ABSTRACT
A standard part of journalism scholarship is considering the relationships between the journalist/journalistic organization, the community covered by the journalist, and the audience that reads/listens/watches the journalists work. Those who have the privilege of teaching journalism at any level would naturally develop their students entering the workforce to deal with the ever-changing media industry by thinking critically about those relationships. The closest memory to what the authors are dealing with now would have been the Challenger explosion in 1986. This distinction between being afraid and being aware is useful to consider social disruption that has occurred this year with the pandemic and racial justice movement both becoming front and center in local and national news coverage. Keeping with the idea of children-focused reporting means that journalists and news organizations should recognize the aspects of society and health that children might have questions about and find ways to address those answers within context of the broader journalistic narrative within the story.
