https://doi.org/10.1177/1077695819837406 Journalism & Mass Communication Educator 1–13 © AEJMC 2019 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1077695819837406 http://journals.sagepub.com/home/jmc Special Issue: Teaching in Post-Truth: Challenges, Lessons, and Innovations in Journalism Education Whose Post-Truth Era? Confronting the Epistemological Challenges of Teaching Journalism Jeff Tischauser 1 and Jesse Benn 1 Abstract While discussions on validity, professional standards, and routines have become more challenging to many educators of journalism, these challenges are old news to communities of color whose experiences are often discounted or erased by information gathering practices taught in journalism schools. We argue that using the label “post-truth” reinforces the privileged and entitled position of journalism educators, and curtails our responsibility as arbiters of professional practice and routine. In this article, we examine how journalism classrooms can bring in ways of knowing and seeing that can provide a refreshing counter to the staid dis- embedded outsider perspective that views journalism as the protector of one truth, liberal democracy. Borrowing ideas from press theory that places journalism inside community, and counterpublic theory that places agency inside culture, we explore an opportunity for journalists to become mediators and translators between publics as a way to strengthen understanding between communities. To do so, we identify and examine reporting practices used in the Black press to understand how to confront the multiplicity of truth. By unpacking how the ethnic press examines the diverse conditions and experiences that lead to alternative versions of events, we can better gauge what reporting practices are relevant to our students today. Indeed, the so-called post-truth era is part of a larger sociohistoric process of truth-making that reflects the dynamics of power and authority in civil society, which we unpack in this article. In the end, we argue that it is more valuable for journalism students to view their work as mediators and translators of truths between communities. 1 University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA Corresponding Author: Jeff Tischauser, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 821 University Ave., Madison, WI 53706, USA. Email: tischauser@wisc.edu 837406JMC XX X 10.1177/1077695819837406Journalism & Mass Communication EducatorTischauser and Benn research-article 2019