To fulfill our “learning by doing” teaching ideal, we put emphasis on the professional training of news practices, combining teaching and practices to inspire students to run with their creativity. Therefore, we vigorously encourage students to take part in in-depth reporting writing program, letting them learn more advanced expertise and knowledge attainment, and share their final accomplishments with the public.
In recent years, we have been constantly collaborating with other related agencies to work on and publish new monographs and DVD publication projects. In the past 5 years, we have published up to more than 12 in-depth reporting books, becoming our prominent features and accomplishments. In the future we will continue to strengthen written papers, and the publishing of practical monographs, DVDs and so on, with hopes of enhancing our training of young journalism professionals and increasing our contributions to the news communication field. As for compiling monographs, the teachers of our institute will guide students through in-depth reports and interviews to cultivate their news writing and interviewing skills and produce works that will be helpful to the country.
For instance, our finished book in January 2008, “Searching For the Star In the Dark Night: A History of a Senior Journalist Who Made It Through Martial Law Era”, is one of the products of our “Brilliant Journalists Seminar Project”, it consists field experiences, sentiments and reflections of 17 senior journalists documented by 17 grad students who are under the guidance and instructions of 3 of teachers and the awarded brilliant journalist from the aforementioned project. In order to successfully finish this work, 4 teachers organized a series of sessions to train the students to understand the democratization of Taiwan politics and history of the progress of press freedom, and they invited experts to explain skills on field work and in-depth interviewing. Which readers they wanted to target and which reporting directions they wanted to take were all finalized upon repeated discussions, and it was after thorough preparations and training that the teachers led the students to undergo interviews. Students were responsible for recording and organizing data; teachers and interviewees then proofread and confirmed details. It took them a year and a half to eventually finish the book; the teamwork experience that came with it let the students understand the bumpy process of democratization and press freedom, and also increased their practical experiences in reporting and writing, and even still, we can show to the academia and society, our recordings and reflections on the happenings in Taiwan history.