De’Arbreya Lee
Blue & White Flash / Staff Writer
Without setting foot in Jackson, Miss., award-winning journalist Jackie Spinner shared her life experiences with Jackson State University students and several other college students during the “Face-to-Face: Conversations with Journalists” live webinar held on April 3 in the Mississippi e-Center.
Presented by Poynter News University, the webinar was hosted by the Jackson State chapter of the National Association for Black Journalists. Each year, the Poynter Institute holds live webinars that allow students throughout the United States to engage in conversations with journalists who come from all walks of life and varying experiences.
Although Spinner is now an assistant professor of journalism at Columbia College Chicago in Chicago, Ill., she has made many contributions to the international world of journalism. A woman of much experience, Spinner has worked as a photographer and military correspondent for the Washington Post.
While teaching journalism at Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat, Oman in the 2010-2011 academic school year, Spinner founded the first independent student newspaper at the university. She also founded Iraq’s first independent student newspaper at the American University of Iraq called AUI-S Voice in 2010.
During the webinar, students asked Spinner questions about her experience as a journalist as well as the ins and outs of international reporting. Spinner encouraged students interested in international reporting to know the language of that country well, have a curiosity about the world and to use social media effectively, but most importantly stressed news literacy.
“I think that news literacy starts by simply paying attention…paying attention to the world helps news literacy,” said Spinner.
As an American journalist who reports on various levels of news, Spinner says that she is often asked if she ever struggles with being a journalist or an American while reporting abroad.
She stated that “being an American journalist isn’t something that I don’t typically wrestle with. I make sure that when I go abroad as a journalist that I go as a journalist first and then as an American,” said Spinner.
Spinner further explained the attitude and principles that she carries with her in her travels overseas.
“I don’t represent America, necessarily when I’m overseas, I represent journalism and truth and fairness and creditability and all of those other things that we care about as journalist,” she stated.
Momentarily stepping back into the classroom, Spinner pointed out one of the misconceptions that she always tells her students about being an international reporter is that it should not be mistaken for simply a vacation.
“You have to learn how to be uncomfortable because being an international correspondent is not all about jetting around the globe and getting cool souvenirs. It’s about telling great stories,” said Spinner.
A picture captured by Spinner’s iPhone while she was in Hebron at the Ibrahim Mosque was displayed. Spinner’s picture show the reaction of a young girl as she responds to the Israeli soldiers during training entering the mosque, the women uncovered and the men with their shoes on, dishonoring the wishes of the mosque. With much of the attention focused on the entrance of the soldiers, Spinner chose to focus on a little girl.
“To me, that was the story. I think that sometimes our instincts, when something happens, we focus on the action, but sometime I think that the photo or the story is also on the reaction. To me, this little girl’s face tells the story of why this conflict is ongoing in the Palestinian territory,” said Spinner.
She also shared personal tips on how students can be smarter news consumers. She said that waking up early, checking Twitter accounts, reading online news sources and international online news sources, and setting up a Google Alert to have the news that you want to read sent directly to you are great ways to stay in tune with the world.
Devan Lewis, a junior broadcast journalism major from Madison, Miss., said that he was intrigued by Spinner’s stories of traveling during her reporting.
“I wished that I could have listened more because I actually like talking about the Middle East,” said Lewis.
According to the Poynter Institute website, the goal of the “Face-to-Face” webinars are to help students see the challenges that foreign correspondents face in covering the news, understand why getting the truth is important and increasingly difficult, grasp how international coverage applies to their lives and become smarter, more aware news consumers.
For more information about “Face-to-Face: Conversations with Journalists,” log onto the Poynter News University website at www.newsu.org.
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