In 2023, the Reynolds School of Journalism introduced the Journalism Writing Center, offering one-on-one writing tutoring sessions to students with a team of writing coaches. The coaches, each backed by their extraordinary careers and industry experience provide valuable feedback to students as they grow as writers.

Since its inception, the writing center has served more than 450 students over 640 hours. This semester, the writing center will add more than 250 hours of writing instruction to that total.

Access to the Journalism Writing Center begins when students enroll in Journalism 107, the introductory Media Writing course. Students in the course are required to attend four 30-minute sessions for credit in the course, often bringing a draft of an article, an interview outline, or other writing assignment. Together with coaches, students receive focused writing instruction ranging from grammar and story structure to formatting quotes and including attributions in their reporting.

Jim Scripps, instructor for Media Writing and director of the Journalism Writing Center, has seen firsthand the impacts the writing center sessions in his students’ work.

“The primary thing that most students get out of [the writing center] is how to build a story in a journalistic style, because they're converting from a paradigm of English composition writing to more of an inverted pyramid style,” says Scripps. “That's how the writing center coaches are supporting our students, it’s like turning on the light in understanding the difference between those two.”

The coaches, Scripps believes, are the key to making this program stick.

Coaches like Karen Galatz, who’s worked as a coach since the program started, have seen students through from their first few writing assignments as a freshman to now, as they work through assignments for upper-division courses.

Galatz’s own decorated career as a journalist, including her background in public policy, as a human rights activist and author, allows her to bring a broad perspective as a writing coach.

“I act like I'm an editor on the job with them, and I don't mince words,” Galatz says. “Would you read this story if you were on your phone walking across campus, rushing, talking to your friend, drinking a latte, would you read that headline in that story?”

Galatz has found that the students she works with are passionate and have creative story ideas, but it’s in helping her mentees understand the expectations they’ll have as journalists in the real world that she’s found the most rewarding.

“I have learned many things from the students who come into the writing center. The center is a gift for the students, and I think it's a gift for the writing coaches,” said Galatz.

This semester, Media Writing has 105 students enrolled, the largest cohort of students since Scripps has been teaching the class.

Scripps believes the writing center is helping provide a foundation in writing — something they may not have had coming into the program—will help propel them as in their academic and professional careers.

“It’s about recognizing that writing is the super-skill for every communications profession that we teach,” he says. “[Students] might focus on video production or something like that, but writing is underneath video production. They might focus in on sports media, writing's underneath sports media. This program underscores the importance of writing in all these disciplines that we're teaching.”