“This could be a new model for journalism education,” said Beverly Blake, a program director for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which provided a $4.6 million grant. “We thought about what it could do for journalism education and to strengthen our community.”

There have been some growing pains. University officials housed the radio station in a space that has the distinct smell of a nearby wings joint. The newspaper offices are just three noisy stories below student dorms known for their Friday night dance parties. A recent Friday deadline was accompanied by what reporter Joe Kovac Jr. joked sounded like “a wild game of Twister.”

On a recent election night, newspaper editors who were already short-staffed neglected to plan with professors in advance to have students help out. Telegraph editors and reporters who have previously worked with interns and students are concerned about working with inexperienced staff.

“Some reporters think they’re going to be unduly stressed,” Mr. Kovac said.

There’s no shortage of material. Macon — a city with 91,000 residents in the throes of gentrification — is filled with enough political battles and economic disparity to occupy flocks of enterprising student journalists. It’s rich with old Southern grandeur: it has an opera house, enough stately homes on the National Historic Register to rival Charleston and Savannah and an imposing Beaux-Arts 1916 train station where preservationists kept the “Colored Waiting Room” sign etched into the facade. But Bibb County, where Macon is, has a 22.4 percent poverty rate that is equally visible as residents linger on the front porches of decrepit homes that local community groups have been working to help clean up.

At a recent morning editorial meeting, Oby Brown, the senior editor of local news for The Telegraph, ran through a long list of story ideas. With many of the paper’s 20 staff journalists out on mandatory furloughs and maternity leave, he said there’s “not a lot of room for throat-clearing.”

Mercer students, who say they depend heavily on the Internet for news, will be used to fill the gaps. On a recent evening, nearly two dozen students, many dressed in candy-colored fraternity and sorority pledge shirts, herded into a classroom at Mercer’s new Center for Collaborative Journalism. They ate pizza slices and listened to Timothy Regan-Porter, a newly minted professor and the program’s director, nervously walk them through a slide show of his plans.