Students return from covering World Cup with sharpened skills and AP bylines

This summer, 17 University of Georgia sports media and visual journalism students traveled to Australia to cover the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup for The Associated Press.

“It’s one thing to sit in a class and look at great works, breaking them down into component parts to understand how they were made,” said Mark Johnson, a principal lecturer in Journalism, who was one of three professors on the trip. “But to be on the pitch for the largest women’s sporting event in history, with deadlines every minute and seeing the works that you produced show up, minutes after they were made, on web sites and social media feeds around the world—that’s a whole new level of learning.”

The students were separated into three groups and sent to one of three Australian cities – Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne – where they spent nearly three weeks…