An essay by Prof. William J. Drummond

Eleven Berkeley journalism students in the Spring 1998 Semester embarked on an experiment to rediscover the roots of community reporting. In 15 weeks, they created a community newspaper called Inside Oakland. They took turns working as editors and reporters. They brought together focus groups of Oakland residents. The students assigned and reported stories, and with the able assistance of two other J School students with desktop publishing experience, the class produced five editions of Inside Oakland.

In partnership with Oakland publisher Tom Berkley, Inside Oakland was inserted into 60,000 copies of the Oakland Post, an African American newspaper that's distributed on newsstands and in churches throughout the East Bay.

The published stories ranged from the history of a local Baptist church, to the effects of federal welfare reform, to the city's efforts to clean up blighted buildings.

Many students pulled many all-nighters in North Gate Hall to make the experiment a success. But almost without exception, the students said the experience was worthwhile. Quoting from a student evaluation, "For all the problems with printing and all the late nights I finally felt like a journalist at this school. I also felt like an editor."

The Community Reporting class in many ways symbolized the new direction the school has taken. It was a collaboration with news media in the real world. It gave students an audience for their work. The class filled a void in news coverage that the corporate, mainstream media have been unable or unwilling to fill.

Oakland is a city with social and economic problems, but it was poised for important political changes. The locale was right in the Journalism School's back yard. The class demonstrated for the students the potential vitality in local news. Importantly, it established that community news coverage is deserving of every bit as much respect as the coverage of international affairs. In Berkeley’s tradition of “learning by doing,” this class in “community reporting” lay very close to being a model project.

In 1967 when I was a brand-new reporter at the Los Angeles Times, Assistant Managing Editor Leonard Riblett asked me what my ambition was. Without hesitation I said I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. Riblett snorted, "There are some real good stories within an hour of downtown." (Riblett was a man who once sent a reporter-photographer team a hundred miles to do a feature story on a dog run over by a car!)

Nevertheless, Len Riblett's advice was sound and remains so to this day. A very important part of journalism is still the coverage of local news and communities. As newspapers have become more concentrated in ownership, they look at readers only in terms of their disposable income. In so doing, they often lose touch with the things that people really care about in their everyday lives. The way to remedy the problem is to teach students the value of getting out in the real world and reporting from the world that’s around us. GOYA (get off your ass) and KOD (knock on doors).

Before growing his hometown roots in Oakland, Professor Drummond was the Los Angeles Times bureau chief in New Delhi and Jerusalem and an editor and correspondent for National Public Radio.