Journalism education needs an update. You can and must teach and honor the timeless fundamentals of journalism and still prepare journalists for the dynamic job market they will be entering.
Journalists and educators who play the “basics” card in resisting overhauls of journalism curriculum fail to acknowledge how basic to journalism resourcefulness and problem-solving are. When a county attorney who didn’t respect the law denied me access to a file in the local courthouse, I found the records I needed in the Iowa Supreme Court and got the story. When I couldn’t persuade intimidated friends of a victim to speak on the record for a story about domestic violence by a football player, I used a draft of the story using unnamed sources to prod reluctant coaches to confirm and clarify details on the record. When floods cut off streets in much of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, my staff covered the news in boats, chest waders and by finding alternate routes. Good journalists adjust to the situations they face and they don’t use obstacles as excuses.
We need to adjust to digital challenges and journalism educators need to stop using “basics” as an excuse. They need to develop ways to teach the basics along with principles and skills of innovation.
I don’t know whether the University of Colorado will find the right future for journalism education by planning to close its journalism school in favor of a new school of information and technology. But I’m certain that the way forward will not be found by looking backward.
Tony Rogers, writing for About.com, quoted a succession of journalism professors wringing their hands over the supposed erosion of fundamental instruction:
“You have to wonder how much you can cram in a curriculum without diluting the essentials,” says Virginia Breen, a SUNY Purchase journalism professor. …
Fred Bayles [of] Boston University’s journalism school … says the skills taught in a traditional public affairs reporting course – coverage of beats like cops, courts and city council – are needed now more than ever.
At Temple University in Philadelphia, Professor Linn Washington … worries that “too much emphasis has been placed on the bells and whistles of technology and not on the fundamental purpose of journalism – to provide information to the public and to serve as a watchdog on government.”
In a blog post for the American Copy Editors Society, Teresa Schmedding asked this falsely skewed question: “Should journalism schools be ditching the basics and loading up on tech-based curriculum?” It’s not a matter of one or the other. I don’t know of anyone suggesting that journalism schools ditch basics. I have suggested that journalism basics need to be taught in a context relevant to today’s journalism. I don’t advocate a “tech-based curriculum.” I advocate a journalism-based curriculum that recognizes how journalism and the industries that support it are transforming in response to technology and market changes.
More from Schmedding:
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve been frantically waving my hand over my crystal ball for that past five years to no avail. I still can’t see into the future. None of us can. … Once we acknowledge all that we don’t know, we can focus on what we do know. People will need information. We as journalists want to provide accurate, fair, authoritative, ethical and clear information. And what we need to be teaching the journalists of the future is how to gather, write and edit information following those guidelines. …
If our universities have invested the bulk of their teaching efforts in Twitter, then those students are valuable only as long as Twitter rules. How useful are those Twitter students if we all have Apple chips implanted in our brains and download/upload information by just thinking?
Does that mean J schools shouldn’t teach any technology? Absolutely not, but technology will change faster than most curriculums can, and we are dooming the future of our industry if we lose sight of the importance of our core journalistic principles.
She’s right that we can’t predict the future. But we know we’re not going back to the past. The casual dismissal of Twitter waves off how it has transformed journalism. Yes, Twitter may not rule forever, but whatever takes its place will provide even better tools for real-time crowdsourcing of breaking-news coverage and instant reporting of news in short bursts. The days of working hours on your story for the morning newspaper are over. So journalism schools need to teach students how to gather, write and edit information using the best breaking-news tool we have and that’s Twitter. Students who learn those skills with Twitter will be best prepared to adjust and use the brain chips Schmedding speculates about, or whatever tool comes next.
You don’t need to eliminate a basic reporting course to make room in the curriculum for a Twitter class. You integrate Twitter into the basic reporting course, because it is now basic to reporting and those skills will remain basic, even if the brand name of the tool changes.
The truth is that too many journalism schools and journalism educators turn out students who can’t get to the point in 140 characters. That skill, which Twitter demands and teaches, helps you write a better story for the morning newspaper, so every old-school professor who loves the basics should love this teaching tool.
As for the public-affairs course that Bayles favors, you can’t cover crime, courts or the city council effectively today without understanding how to use social tools and databases. The police reporter needs to know how to use Twitter, because that’s where breaking stories invariably unfold. The court reporter and city council reporter need to learn the skills of liveblogging, because that’s how they will use their basic writing skills to report trials and council meetings. All three of those reporters need to learn data skills, because you can’t practice the basic skills of investigation and verification now, or however the future unfolds, without knowing how to access and analyze data.
Praising the basics and fundamentals feels good. But Schmedding’s own recognition of how unpredictable the world has become underscores that innovation has become one of those basics (if it wasn’t always). I don’t know of many journalism schools that teach the fundamentals of disruptive innovation. For much of my career, my peers and I were blissfully unaware of how our businesses operated, in large part because the divide between journalism and business operations started in journalism schools. That was wrong then and it’s unconscionable now. Far too many journalists and journalism school graduates know next to nothing about the business of journalism and that status quo is indefensible.
The journalism student graduating today will need to either be a small-business entrepreneur or succeed as a valuable contributor to a nimble, entrepreneurial business. Entrepreneurial journalism is one of the basics today. That’s not a technology class, though the instructor will need to teach students about the opportunities and disruptions that technology presents. (Disclosure: I am co-teaching a course in entrepreneurial journalism this semester for the Master of Professional Studies in Journalism program at Georgetown University.)
