'Shelter' around the world: Students from 22 universities team up for fifth Global News Relay to produce 7 hours of storytelling

Students from 22 universities from around the globe are teaming up for the fifth edition of the Global News Relay, with each university producing a 15 minute news segment to be broadcast live on Monday, April 23, from 11am to 6pm BST.

The Relay is hosted by Fresno State’s student-run TV news magazine called Fresno State Focus, and will be broadcast live on CMAC.

Fresno student journalists will co-anchor the broadcast together with participating students from the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai, India, and Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.

Each 15-minute news segment will be followed by a live talk-back with the students who produced it.

The theme of this year’s Relay is "Shelter", with stories taking a look at issues including homelessness, immigration, the housing crisis, urban renewal, and animal habitats.

The overarching topic came out of discussions between Fresno staff who settled on three key subjects they wanted to tackle as part of the Relay: immigration, the refugee crisis, and climate change.

"When we started thinking about homelessness, we discussed how it's not just people who are living on the street because they have a drug habit or because they have a choice to live on the street," said Faith Sidlow, assistant professor, media, communications and journalism, California State University, Fresno.

"There were so many different ways of looking at shelter we thought we didn't want to limit it. The Global News Relay works best when it's broad."

This edition of the Relay is the largest yet, with universities participating from the United States, India, Canada, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Lebanon, The Netherlands, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Mexico, China, Japan, and Indonesia.

Stories range from explorations of creative housing or animal rescue to reports on group homes for troubled youth, the housing available to women who have experienced domestic violence, and the schooling available to homeless children.

The Global News Relay has been running since 2014, when it was set up by Professor Sarah Jones at the University of Salford, and has brought together universities from 13 countries so far.

"We now have much more of a shared duty," said Sidlow of the contribution of each university to the Relay.

"I am hoping that after this year we will still continue the Global News Relay but that we will be able to involve more universities that will take a greater role."

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