A group of student reporters from the University of Richmond interview Art Conaghan, chief of staff for a local member of Parliament in Northampton. Photo courtesy Tom Mullen.

By Dominic Minadeo

When Kelsey McCabe wrote about the latest charity events and traffic light repairs in South London this summer, echoes of her professor’s words bounced around her head.

“It’s not glamorous, but it’s the information people need,” she said Tom Mullen, professor at the University of Richmond, preached last semester. Point taken, she’d thought at the time. But it wasn’t until she interned with South London Press when she realized what he meant.

“Being able to see the tangible impacts of the work you’re doing totally changed my perspective on doing local journalism,” she said.

Local journalism is the focus of Mullen’s class, Community Journalism at Home and Abroad. The course is offered to sophomores at the University of Richmond, who spend eight days reporting, exploring and learning in London.

The first rendition of the program launched this past January, and it was “extremely competitive,” Mullen said. He approved 10 students for his class, who spent most of the semester learning and covering local news in and around Richmond before they tackled news abroad.

Once abroad, students worked with editors at South London Press, a local weekly based in Southeast London, to write articles that were published in the newspaper.

“We got to write an article for the paper, which, for a lot of us, was our first print byline,” McCabe said, “which was really neat to see your name in print for the first time."

McCabe’s class also worked alongside students at the University of Northampton to produce a joint radio broadcast, which gave students an interesting insight into multimedia journalism, she said.

It was a trip of firsts for McCabe. On top of getting her first print byline, it was also her first time traveling outside of the U.S.

“To take that trip with people that you’re very passionate about the same field with, and to be able to geek out over everything was a really, really cool experience,” she said.

The idea for the trip came to Mullen after a University of Northampton professor reached out to his department chair in 2020 and asked if anyone was interested in producing a program on the U.S. presidential election. Mullen teaches four classes, one of which is about public affairs reporting.

“I was a natural fit for that because I teach all that stuff,” he said.

On election night, the two universities worked together to produce live election night coverage. The University of Northampton focuses on audio and video reporting, so on election night Mullen’s students “did standups and broadcast stuff, which was freakishly cool,” he said.

But each program was an ocean and a six-hour time difference away, and Mullen wondered if they could do more. Eventually, he asked the question: “Hey, what about if I brought 10 American students to your university, and they worked on a show together?”

The first trip was a success, and Mullen plans to offer the course again next year. He said McCabe’s summer internship won’t be a one-time thing, either.

“We've arranged to have an annual intern in London, which is pretty cool to be honest with you,” he said.

Up until her internship, McCabe preferred writing feature stories for the University of Richmond’s student newspaper, The Collegian, where she is the editor-in-chief.

Her assignments were less glamorous this summer, as she described the latest city maintenance project or upcoming charity event.

But after writing about a local soup kitchen, she recalled the event organizers reaching out to thank her for writing about them and to let her know that her article generated a big turnout.

She recalled Mullen’s words once more, and this time they sunk in.

“When I went to the South London Press, and I was writing those stories not for class, but for the actual community, it clicked,” she said. “I enjoyed it so much more than I thought I was going to.”

In-text image caption: Rosalie Hinke, a sophomore, interviews a homeless person for a story about a lack of affordable housing in London. Photo courtesy Tom Mullen.