Stories From The Gap: Towards A Critical Pedagogy Of Community Service Journalism

The ways that journalists teach and learn through the production of knowledge is the fundamental concern of this paper. Popular journalism provides a powerful pedagogy that names and effectively silences marginalised communities as objects of knowledge. Such communities are confronted by the contradictory struggle to expose the gap between the promise and reality of liberal democratic capitalism while challenging the gap between dominant, negative representations and their lived experiences. It is increasingly questionable whether contemporary journalism is capable of serving the interests of socially and culturally diverse publics that fall between limited success-narratives and the impoverished language of marginalisation and social injustice. A critical pedagogy of community service journalism challenges journalists to shift their consciousness from a politics of critique to a language of possibility and strive for substantive democratic encounters through cultural action and critical knowledge. As a form of knowledge work grounded in a set of pedagogical practices, journalism is shaped by four "integrated spheres of praxis": Emotional Attitude, Power Awareness, Critical Engagement and Knowledge Production. Through these spheres, journalists are potentially empowered to imagine innovative ways of entering the politics of representation and critically engaging grassroots and marginalised communities while reporting on complex issues and problems