Our Team.
THE LAUNCH OF WHAT’S UP, WKU?
In this first issue of What’s Up, WKU? we sat down with Prof. Abbigail Ajim to discuss teaching Introduction to Journalism and how this newspaper came into being.
What’s the story behind What’s up, WKU?
What’s up, WKU? is the name Shen Xuzhou and his group used for a newspaper project. Xuzhou and his classmates are the Class of 2023, which is WKU’s first cohort of Communication majors who will be graduating this year. What’s Up, WKU? resonates because it combines a popular American slang and the name of the university. It’s youthful, fresh and inclusive.
The stories, photographs and blogs are produced by Communication majors, including the class of 2024. All articles were written in Fall 2022 and Fall 2021. This newspaper provides them with an opportunity to showcase their talent and build their portfolios in preparation for employment.
Wu Yuxi, Sun Weiting, Fu Xiatong, Xie Ziyang, Liu Yanxi, Yang Xinyi, Wang Shilu, and Cao Yu worked on this project. Lin Mohan provided the great video you see.
The highlight of teaching Journalism was…
Students needed to be intrepid and walk beyond the school gate. They travelled to the city and countryside to write about people, places and projects underway. They had a keen nose for news and approached complete strangers. Of course, they were terrified!
They had to use the Associated Press Style-guide, the gold-standard in news-writing. They found this painful, but it helped them to write stronger stories and captions.
The most difficult aspect of teaching this course …
Getting students to write a strong lead, that’s the first sentence in a news story with the most crucial information. To their horror, they were prohibited from using banal phrases such as “hot-topic,” “nowadays,” “the situation,” and “besides.”
Feel free to leave feedback on the stories you read.
Please enjoy this first issue of What’s up, WKU? and look out for more articles in the future!