By Reginald Stuart
When Tennessee State University (TSU) senior CéDra Jackson reports for `class’ each day, her learning is more likely to be listening to lawyers make arguments before a federal judge, reading voluminous court documents involving any range of topics from immigration issues to fraud to patent disputes, then writing a brief summary of her activities so others across Tennessee can read it.
Jackson’s days in Nashville’s United States Federal Court for the Middle District of Tennessee are part of her fall semester’s college internship as a student news reporter for the Seigenthaler News Service (SNS), a college news reporting service started by Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU). Named in honor of Nashville journalism icon John Seigenthaler, the SNS focuses on federal courts news coverage.
The SNS, started just over a year ago by MTSU’s College of Mass Communication, helps student journalists get the kind of real-time experience that gives them a head start on news media careers after graduation. Several of the original interns have graduated and started news media jobs. Program alum Alex Hubbard is now working on his Master’s in Journalism degree at the Columbia University in the City of New York.
The still-new program also helps fill a news coverage void in Nashville created in the last decade as local news media coverage of the federal courts in Middle Tennessee shrank to a shadow of what it was in the heydays of Nashville’s new media.
At one time, the Nashville Banner and The Nashville Tennessean covered the federal courts full time. All Nashville television stations kept federal court proceedings monitored on a regular basis. So did several radio stations.
Today, Jackson is part of a small team of college journalism students who are considered part of the federal court house press corps. The student journalists pursue their craft under the guidance of veteran award winning journalists Wendell Rawls, chair of the MTSU Seigenthaler Center, and Dwight Lewis, former reporter, columnist and editorial page editor of The Tennessean.
The student journalists file brief stories for the SNS based on their reporting. The stories that are published by The Tennessean and other Gannett Co. Inc. papers around Middle Tennessee.
“I’ve lost count of how many stories I’ve written,” said Jackson a 21-year-old senior, expressing her enthusiasm for the court reporting internship. “You get a much clearer view of things that can be distorted by TV shows and other movies,” she said,
referring to the front row seat her internship gives her in tuning into to all kinds of legal confrontations.
The resumption of regular coverage of the federal court in Nashville is a welcomed sight for a number of reasons, said Chief Justice Joe Haynes.
“It’s extremely helpful to the community,” said Judge Haynes. “The work of the court is extremely important to the community. The news reporters are an important part of communicating the work of the court and it’s important for students to have an understanding of the court,” said the veteran justice.
Judge Haynes said the workload of the federal court in Nashville, with four district judges, a senior judge, four magistrates and three bankruptcy judges, has expanded considerably over the years, despite the fall off in news coverage.
In addition to its traditional shopping list of blue collar and white collar federal crimes cases from around the region, it is not uncommon for the court to be hearing cases involving international issues involving companies from around the globe from China to Germany, France and Japan.
Jackson and her peers get a taste of it all.
The judges meet with the student journalists on occasion to discuss how the courts work. The U.S. Attorney and his federal prosecutors make themselves accessible to explain cases and court procedures. Staffers in the court clerk’s office, once the regular information station for such courthouse journalism legends as the late Nellie Kenyon, help the aspiring journalists learn how to search and understand court records.
“They have been more than willing to help us understand things we don’t,” said Jackson, referring to the judges, federal attorneys and courthouse staff. Jackson, She also gives Rawls and Lewis kudos for mentoring and editors at The Tennessean a salute for questioning the final stories turned it. “It’s interesting to have three sets of eyes to look at your copy,” she said.
Jackson, who earns 12 hours of college credit this semester for working the non-paid internship, is the second TSU student to be selected for the internship program. Last spring semester, Jer’Mykael McCoy, a senior set to graduate in December, was the first TSU student in the program. Upon his expected graduation, McCoy is set to enter graduate school at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Photo by: Daryl T. Stuart