Digital Natives program to connect digitally-native students with Georgia newsrooms
Digital Natives program to connect digitally-native students with Georgia newsrooms
The deadline for student applications has been extended to Nov. 8, 2020.
Grady College and the Georgia Press Education Foundation have joined forces for Grady Digital Natives, a new and innovative program that connects college students and Georgia news organizations. The online Grady Digital Natives program will connect UGA journalism students with digital news expertise with Georgia newsrooms to help local journalists accomplish specific digital goals.
The digital transition continues to be challenging for community journalism for reasons ranging from funding to time to expertise. Grady Digital Natives will help bridge this gap by allowing digitally savvy journalism majors to assist with a digital task like optimizing social media, creating digital content on various platforms or experimenting with new technologies. Another potential goal could help with audience engagement and Trusting News concepts.
“Through the Digital Natives program, these college students will bring their skills into our community newspapers to help advance the paper’s presence in the ever changing digital world,” GPA Executive Director Robin Rhodes said. “GPA is grateful for Dean Davis bringing forth this amazing program to our members.”
Due to COVID-19, students for 2020-2021 will not be on site at news organizations, but they will create and present a webinar that will introduce a digital tool or process to meet one targeted goal for the news organization. The webinar will move step-by-step through the philosophy, technology and process, and it will show how journalists in the newsroom can enhance as well as sustain this new opportunity. This will be accompanied with a written report and a follow-up Zoom conference to address any questions.
The program is expected to launch in January 2021.
The director of Grady Digital Natives, Amanda Bright, is a faculty member at Grady College and will train the students before they start their week within Georgia newsrooms.
“This program is going to be mutually beneficial for students and local newsrooms,” Bright said. “Whether it’s starting an email newsletter, diving into Facebook groups, telling stories through web-based interactives or creating a codified social media strategy, Georgia news organizations will tangibly benefit, while our students will gain the knowledge and experience from those doing the important work of journalism each day.”
Georgia news organizations interested in participating should apply by Nov. 1, 2020. Grady College journalism majors who want to apply to be Grady Digital Natives should apply by Nov. 1, 2020. For more information, contact Grady Digital Natives Director Amanda Bright (amanda.bright@uga.edu; 217-549-9821) or GPA Executive Director Robin Rhodes (rrhodes8738@gmail.com; 770-454-6776).