By Bob Allen
A historically Baptist college in Georgia is launching a cutting-edge experiment that industry experts say could provide a model to help save local journalism in America. This week the New York Times business section profiled the new Mercer University Center for Collaborative Journalism.
Supported by $5.6 million in grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Peyton Anderson Foundation, the program combines Mercer’s journalism and media-studies programs with the professional expertise of the 186-year-old Macon Telegraph and Georgia Public Broadcasting.
Reporters and editors from the newspaper and radio station will work out of a new 12,000-square-foot journalism center on the Macon campus alongside students who will learn by doing legwork for newsroom staffs working with increasingly shrinking resources.
Mercer President William Underwood describes it as applying a medical residency model to journalism, not only for education of students but in hopes of creating a model to help a struggling news industry survive.
“Just as our medical students train in teaching hospitals with live patients in real situations, Mercer journalism students will learn in a real-life multimedia newsroom through a one-of-a-kind collaboration with The Telegraph and GPB Media, on whose websites, pages and airwaves their best work will appear,” Underwood explained in a press release.
Official dedication of the Center for Collaborative Journalism is scheduled at 11:30 a.m., Sept. 28 on the first floor of the recently completed Phase II of the Lofts at Mercer Village, a $10 million mixed-use development on Mercer’s Macon campus combining retail space and loft-style apartments. Georgia Public Broadcasting’s radio and television studios are also located in Mercer Village, adjacent to the center.
The idea for Mercer Village began with a class project in 2006 about how to spur economic development in Macon, a city with 91,000 residents that is undergoing gentrification.