The Best Class I Ever Led
By Joseph Russomanno
On November 9, 2016, I woke after sleeping poorly, feeling much as I did on the days each of my parents was buried. After the shock of the presidential election outcome the night before, it felt to me as if something had died in America. For much of that day, I was in a stupor, unable to process the new reality and the potential dangers that would lie ahead.
The next night, at 6pm, I walked into my regularly scheduled mass communications law class, notes in hand to teach ”Free Press-Fair Trial.” I stood in front after the 19 journalism students filed in silently. The mood was somber. Heavy. None of the usual greetings and chatter. Even though I rarely stray from the syllabus, I did not forge ahead with the planned topic.
“So how are you all doing?” I asked.
“How are you holding up?” one student responded.
I sat down. I thought it would be a short conversation. I was wrong. The class needed to talk about their thoughts and feelings. They needed someone to listen, and an opportunity to be themselves.
What ensued was intensely emotional, liberating and necessary. For me, it was the best and most meaningful class I’ve led in over 25 years of teaching. Students talked about their sense of dread and despair, about their feelings of confusion and fear over threats that the journalism community may soon face. What became apparent was these future journalists yearned for a safe space to openly share what was on their mind. “Your class was the first catharsis, the first exhale,” one student told me later.
At the center of our three-hour conversation was nothing less than the long-revered quest in journalism for objectivity, the Holy Grail in the pursuit of fairness and excellence. I quickly learned this was a lightning-rod, stress-inducing issue for these students. They were rubbing up against the traditional principles of journalism.
“These future journalists yearned for a safe space to openly share what was on their mind.”
“We heard from so many professors and journalism role models that we weren’t allowed to ‘feel’ anything about the election results,” one student told me later. To her and her peers, forced adherence to objectivity required bottling up their feelings, especially problematic in the wake of the election. They felt obliged to gather and process information robotically. Their repressed emotions engendered stress.
That night we knocked “objectivity” off its pedestal. We explored whether the news media was too objective in its campaign coverage. We discussed the notion that conclusions lacking even-handedness may be acceptable—that ignoring the facts for the sake of appearing objective may be a worse journalistic transgression than distortion. As CNN’s Christiane Amanpour advocates, “Be truthful, not neutral.”
Struggling with my own emotions, I mostly asked questions and mediated the conversation. Toward the end, I tried to read a letter written by legendary screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to his daughter and ex-wife after the election. I couldn’t get through it; Sorkin’s words made some of the students cry; one of the students instinctively picked up the reading until I could resume.
I’ve carried important lessons from that night. When the situation warrants, go off script. Let students talk. Let them feel. It’s potentially cathartic and may result in a powerful and resonant bonding, not only among each other, but also with you. As one student recalled, “I remember feeling a sense of community in that room I had never felt in another class.”
Show your true colors now and then. It’s more than OK. When you open up, your students will follow your lead. Let them be themselves on occasion. Not only will they benefit, the person who learns the most might be you.
This essay is part of our new Transformations Snapshot series—short takes on transformational experiences.
Joseph Russomanno is now in his 26th year on the faculty of Arizona State University’s Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication where he teaches, researches and publishes in the areas of mass communication law and First Amendment theory and doctrine. His time at ASU was preceded by a decade as a broadcast journalist and earning graduate degrees from the University of Missouri and the University of Colorado-Boulder.