Feeling connected in life is important, but being connected is critical for students in a successful journalism program. Students need support from their peers in the program, from the teachers in the school, from the administration, from the parents, from local community members, from the national and international professional associations. When students first start interviewing and researching stories they need to be treated with respect by students, faculty and administration alike.  People need to respect appointment times, give uninterrupted interviews, respond to phone calls of journalism students.   (Click on some links below..)

Faculty and community members need to support students' right to choose topics of interest to students and to research and publish articles about topics they choose. They do this by not criticizing students for the topics they select and by giving feedback when appropriate in letters to the editor. The only guidelines the students should have are the same guidelines the professional press has: censoring itself for libel, obscenity and inciting to riot. Community members need to trust students to self-censor and give appropriate feedback, either positive or negative, when their are issues or questions regarding these areas.  

Advertisers in the community support student work simply by taking out advertisements in the paper thus helping provide financial support for the program.  Students work with these advertisers trying to understand and meet their needs and simultaneously learning how business functions in the real world.  Advertisers are a critical key to the authentic functioning of a journalism program.  Without advertisers, the experience lacks the critical element of authenticity.  

Practicing journalists also offer a valuable way of making students feel connected to the real world. In some cases, students can actually experience what a professional journalist is doing. They can work in tandem with the professional journalist to research a story. Also, the professional journalist can offer support by speaking to the class about their life and by helping student journalists when they have research questions.    

The next figure demonstrates the nature of the relationships between the journalism community and  the school, local, national and international communities.

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