Assistant Professor of Journalism at Temple University, Andrea Wentzel, spoke to our class on January 30th about community engagement.

What was great about hearing Wentzel speak is that she never heard of Solutions Journalism until she was working on community engagement and her PhD at USC. This was good to hear for me, since I didn’t know about solutions journalism until I took this class. Going back to her main discussion about community engagement, it seems to me the focus is on the community members as main sources. It also seems that from listening to Wentzel that you’re just not interviewing the people like an old fashion journalism story, but it’s more about having a discussion and being almost like a participant and observer in the atmosphere of the community. It’s more about learning and engaging with the community to educate ourselves about the issue that’s going on in the community. This what I took in after hearing Wentzel and I think this is going to be extremely helpful going forward in the class.

I think it’s also important to note that when Wentzel approached her stories, before knowing about solutions journalism, she approached it in a solutions way by talking to community reporters and researching the community while at the same time being an observer and participant and not taking the old fashion journalist model way. This also spoke volumes to me because it helps guide me how to approach community members when it comes to writing my story. Also as multimedia creator, when it comes to showing what’s going on it helps me tell the story in a visually accurate way. Hearing Wentzel might be the most beneficial speaker I heard so far in this class. I know there is more to come, but for now I have so admiration for Wentzel coming to speak to our class.