Q&A with Dr. Jessica Retis

The director of the University of Arizona School of Journalism talks about adapting journalism education to keep up an ever-changing and uncertain industry.

Caitlin and Curt are alumni of the University of Arizona School of Journalism, but there have been a lot of changes in the years since we graduated, including a recent change in leadership.

Dr. Jessica Retis came to the J-School in 2019 and was appointed as director last summer. She’s been busy forming partnerships, gathering feedback from students and creating ways for the community to get involved with the school.

She’s also a champion for the school’s bilingual master’s program, which she was recruited from California to launch.

This semester, the journalism school introduced several innovative classes, including one on media entrepreneurship and innovation (wish we’d taken that!) and another about navigating the industry while caring for ourselves and the communities we cover.

These classes will go a long way in preparing students for the reality of a career in journalism, where the burnout rate is as high as teachers but the pay is even lower.

The media industry is changing with each algorithm and higher education moves notoriously slow, so we wanted to hear from Jessica about how she thinks about the future of educating journalists.

Our interview has been edited for length and clarity. But our paid subscribers will receive a podcast of the full version.

You can find a separate, paywall-free Spanish-language version of our Q&A with Jessica here. Please make sure to share it with your Spanish-speaking friends and family.

Tell us a little bit about your work in journalism and academics before you came to the University of Arizona.

Yes, so I'm Peruvian. I was working as a journalist to pay my tuition to study at the university, as do many of our working students. I'm also first-gen, and this means that I was acquiring the professional expertise while learning about it. I worked for print and audio outlets there in Peru, and then I moved to Mexico City to study my master’s in Latin American Studies in the School of Journalism at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

While I was studying my master’s in the college of social and political sciences, one of the prerequisites was to teach a three-unit class. I didn't know I had the ability to teach until I was forced to, and since then, I have never ever left the classroom. And it has been 30 years, 32 years actually.

So, I taught at other universities in Mexico City while also working as a freelancer for several news media outlets there as well. Then in 2006, I moved to Spain to start my PhD in Latin American Studies while working as a journalist again. I started working at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in the Journalism and Media Department when I was recruited by Cal State Northridge from Los Angeles. I decided to move from Spain to California to help with the minor in Spanish-language journalism and also the master’s in communication at Cal State Northridge.

In 2019, I accepted the invitation of the University of Arizona. I was recruited by UA with a specific program to recruit specific faculty that they are interested in inviting to join UA. That's why I came from sunny Los Angeles to sunny Tucson.

This career is rapidly changing and not always for the best. But, the wheels of higher education don't move as fast as the industry and it can take years to get courses and curriculums approved and implemented. How do you navigate those challenges?

From my own research on the history of higher education and journalism education in the United States, industry and higher education have had their own synergies, since 1908, when the first school of journalism started in the East Coast.

By that time, journalism was a trade learned in newsrooms and on the streets, and it was around those years when some universities, starting with Missouri, started these programs trying to better prepare journalists that were actually doing journalism on a day-to-day basis.

Moving in fast-forward, one of the latest reports from Pew Research Center is showing that in the U.S., roughly nine in 10 adults get at least some news online, either via mobile or desktop. And the online space has become a host for the digital homes, both legacy, new media outlets, and new, born-on-the-web news outlets like yours.

So how can we move from 1908 and the 1920s to 2023? We are having the same discussions in how we can better prepare the storytellers, the researchers, the ones that are digging into understanding the society and bring those stories to our readers, audiences, listeners. Those challenges remain the same, although we have new platforms now.

We are doing our best to keep with the with the pace and understand what's going on, which is why for me as director of the School of Journalism, it's important also the contributions that we have from our adjunct instructors because they are actually bringing fresh from the newsroom expertise to our school. This combination of full-time faculty that are advancing the pedagogical programs and the contribution from adjuncts, it's a very interesting combination to better prepare our students.

You've implemented some exciting and important new courses into the curriculum. Can you talk a little bit about the thinking behind their creation?

It’s important that your readers, audiences and listeners understand that for me, journalism and the school of journalism are needed today more than ever. We've been important for society, but today more than ever.

Why? Because we are living in a challenging world of misinformation and disinformation. We've seen impostor websites designed to look like professional outlets that are publishing misleading information. It’s important that audiences can understand that the accuracy of professionals working with and for them for the society is very important.

We need to keep training professionals on the main pillars of ethical journalism: Seek the truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently and be accountable and transparent. In this regard, we are aware of the uniqueness of Tucson and we are in an interdisciplinary and rich academic environment, where many different units within the university can provide the necessary information to educate the professionals of the future.

At the school of journalism, we train them on the basics and values of journalism, but also our students can take all these other electives from other units that help them understand the diverse realities that we live in.

