At the University of Regina’s School of Journalism, an unlikely pair of instructors is tag-teaming a class that is honing students’ writing and presentation skills. For five years, the father-and-son duo Darrell Davis BA'82 and Austin Davis BAJ'13 have been teaching Journalism 320, a class in advanced digital news writing. Together, in the same classroom, they are sharing decades of newsroom experience and fresh digital perspectives to prepare a new generation of journalists for the vocation.
In a University of Regina journalism classroom, the usual rhythm of lectures has given way to urgency. Students lean over laptops, chasing final details, tightening ledes and checking quotes. Conversations overlap. A deadline looms. For a few hours, the space feels less like a classroom and more like a working newsroom.
At the front of it all are Darrell Davis and Austin Davis, moving between students, offering edits, answering questions, and nudging stories forward.
“A day like today, when the room feels like a real newsroom, that’s everything,” Austin says.
It’s a fitting scene for a course built around doing the work, not just talking about it. Journalism 320, Advanced Digital News Writing, has evolved alongside the industry itself, shifting from its former identity as an advanced print course.
“What’s print?” Darrell says with a laugh. “Nobody says print anymore.”
The class also reflects something less common, a father and son teaching side by side, bringing two distinct perspectives into the same learning space.
“I love teaching with Austin,” Darrell says. “We relate well as father and son, but in the classroom it’s even better. It’s a shared passion.”
Darrell Davis is a longtime Regina sportswriter and CFL Hall of Fame journalist who now teaches journalism at the University of Regina, bringing decades of newsroom experience into the classroom.
For Darrell, that passion was shaped over decades in the newsroom. He began his career as a sportswriter at the Regina Leader-Post in 1983, in an era when stories were filed once, for a single deadline, and the pace, while demanding, was predictable.
“When I started, you only did the story once,” he says. “If something happened Friday, it was in Saturday’s paper. That was it.”
Today, the work is constant.
“Now it’s 24 hours a day,” he says. “You’re feeding the social media monster.”
And yet, he insists, the core of journalism hasn’t changed.
“The best part is still writing the story. That hasn’t changed.”
That belief underpins his teaching, along with the values he sees as essential.
“Honesty,” he says. “There’s nothing more important. And a close second is empathy.”
Across the room, Austin is reinforcing those same ideas, but from a different vantage point.
A graduate of the journalism program in 2013, he returned to the U of R to teach in 2021 while building his own career as a reporter. His experience reflects a more recent version of the industry, one shaped by digital platforms, multimedia storytelling and a more fragmented audience.
“You can’t teach coachability. You can’t teach hunger and drive,” he says. “But these students have that. They want to be here. They want to get better.”
The division in how the two instructors approach the craft is clear, and intentional.
“He’s the better writer,” Austin says of his father. “I’m more of a grind-it-out reporter. I work the phones, find the angles, get the voices.”
Together, that balance gives students a more complete understanding of the work, how to tell a story, and how to build one.
It also reflects the evolution of the profession itself, from a more structured, print-focused model to one that demands flexibility, speed and constant adaptation.
Austin Davis works with a student during a Journalism 320 class, focusing on reporting, digital storytelling, and presentation.
In the middle of it all, the energy in the room continues to build. Students collaborate, challenge each other and push toward the deadline, producing work that both instructors say stands up to what’s being done in the field.
“This is maybe my most inspirational class,” Darrell says. “They’ve got a lot to learn, but they just keep springboarding higher and higher.”
For him, the payoff often comes later, outside the classroom.
“Every press conference I go to now, I run into four or five former students,” he says. “That’s what I love. It’s like coaching, you see people succeed.”
For Austin, the reward is in moments like this, when the classroom becomes something real, something immediate.
“There’s energy,” he says. “They’re pushing toward a common goal. Everything is in service to the story.”
It’s work both men have chosen to take on alongside already full lives. Darrell, now 68, has returned to the Leader-Post after years away, while continuing to teach and contribute to local sports radio. Austin balances the classroom with a full-time reporting job and a young family.
Back in the classroom, the noise hasn’t let up. Stories are still being filed. Edits are still being made. The newsroom, at least for today, is alive.
“I kind of ask Austin every year, ‘Do you want to do another year?’” Darrell says. “If he wants to do it, I’ll keep doing it.”
Given how much this father and son value the experience, and how much students continue to get out of the class, there’s every reason to believe this father-son teaching team isn’t done just yet.
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