Senior Editorial Advisors: Ande Richards and Brian Branch-Price  

2025 Class Overview

PSA's "Citizen as Journalist" program class of 2025 took eight participants through an experiential learning process designed to inspire storytelling that centers the voice of activists, students, workers, and immigrants.

The class will focus on four modules of learning:

• Civics 

• News Reporting

• Photojournalism

• Opinion Writing

Participants learned to manipulate journalism tools to explore and document their storytelling and engage in first-person reporting. Participants were also exposed to multimedia production, long-form writing, sourcing, interviewing, photography, and more.

The class opened the storytelling world to community members who are untrained in journalism and news reporting and created spaces for them to witness events that impact their lives and the transformation of their communities. Those members who are working journalists were exposed to new ways of centering the peripheral voice and social movements.

Objective/Focus/Goals

This unique course was facilitated by Public Square Amplified Advisory Committee member Ande Richards, a multimedia journalist who recently moved from Los Angeles to New Jersey to become Managing Producer, Diversity of Voices at NJ.com, and Brian Branch-Price, a National Headliner Award-winning photographer. 

Participants learned to manipulate journalism tools to explore and document their storytelling--to engage in first-person reporting. Participants were also exposed to multimedia production, long-form writing, sourcing, interviewing, photography, and more.

The Community Journalism course for this year was made possible by New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, and the Prudential Community Foundation, and our community members.