Teaching and learning journalistic responsibility in the post-digital revolution

As this Special Edition indicates, journalism education is increasingly concerned about how to maintain the profession's core skills, particularly the art of storytelling. As this Special Edition's call for papers pointed out, this (and other) core skills are being challenged by the demands of the 24/7 news cycle, shrinking newsrooms, and the online environment's im- perative of simplicity and interactivity to keep audiences engaged. But although journalistic practice has changed dramatically to accommodate the digital revolution, the basic reason for journalistic endeavour has not. Using the core skill of storytelling to ensure a diversity of public voices, to champion the underdog, and to scrutinise and criticise those in power, is just as much the journalistic responsibility today as it ever was in the pre-digital revolution. And yet, somewhat ironically, in a predominantly skills-based course - such as that at Melbourne's RMIT University - the underpinning theory of journalism and its basic function can get somewhat lost as curriculum plays catch up with multi-platformism, audience interaction and technical skills. This paper is about its author's use of a formulated cultural-historiographical approach to journalism pedagogy in a predominantly practice-based Journalism programme. It starts with an explanation of cultural- historiography as a theoretical paradigm, and its crucial elements related to the learning of journalistic theory through the practice of storytelling, then goes on to examine its relative success or otherwise through a three-year case study of its application in RMIT Journalism's first-year courses