Exhausted and lonely: learning in student newsrooms during COVID

ABSTRACT In a mixed methods survey (N = 323), college journalists shared their experiences of working in remote student newsrooms during the COVID-19 campus disruptions. Through the theoretical lens of Communities of Practice, findings revealed students experienced robust, but different learning in disrupted newsrooms. While students reported that their ability to cultivate and learn with a community suffered, they still reported the formation of their identities as journalists and the development of meaning. Analysis demonstrated that the survey items created statistically reliable scales for each of the four pillars and overall CoP scale. This advances the Communities of Practice theoretical framework to help describe the nature of student newsroom learning in a disrupted environment. Consistent with existing literature, this work points toward the special nature of student-run newsrooms as high-impact learning environments, however, the isolation that came as a natural outgrowth of the lack of community contributed to students’ struggles with mental health. These findings also underscore additional practical implications of young journalists learning and refining their craft in isolated spaces. Reporting remotely required heightened self-sufficiency and resiliency, but also amplified feelings of burnout, low morale, and mental exhaustion.