Case Study

Making journalism education accountable to communities

By Andrea Wenzel

July 17, 2024

I met Andre Simms after a particularly contentious community discussion connected to one of my research projects. We were in North Philadelphia, a majority Black and Brown neighborhood that has a long history of disinvestment fueled by racist redlining policies, and a contentious relationship with my employer, Temple University — who has been seen by many as a force of gentrification in the community.  

Andre was participating in a workshop that invited North Philadelphia residents and community organizers to consider what it would look like for media to be accountable to North Philadelphia. Andre co-leads an organization he founded, DayOneNotDayTwo, which is also the name he goes by as a hip hop artist. The organization runs a variety of programs focused on restorative justice, ending youth incarceration (Andre himself served 8 years in an adult prison after being incarcerated at the age of 17), healing through creative expression, narrative change, and more.  

When Andre and I first talked after a workshop, he pitched the idea of community members taking a course at Temple so that they could gain the skills needed for them to share their own stories. So in the Fall semester of 2023, he launched the Community Apprentice Fellowship program (Community AF) and we collaborated to co-lead a solutions journalism course at Temple, where a paid cohort of North Philadelphia resident fellows studied and reported alongside Temple undergraduate students.  

Recently I sat down with Andre to talk through the experience. What follows is an excerpt of our longer interview, which has been edited for length and clarity. I’m sharing here the section which focuses on our collaboration that may be of most interest for journalism educators—as Andre and his colleagues from DayOneNotDayTwo also participated in our previous AEJMC preconference focused on making journalism education more equitable.  

I began by asking Andre, why he wanted to start Community AF? 

Andre: This short answer is that North Philly has historically been misrepresented in mainstream media. And it was very, very obvious that the community needed, prayed, and wanted stories that were made for them, by them. And so connecting people to resources to tell their own stories just made the most sense to us.  

Community members kept saying time and time again, that they don’t trust the media, they don’t want to work with the media, or mainstream media … They don’t trust journalism, they don’t trust reporters. But journalism is important. Being able to be involved in democracy is important. Being able to have resources and have access to information is important. And that’s really at the core of what journalism is supposed to be, right? And so, because a lot of these institutions are controlled by the top 1% of society, I’ve seen my community reject what could be something that could be actually very useful, beneficial, even transformative if it’s done the right way. 

Read Andrea and Andre's full Q&A Read Andrea and Andre's full Q&A

As The Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund, a joint venture between the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, comes to a close, we’re sharing insights, lessons, and best practices from our grantee-partners to better understand their impact and help shape the broader field. Sign up for The Lenfest Institute’s Solution Set newsletter to receive all the latest updates and posts sharing lessons from the Fund.