveling Curriculum

The defining features of the CCJ workshop program are: 1) its location in the home community of the newsroom, 2) its inclusion of all levels of newsroom staff, 3) its emphasis on reflection and critical thinking, 4) the intensity of the discussions that it promotes, and 5) its emphasis on active participation in its training experience. This particular combination of features is unique in journalism education.

For more information on the defining features of the Traveling Curriculum, click here.

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Training Statistics

The CCJ Traveling Curriculum program was launched in February 2001. As of June 2006, the program had conducted over 300 sessions at more than 120 print, broadcast, radio and Internet newsrooms, reaching over 7,300 journalists who work in these newsrooms. In addition, workshops have been offered at the National Press Club and other professional associations; to journalists in Europe, Asia, and Latin America; and to student newspapers in U.S. colleges and universities.

For a more detailed breakdown of Traveling Curriculum training statistics, click here.

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How We Assessed Training Outcomes

A formal assessment of the impact of the CCJ Traveling Curriculum began in July 2003. The main assessment instruments were: 1) One-on-one interviews with those who participated in the workshops, 2) staff surveys administered before and after workshop participation, and 3) samples of “product” (news stories, broadcast segments) collected before and after workshop participation. Between July 2003 and September 2005, the assessment team traveled to 34 of the newsrooms that had participated in the workshops to conduct interviews and collect surveys and samples of news product. Of these 34 newsrooms, 17 were newspapers, 15 were local television stations, one was an online organization, and one was a student newspaper. During these visits, the assessment team interviewed 549 workshop participants and collected over 1,800 staff surveys. The team also collected and analyzed nearly 2,100 newspaper stories and 300 local television newscasts.

For more details about the assessment methodology and demographics of the organizations assessed, click here.

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TRAINING IMPACTS/OUTCOMES

The assessment established the following outcomes, many of which are directly attributable to the unique features of CCJ program:

1. An extremely high level of positive feeling regarding participation in the workshops: In post-workshop evaluations, over 95% of participants gave the workshops the highest available ratings. This indicates that most participants found the training to be engaging and believed that it was a worthwhile use of their time. The small-group format, the opportunity to discuss their journalistic mission and standards, and the chance to work collaboratively with newsroom colleagues, all are enjoyable, meaningful, and all-too-rare experiences for today’s journalists.

For more details about participants high level of positive feeling about workshop participation, click here.

2. A strong and positive impact on participants’ sense of purpose and morale regarding their journalism: Participants reported having a clearer sense of their mission after the workshops and found that to be a morale-booster. Mission and purpose are central themes of the CCJ curriculum: every module offers participants multiple occasions for discussing the reasons why they chose to become journalists, which is a naturally morale-enhancing experience.

For more details about increases in participants' sense of purpose and morale, click here.

3. Marked effects on the willingness and ability of participants to use critical thinking in their journalism: The intense group discussions foster critical thinking skills by forcing participants to reflectively examine every aspect of their practice and to think skeptically about their habits of researching, sourcing, verifying, editing, and writing stories.

For more details about participants' increased willingness to engage in critical thinking about their journalism, click here.

4. Improvements in quality of news product: Several measures of news story quality in both print and broadcast newsrooms showed strong improvement after the training. This finding is likely due to a closer attention to journalistic mission and an increased tendency to think critically and deeply about routine habits of practice, all of which the training demonstrably fostered.

For more details about improvements in product quality, click here.

5. Learning tools of good journalism: Participants reported learning a number of journalistic tools imparted by the workshops, including tools of verification, accuracy, investigative reporting, engaging and proportional story telling, and balance. The substantive core of the CCJ curriculum consists of the tools and other elements of good journalism. Participants in the training engaged in exercises that require mastery of the tools and listened to distinguished journalists present state-of-the-art strategies for researching and reporting the news.

For more details about participants learning the tools of good journalism, click here.

6. Improved communication within the newsroom: Three-quarters of all participants reported that inter-staff communications within their newsrooms had improved due to the CCJ workshops. Because the CCJ training visits newsrooms and engages staff at all levels in intense discussions, it offers participants multiple opportunities to become more familiar with one another (necessary for many workers who have felt isolated) and to correct malfunctioning communications patterns that often prevail in many newsrooms. Moreover, the continuing consulting that CCJ provides participating newsrooms after the workshops offers a source of ideas about methods that a newsroom can put in place to facilitate more productive and clearer communications among staff.

For more details improvements in newsroom communications, click here.

7. A proliferation of newsroom innovations dedicated to fostering better journalism practices: The CCJ training left behind a legacy of self-improvement manifested by multiple innovations within many newsrooms visited. Because CCJ training focuses on the particular needs and mission of each newsroom that it visits, it can provide direct feedback regarding changes that could advance that particular newsroom’s purposes. Regular follow-up contacts, either through second visits, e-mails, or phone calls, offer opportunities for such feedback, providing rich contexts for the generation of many innovative solutions.

For more details about newsroom innovations, click here.

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Characteristics of Successful Training Programs

In addition to these findings regarding the impact of the CCJ training program on journalists and their newsrooms, the assessment pointed to ways that mid-career training can be made most effective. The principles underlying the CCJ program were:

Training must address issues that the participants themselves recognize as important for doing their jobs well.

Training must actively engage the participants in collaborative exercises.

Training must be vigorously supported by the leadership of the organization.

Training must challenge the participants with difficult, cutting-edge problems.

Each of these principles was confirmed by the Traveling Curriculum’s successful reception in the field. In addition, the CCJ field experience revealed the importance of having lead trainers who themselves had been distinguished journalists, for the sake of adding credibility and texture to the training.

Moreover, the value of regular follow-ups by trainers and CCJ staff after the initial visits was demonstrated in multiple instances. The follow-up provided occasions to reinforce the workshop message, to guide the staff towards needed newsroom innovations, and to keep alive the spirit of self-improvement fostered by the workshops.

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About the Researchers:

Dr. William Damon is Director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence and Professor of Education at Stanford University. He is co-author of Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet (2001), with Howard Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. They collaborated on the Good Work Project (GWP), which studies exemplary leaders and practitioners known in their professions for doing work that is both successful in the usual terms of the field as well as highly ethical. Damon applied findings from this project in consulting with CCJ Founders Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel on the creation of the Traveling Curriculum.

Brett Mueller managed the collection, organization, and analysis of assessment data.

Paul Hitlin vetted the newspaper and broadcast product codebooks, trained student coders, and ran the statistical analyses.

LaToya Drake, Mahvish Khan, Judy Mayka, and Ashley Spillane coded newspaper stories, television broadcasts, and staff survey responses.

Click here for a link to a more detailed version of this report.

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