Blessing Jona

Blessing Tapiwa Jona is a Graduate Teaching Assistant and Ph.D. in Journalism and Mass Communications Candidate (ABD) in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications. He is a scholar-practitioner whose work sits at the intersection of media production and theory, digital storytelling, and health communication. 

Originally from the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where he taught in the Journalism and Media Studies Department for more than a decade and a half, Blessing has been teaching Data Storytelling, Laboratory in Media Production, and Broadcast Reporting at the University of Kansas. His academic and creative work is grounded in narrative persuasion, audience reception, and critical analyses of media representations of lived experience, particularly within health and social contexts. Blessing brings these perspectives into the classroom through a student-centered, compassionate teaching philosophy that emphasizes clarity, equity, and hands-on learning. 

Whether teaching a full classroom or supporting a small group of students to ensure their timely graduation, Blessing approaches teaching as both a responsibility and a form of care. Alongside his academic work, he is an award-winning filmmaker and a Humphrey Fellowship alumnus. A short documentary that he co-produced, Forgotten Children of Mother Magma, won Third Place at the 2023 BEA Festival of Media Arts Awards. Blessing is also a Robert Bosch African Filmmaking Fellowship alumnus and trained through the Steppingstone Africa Filmmaking Fellowship at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. His professional skills span audio-visual storytelling, broadcast journalism, screenwriting, editing, and documentary filmmaking. 

At KU, Blessing has served on faculty search and graduate studies committees, contributed to nationally recognized research, and co-authored award-winning conference papers honored by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). These experiences reflect his commitment to collaborative scholarship, fair academic governance, and mentoring the next generation of media scholars and practitioners. Across institutions and roles, Blessing’s work is guided by a belief that service, scholarship, and storytelling are inseparable. He is interested in roles where he can teach with purpose, produce meaningful media, advance theory-driven research, and contribute to academic communities that value empathy, rigor, and impact.