If you pick up Brant Houston’s 2023 book, “Changing Models for Journalism,” you would read about the collapse of traditional media and the changes in the news landscape over the past decade, written by an award-winning journalist who has spent years researching journalism models.
You would learn about the digital age, blogging, nonprofits, investigative centers and the rise in university-led student reporting programs — which is fitting because Houston founded his own such program in 2009 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The watchdog community reporting outlet, , is run entirely by him and his managing editor, Dylan Tiger, as well as a cadre of student journalists.
“I think his goal at the start of every semester is to get everyone published in Citizen Access,” Farrah Anderson, a recent graduate who took his class, said of Houston.
Along with publishing on the website, his students have published stories in the local NPR-PBS station, and , a nonprofit investigative outlet which primarily focuses on big agriculture, according to Houston. He serves as president of the board of directors for the investigative nonprofit.
Houston is a professor of investigative and advanced reporting courses at the university, where he teaches an advanced investigative reporting class and an intermediate public affairs reporting class. Students write community-driven stories and investigative series through the two courses, and they are edited by Houston and his managing editor.
For the public affairs reporting course, Houston requires students to write at least three different articles. First, they write a “neighborhood story, because our neighborhoods don’t get covered that much anymore, unless there are gunshots,” he said.
The other is a data-driven story, and the third is an issue-driven story, which usually involves a problem in the community or around campus, Houston said.
One such carefully breaks down why there was a rise in arrests for fake ID usage at local bars and liquor stores, while there was a drop in underage drinking citations.
On the investigative side, students get to choose a project and work on it for the semester, said Anderson, who wrapped up in May and says she’s already found her “dream job.” Anderson is an investigative reporter for the and lives in Washington, D.C.
Before then, she worked for Illinois Public Media, Wisconsin Watch and the Invisible Institute. She also wrote for Chris Evans in the Illinois Student Newsroom — another program offered at the university — before she landed in Houston’s investigative journalism class.
During her semester in the class, she put out a two-part series in CU-Citizen Access, in Champaign, and the .
Anderson has interned for a news outlet every summer of her undergraduate experience, and student news opportunities like Houston’s class have helped her secure a dream career in a field where jobs are scarce.
“The university has done a really good job of making sure that I graduated with a lot of professional experience,” she said.