News Workshop of Yozgat Bozok University Faculty of Communication

Established in 2019, our News Workshop provides undergraduate students of the Department of Journalism at the Faculty of Communication, as well as all students interested in journalism, with opportunities to engage in practical news production. By integrating theoretical knowledge with hands-on practice, the Workshop aims to help students gain field experience and develop into the media professionals of the future.

The News Workshop plays a central role in planning, integrating, and implementing a wide range of practical and extracurricular activities. It serves as the newsroom of our Faculty’s practice newspaper, GENÇ BASKI, as a classroom for practice-based courses, and as the working space of our student organization, the NEWS COMMUNITY.

In 2024, the Workshop moved to its new location within the Faculty of Communication and was further strengthened with equipment including photography cameras, video cameras, drones, design computers, audio recorders, lavalier microphones, and handheld microphones.

The News Workshop Educates Communication Professionals Equipped for All Areas of the Media Industry

In the field of communication, activities such as news writing and content production for newspapers, television, public relations and advertising campaigns, web publishing, and page design require intensive practice and are most effectively carried out in small groups. For this reason, news and practice workshops are an essential component of communication faculties.

Fundamental news-writing skills form the basis of many of the content-production competencies expected in the media industry. Therefore, the News Workshop is not merely a place where news stories are written; it is a learning environment in which communication professionals develop expertise in content production.

What Activities Are Carried Out in the News Workshop?

• Practice-based courses are conducted in the Workshop.

• Core courses in the Journalism Program, such as Fundamentals of Journalism, Digital Journalism, and Web Journalism, which also carry high ECTS credits, are delivered through practice-oriented activities in the Workshop.

• Together with students participating in workshop activities, our Faculty’s practice newspaper, GENÇ BASKI, is produced both in print and online.

• Students engage directly in journalistic practices. As the Workshop operates in a manner similar to a professional newsroom, students gain practical experience in news production.

• Experts from local and national media are invited to workshop activities by the NEWS COMMUNITY, enabling students to benefit from their professional experience.

• Within the NEWSROOM, current developments are followed, editorial agenda meetings and newspaper reviews are held, practice-based courses are conducted, content is produced collaboratively, and students gain experience in professional socialization, solidarity, and cooperation.

The News Workshop, structured as a practice-based unit within Yozgat Bozok University Faculty of Communication, makes significant contributions to communication and journalism education. These contributions include:

1. The News Workshop enables students to receive practical training at a level that meets the expectations of institutions in the publishing and media sectors and helps them acquire the practical knowledge required in professional publishing. Students learn journalism and content production for various areas of the media through direct practice and graduate with stronger professional competencies.

2. The News Workshop ensures that courses requiring knowledge and practice in content production are delivered in a coordinated manner in line with specific educational objectives and with an emphasis on learning journalism through practice. It also provides intensive opportunities for applied workshop activities and brings students together with professionals and experts in the field.

3. The News Workshop has played, and continues to play, a central role in the establishment, operation, and development of GENÇ BASKI, the practice newspaper of Yozgat Bozok University Faculty of Communication, which publishes both in print and online. Courses are coordinated with workshop activities, and achievement criteria in practice-based courses are linked to participation in these activities. This ensures a continuous flow of news and other content to the newspaper. In this way, GENÇ BASKI is able to maintain more effective, regular, and wide-reaching publication, while students are provided with opportunities to further develop their publishing skills. With its spacious physical environment and technical infrastructure, the Workshop also functions as a NEWSROOM, allowing students to experience collaborative production and professional socialization.

4. The News Workshop provides practice-based training through digital technologies that have become dominant across the publishing sector, thereby enabling our graduates to acquire the competencies required to meet the evolving expectations of the media industry.

GENÇ BASKI

Established in 2019, GENÇ BASKI is the student newspaper of our Faculty. By offering original content in a variety of journalistic formats, the newspaper contributes to the development of students’ journalism skills. In 2022, GENÇ BASKI also began publishing digitally and has continued to reach a broader audience.

Providing news from both the University and the city, GENÇ BASKI published its first printed issue on January 10, 2023. The newspaper, which also features news produced within the News Workshop, is an important educational tool for workshop activities. The Workshop also provides GENÇ BASKI with a physical newsroom environment.

NEWS COMMUNITY

Founded by our students in 2023, the NEWS COMMUNITY has become one of the key components of the News Workshop through the news stories it gathers from the field and the projects it carries out.

Composed of students from the undergraduate Journalism Program of the Faculty of Communication, this dynamic community supports the objectives of the News Workshop through news gathering activities conducted both within the University and across Yozgat, as well as through various student-led projects.

Our Activities

The Workshop has hosted a variety of projects that enable students to develop their professional competencies while contributing both to journalism and to society. Some of these activities include:

“Communication Students in Village Schools” Project

Within the scope of this project, students participating in the Workshop visited several village schools in Yozgat and provided students with information on media literacy. Following the presentations, which attracted considerable interest, question-and-answer sessions were organized and students’ questions were addressed.

“Local Media Workshop”

This workshop brought together representatives of the local media in Yozgat and members of the Department of Journalism. Current issues, challenges, and possible solutions concerning local media were discussed, and participants exchanged views and experiences. The workshop also attracted considerable attention from the local press.

Establishment of the News Workshop and GENÇ BASKI

The News Workshop was established in 2019 through the dedicated efforts of faculty member Şafak Etike and students. A total of 169 students from different departments of the Faculty of Communication, together with academic staff, attended the founding meeting, where the decision to establish a student newspaper was made unanimously.

At the same meeting, through a democratic voting process involving these 169 students, it was decided that the newspaper would be named GENÇ BASKI.

The activities of the Workshop and the newspaper subsequently became formally integrated into the Faculty, and since 2020 they have continued to operate officially as the Faculty’s practice workshop and practice newspaper.

Our newspaper and practice unit are currently coordinated by Asst. Prof. Dr. Atike Sevtap DEMİR.