“A Jack of All Trades”: Students' Perception of Industry Realities and Classroom Theory in Kenyan Mass Communication Education

Abstract

Digital transformation has pushed global newsrooms towards full convergence, making multi-platform fluency an industry baseline rather than a specialist advantage. However, Global South journalism pedagogy frequently struggles to align classroom theory with these operational realities due to resource constraints and entrenched academic silos. This qualitative study investigates the educational impact of industry immersion by analysing the perceptions of 16 Kenyan undergraduate mass communication students following a structured field visit to a major integrated media house in Nairobi. Immediately after the visit, students completed an open-ended reflective survey that also captured a single-item self-rating of how well classroom lessons had prepared them for the industry’s pace. Textual responses were examined using Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis, and self-ratings were summarised descriptively. Four themes emerged: the tempo and simultaneity of newsroom operations, coupled with surprise at the professionals’ composure; the realisation of media convergence and multi-skilling; technological and infrastructural deficits; and the salience of professional socialisation and teamwork. Although students rated their preparedness highly (4.0 out of 5), their reflections revealed a persistent gap between the sequential, controlled logic of the classroom and the simultaneous, high-velocity logic of the professional newsroom. The study contributes student-level empirical evidence to an institution-level debate, extends the Global South technology-gap literature by distinguishing a deficit of missing equipment, and argues that convergence be treated as a curricular design principle rather than an add-on. To narrow this gap, the study recommends curricula pivot towards experiential learning, integrate cross-platform newsroom simulations under deadline, and address infrastructural deficits.