By Alis Okonji

Journalism education and training play a fundamental role in shaping the media landscape by forming the new generations of reporters, editors and leaders of the industry, but they can go further. Academic institutions have a unique opportunity to equip journalists and media professionals with knowledge and skills to practice sustainable journalism.

A recent study conducted by media academics, including Report for the World’s board member and Wits Centre for Journalism Director Dr. Dinesh Balliah, investigated the state of sustainable journalism in Africa and its implications for the continent’s media industry.

The study titled “Putting Forward Sustainability as a Model for Journalism Education and Training” sought to appraise what role sustainable journalism education and training could have beyond the classroom to positively influence the media ecosystem.

Sustainability in journalism can be understood as a means to ensure long term viability and impact of the media. In addition to the ethical considerations of the media in responsible reporting, the concept of sustainable journalism considers the economic feasibility of journalism, prompting newsrooms to adapt and innovate beyond the conventional income generating models.

Sustainable journalism also takes into account the social and environmental impact of the media in the face of climate change, creating an opportunity for journalists to understand their role in climate change mitigation. Overall, its inclusion in academic curricula contributes to a multifaceted approach to preparing journalists of today for the world of tomorrow.

Report for the World spoke with Dr. Balliah to understand the rationale behind the study and discuss its main findings. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Report for the World:  The study notes that ideologically, journalism education in Africa largely remains unchanged, with the western models of pedagogy still dominant. What are  these western models of pedagogy and their relevance to the African context? What are practical steps that African institutions can take to decolonise journalism education and training in Africa?

Dr. Dinesh Balliah: Journalism education in the global south, and for most parts of the world, has been in response to the journalism industry and what its needs are. And for a long part of its history, that has meant a singular type of industry, with a model that was imported across the globe.

The way the media covers news, what news means, how we capture it and even the layout and design in the newspaper like the columns, is very much imported into a space where that kind of medium didn’t previously exist.

It is important to note that I do not believe in an African approach to journalism because Africa is made up of so many different contexts. I think one of the beauties of thinking about decolonization is that we have the ability to move away from the general to the very specific. So decolonization on the one hand for me means responding to a very specific context, which means that we’re responding to very specific audiences, to very specific cultures.

So for me, in the future of journalism, we are not looking at a mass media approach, but a very hyper local approach that is aware of global shifts. That is not divorced from the global landscape, but really is sensitive to those and understands the place of the local in the global as such. So when I talk about a western pedagogy, I don’t intend to throw out that entire system, but I’m saying how can we do better with what’s there to fit what is a very changed media landscape in each of the countries in Africa?

RFW: Sustainability exists in various forms: financial, environmental, gender representation etc. Which aspect of sustainability is your study focused on?

Dr. Balliah: For our study, we considered sustainability in journalism in various dimensions, including environmental, economic, and financial aspects. We wanted to understand how training institutions’ curricula can address sustainability issues and how they could integrate them more effectively. We analyzed the curricula from institutions in Kenya, South Africa, and Ghana to assess how journalism education could contribute to a broader sustainability agenda and better prepare students for the evolving media landscape.

RFW: In what ways does the national context (political landscape, tone of public discourse, economic driving forces ) of the three countries you studied impact and shape the sustainability in journalism?

Dr. Balliah:The three countries we studied; Kenya, Ghana and South Africa have very different media landscapes. For example, in Kenya, newspapers and radio stations are still flourishing. In South Africa, constraints exist in terms of media viability and sustainability.

It is important to note that media sustainability is not only dependent on political landscapes. Free access to media on the internet for example, depends on the cost of the internet that can then influence the sustainability of a newsroom.

Media trust index also influences sustainability in a newsroom. As much as we may want to link it to the national political landscape, the relationship between the media and their consumers is also crucial for their sustainability. There is a larger determinant of media sustainability than the political landscape of a country.

RFW: What kind of  cultural influences on journalism training and education did you identify in your study?

Dr. Balliah: From the research, we found that the curricula of the media institution in South Africa largely excludes environmental journalism. Kenya on the other hand has put a great emphasis on digital journalism with modules on multimedia journalism, data journalism, mobile journalism prevalent in the curricula. Meanwhile Ghana has adopted a more interdisciplinary approach, teaching sustainability ​​in relation to other studies for example Development Communication, Health Communication, Environment communication.

This is what decolonization is about, accepting that we do not have a common agenda on sustainability and each country focuses on what is relevant in their context.

RFW: Talk us through your methodology of syllabi analysis and its relevance to understanding sustainability in a journalistic context.

Dr. Balliah: The aim of the paper was to look at journalism curricula, and whether the curricula as a whole, not just a specific course, at specific institutions, were responding to the global calls for sustainability. We wanted to look at a very granular level curriculum and what institutions are teaching students in a higher education space. Those students are the change makers of tomorrow. We wanted to look at whether the concept of sustainability has been infused into the curricula and in what ways.

Higher education curriculum can often be rigid. For example, to change anything in the curriculum, it takes 12-18 months.  So for us in this study,  it was a matter of looking at what was there in the curriculum so that we could then, in the next phase, propose how we could move forward to make recommendations.

RFW: What can you tell us about the inclusion of environment and climate science reporting in the curricula across the three countries and its relevance to sustainability?

Dr. Balliah: Journalism for a long time has relied on journalists to teach themselves specific things. So whether it be law, economics, and so on and so forth.

The interdisciplinary nature of the climate change and sustainability discussion requires journalists to be more educated on the finer details of what scientists are doing in order for them to communicate it better.

I think at some point, we are going to plateau where we’re communicating the same thing without going underneath the ice. There needs to be more collaboration between journalists and scientists, more engagement with journalists and scientists, and, in order to better the way in which journalists communicate climate change to our communities. So we need to work together to make sure that we’re providing a more holistic picture of what’s happening and how to mitigate it. We must not just report about what’s happening, but journalists have got to start teaching people how to live with the changing climate.

RFW: What are your recommendations for journalism practitioners and educators to ensure the integration of sustainable journalism in their curricula?

Dr. Balliah: There are a few recommendations my colleagues and I came up with beyond this study.

We, as the media, no longer need to speak to everyone in the same voice. We need to speak to reach our audience in very specific voices. When you think about journalism in that way, you’re not thinking about a huge money making machinery, but you’re somewhat thinking about smaller entities, niche newsrooms, focused on niche topics, serving niche local communities. And in that way, we’re going to see a proliferation of media entities doing different things on different platforms dedicated to different topics as it were.

I think the day of certainly in South Africa, the day of the big newspaper that covers everything has passed because it’s impossible. Right? We’ve got shrinking newsrooms. We’ve got limited resources.

Secondly I think that the climate change story is not something we can run away from. I think every story is a climate change story, so we need to educate ourselves, to grow ourselves, to make sure that we learn how to be more creative in telling climate change stories, that it’s not all doom and gloom. Because quite frankly, people also want to understand what they can do to not just change that narrative, but also how to live with what’s coming.

As journalists, we need to learn to tell stories beyond the doom and gloom that’s there currently. We need to be a bit more creative about how we reach people. We need to think beyond the 200 or 250 words text story only. And I’m not saying that every journalist needs to be on TikTok, but I am calling for, and I keep calling for this kind of coalition between content producers and journalists because I think that content producers can learn from what journalists do and how they do it, especially from the point of view of journalism ethics.

I think that content producers have the ability to take the stories produced by journalists and mainstream them to audiences that journalists wouldn’t ordinarily have access to.

There is an opportunity in coalition and collaboration moving forward.