The bilingual master’s program is expanding, too. Can you tell us a little bit about the program’s journey and what this year's class looks like? I got to meet them and they're a really impressive group.

We have a unique program that is setting a national example. I was recruited from California to launch and lead this program and then, I didn't know I was going to become the director of the school. I am currently the only Latina in the country directing a school of journalism with undergrad and grad programs and I assume this role with responsibility.

I work with the understanding that my area of expertise is bilingualism and “glocal” perspectives. And I said “glocal”, because I believe that reporters should understand that they report locally, but with a global perspective. It's only in the “glocal” context that we can better understand the value on the contributions of good journalism.

When we started this program we titled it bilingual journalism because we started with English and Spanish. But this semester we're incorporating Portuguese. We also have a student that speaks five languages. We are trying to incorporate and keep the opportunity for students that are bilingual or multilingual to bring these language skills into our program. In the long run, hopefully, we will incorporate other language skills that are in our surrounding areas. I hope that in a certain moment, we can also incorporate native languages.

So this year, there have been a number of new partnerships and technology that has come into the school. Can you tell us a little bit more about those?

For me, it was important for the School of Journalism to have different studios so this way we can be as our peer institutions, as most of the schools of journalism in the United States have their own studio and newsroom. Thanks to the generosity of different donors, on September 29, at 10 a.m., we're going to have the grand opening of our very first broadcast/digital and podcast studio.

We have had the opportunity to sign a partnership with NBCU Academy and we receive money for offering scholarships, funding some equipment from Gannett and Hearst. We also have generous supporters of the school that are helping us also offer more scholarships for reporting different areas in our society.

How do you navigate the balance between teaching students about the reality of this industry without making them feel like it's hopeless, or they should choose something else?

I’ve been a journalism educator for 32 years, so it's not the first time I’m teaching students into an evolving industry. I'm very experienced with preparing the students, not only professionally, but also for the industry. And I truly believe that journalism is not only a profession, it's a passion and it’s built on the desire to serve the society. Well-trained journalists, students, are and will be always needed.

I try to explain to students the reality of the profession, the industry, and the society, so they are aware of the challenges, but also the opportunities that they can find when they go out there. Our school is including more updated content into our curriculum, which is why we are advancing our science and environmental, broadcast digital, local, border and global specialties. We're also advancing that valuable component into our instructional perspectives, and all of these should help us train well-qualified students that later on can make a difference out there.

You must spend a lot of time thinking about the future of the industry, reporting in other languages, education and even future journalists themselves. What are you thinking the future looks like?

I'm a former journalist with experience in many different countries. I have practiced journalism in all different platforms, way before multimedia existed. So, by the time multimedia journalism educators were needed, I already had the skills because I practiced as a freelancer in different news media outlets. I was the one who was cutting, like physically cutting and pasting, before the digital components started, and then I jumped into the cutting and editing and digital platforms.

But the part that is interesting for me is that as a researcher, I keep visiting newsrooms and interviewing journalists, which is why I have this good understanding of what's going on right now. I have done this in various newsrooms in Europe, in North America, in Latin America, and also in Asia.

And I will say that as there's no clear formula, and the future might seem uncertain. But the values and ethics of journalism must remain strong: Seeking the truth, fact-checking, accuracy, service to diverse audiences. As a public institution, we should advance these areas also, while we're training the professionals of the future. And I think with that perspective, we are going to do a better service to our society as well.

Are there any other upcoming plans in the works that you can tell us about for the School of Journalism?

We’re looking to implement a newsroom in our building, a place that I envisioned as a multi-purpose space where the School of Journalism can engage with local, independent initiatives. In that regard, I will ask your readers to join us in our “What's new with the news?” community classroom series. It will run every Thursday at 5 p.m. from October 26 to November 16.

You will get to meet our facilities, our school, and also our great instructors. Pate McMichael will be talking about true crime and how journalists speak truth to power. Kendal Blust will talk about radio and audio storytelling. Rick Wiley will talk about the evolution of community photojournalism in Tucson. And of course, I will talk about bilingual journalism, the history why, when and where.

This idea of offering community classrooms for us is important to bring journalism to the community and to ask the community to come visit the school of journalism so they can learn about the innovative and interesting projects we are producing right now.

Any final thoughts you would like to share with our readers?

Well, I'm always available. My email can be found on the internet. Send me an email if you want to meet me and get to know what we're doing here, the pedagogical model that we are implementing at the School of Journalism and how we envision the present and the future of this school. We are working towards our 75th anniversary, that is going to be pretty soon.

I also invite them to join us on October 20, we're going to have our absolutely outstanding Zenger Award for Press Freedom. This year is Lyse Doucet, BBC correspondent, she has covered wars all over the place. If you want to meet her, please come attend our gala. And by buying tickets, you can support the good journalism here at the University of Arizona.