I was privileged yesterday to be panelist for a discussion about the future of journalism education. I am pleased that journalism educators are considering the important issues for the future of journalism and the news business and hopeful that this means they will be teaching the right issues and skills and contributing valuable research.
I attended a meeting in Chicago of the Accreditation Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the body that sets curriculum standards for teaching journalism in universities. The same day as the group was meeting, Ernest Wilson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, asked in a centerpiece for Poynter Online, “Where are J-Schools in Great Debate over Journalism’s Future?”
I believe journalism schools need to play a stronger role than they have in shaping the future of journalism, so I was pleased to share my thoughts with the Accreditation Council and the journalism educators who were present.
John Lavine, dean of Medill, the journalism school at Northwestern University, described the future he saw for journalism in a keynote address that preceded the panel discussion. I tweeted during John’s address and you can read most of my account here. (Read my full Twitter feed from yesterday for a few tweets that didn’t use the hashtag; thanks to Amy Gahran for suggesting several tweets into the address that I should be using a hashtag). I thought John’s presentation was mostly insightful, except on one key point: He sees some sort of payment for content as inevitable. I see the failure of most paid-content efforts as inevitable (with the execption of some high-value content for niche audiences).
John’s address was videotaped and the tape will be posted next week at the ACEJMC site. Following John’s address, I discussed some issues facing journalism education in the digital age, joining a panel of Jeff Cohen, Barbara Cochran, Ron Culp and Mark Potts. Answering a question about ethics in the digital age, I mentioned my Upholding and Updating Ethical Standards seminars for the American Press Institute (underwritten by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation). I have led the seminars at universities, newsrooms and press association conferences across North America, with several more scheduled for this fall.
I promised the educators Friday that I would post links to the handouts I have developed for six workshops dealing with ethical issues in the digital age. These handouts offer some advice, but I think of them more as discussion questions for newsrooms and classes wrestling with these issues. Any educators interested in using the exercises I developed for the workshops can contact me directly. I am happy to share the exercises with journalism educators, but I have not posted them online because I prefer for participants in my workshops to deal with them spontaneously, rather than reading them in advance. The six workshops I have developed deal with:
- Ethics in social networks
- User-generated content
- Blogging
- Breaking news online
- Digital visual journalism
- Generating revenue with integrity (I need to update this to discuss the issues raised in the Washington Post’s salon controversy.)
Journalism educators are welcome to use these materials if you find them helpful. Credit them to me, API and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.
I was pleased that the panel discussed how journalism schools must educate students about the challenges of innovation and the need to develop new business models. I spoke briefly about my Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection. I am pleased that Tim McGuire, who moderated the panel discussion, has included C3 in the syllabus for his Business and Future of Journalism course at Arizona State University. I hope some other educators will use it as well. You can read it as a series of blog posts at the link above, or read the 38-page pdf document from Scribd linked below:
We talked about a wide range of other journalism education issues on which I have written, so I will post additional links on some of those topics as well:
- Twitter (I specifically mentioned the Denver news story I blogged about in December)
- Social media
- Liveblogging
- Multimedia storytelling
- Interactive databases
I am pleased that journalism educators are working to update their curriculum. News media companies need all the help we can get in addressing these challenges.
[…] from the ACEJMC discussion and useful tools for academics, check out Steve Buttry’s blog. If you’re in J-school, you should read Ryan Murphy’s blog post on how to get the […]
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