Mary Louise Kelly

From the pandemic and protests for racial justice to a pivotal presidential election and Senate runoff, the last year and a half has been a news cycle like no other.

And yes, professional journalists across the country have been all over it. But so have student journalists at college newspapers around the country.

From the pandemic to racial justice protests, a contested election and a second presidential impeachment: The events of the past year divided the nation, but they also challenged conventional notions held in newsrooms about objectivity and fairly representing diverse points of view.

The Declaration of Independence says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." Those truths the founders were talking about are at the core of American democracy — that all people are created equal, that they have certain inherent rights, that governments get their power from the people they serve.

But what happens when the people aren't united in a shared set of facts — when "truth" isn't evident or agreed upon?