Schmedding describes what her ideal curriculum would teach:
The journalist of tomorrow that I want to hire is one that is skeptical and smart, can smell a good story, is a headline genius and an editing whiz, understands designs basics in any platform … and one that knows the right questions to ask and is not afraid to learn.
That skeptical and smart journalist can see how the world is changing. And he or she will know the right question to ask: “Why are you using ‘basics’ as an excuse to avoid teaching me what I need to learn?”
A response: I am a friend and longtime admirer of Teresa Schmedding, the ACES Executive Committee member quoted most extensively above. We have worked together on seminars for the American Press Institute and the Mid-America Press Institute. She’s an outstanding editor and teacher. I sent her a draft of this post, inviting her to respond, and she did:
I’m not sure we disagree as much as you think. Either extreme is bad: curriculum that teaches only technology or curriculum that teaches none.
I know there’s a finite number of courses colleges can teach, and I’d hate to see those basics lost in the latest trend. Do I think j profs should stick their heads in the sand and still teach students to crop pix using a photo wheel? Heck no!Missouri’s editing courses used to include instruction on using the telegraph machine. Should today’s editing courses include how to edit for Twitter v. FB v. print? Sure. But j schools shouldn’t be teaching FB/Twitter courses with a splash of editing. It’s the core editing skills that won’t go the way of the telegraph machine.
Thanks for the heads up. I enjoy the discussion. I just want to make sure I still get kids who’ll jump in a boat to cover that flood.
Other responses, from Fred Bayles and Linn Washington, are in the comments below.
The Buttry Diary 
[…] You can’t go back to the basics in journalism education; go forward with the basics (stevebuttry.wordpress.com) […]
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I emailed the professors criticized in this post, inviting them to respond. Here’s the response emailed by Fred Bayles, Director of the Boston University Statehouse Program:
Thanks for your note and comments.
I believe, in my case, you are preaching to the choir.
Social media such as Twitter, blogs and whatever else is to follow, is an exceedingly important tool to be mastered and used by all journalists. We strive to teach and encourage the use of all and more in our curriculum at Boston University. Indeed, our professors are going deeper into the use of social media and multimedia with each new semester. It is actually exhilarating for an old hack like me.
What I was responding to in Tony Rogers’ piece is the mindset of some in journalism that the new negates the old. The reporting skills necessary to cover public affairs are more important than ever, as witnessed by your own website, Patch.com and the growth of hyper local sites in many metro daily websites. So are the uses of social media. You can’t be a fully functional journalist without learning and mastering both.
I am in full agreement with your tagline: Not back to basics, but forward from the basics. It is important for journalism educators to bring the two disciplines together.
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Another email response, from Linn Washington Jr., Associate Professor, Department of Journalism, Temple University:
I agree with the premise of your post that journalism education needs to go forward not backwards. Journalists must be adroit in using the ‘tools of the time’ to further their mission of providing information to the public.
At Temple University, we are doing what you propose: ground students in the fundamental skills of gathering, editing and presenting information while equipping students with the competencies to utilize the current (and ever evolving) technologies driving the informational landscape. Interestingly, two years ago, one of our faculty members created an entrepreneurial journalism course…addressing the need emphasized in your post.
Moving forward from the solid foundation of the ‘basics’ is what we are doing with our Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab which trains students to use high-tech tools to report on inner-city neighborhoods. MURL is seven years old with its seed growing from mating the multimedia sequence we instituted over a decade ago with our program’s traditional focus on developing fundamental journalism skills — ‘the basics’. MURL’s emphasis on inner-city reporting responds to both coverage gaps by legacy media and the ethical urging of giving voices to the voiceless.
MURL is a required course for all Temple j-program seniors regardless of their sequence emphasis because students need skills in utilizing the ‘tools of the time’ to produce content.
You’re right, crystal balls have proven cloudy on predicting the proper course for the future of journalism education. While more proposal than prediction, I feel the issue is not either ‘basics’ or ‘hi-tech’ — it’s both.
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Steve: I posted the following on Tim McGuire’s blog:
http://cronkite.asu.edu/mcguireblog/?p=199&cpage=1#comment-986
This comment is directed not only at you but also at Steve Buttry, who uses the phrase “journalism education needs an upgrade” in his Sept. 11 post on “The Buttry Diary.”
What surprises me is that you missed the point of my online article that the phrase–”journalism education” (which Steve uses to discuss Colorado)–is at stake.
You may not know that Iowa State journalism curriculum is one of the most converged in ACEJMC–a fact that I had to defend when professionals on the Accrediting Committee questioned whether the Greenlee School had gone too far in innovating “journalism education.”
I have maintained in the wake of hoopla what Steve is doing now, that we can innovate without losing journalism principles. That does not make me a traditionalist; it does, however, make me a journalist and journalism educator.
You and Steve have one shortcoming when it comes to the situation at Colorado. Tim is relatively new to academe and Steve has less experience. I know how administrators operate and we’re on the chopping block rather than the cutting edge.
I received dozens of emails from journalism professors, journalists and journalism organizations around the country concerned about that main theme in my IHE article and providing more documentation. Worse, those who would destroy journalism education are using your and Steve’s valid arguments about innovation and digital media as an excuse for “Media Studies” and “Information and Communication Technology.”
Even my alma mater, Oklahoma State University, has changed the name of its journalism school to Media and Strategic Communication. When the faculty tried to insert “News” as in “News Media and Strategic Communication,” administration said no.
I believe we can move forward, innovate and not destroy journalism education, as we proved at Iowa State, the longest contiuously accredited program in the country, with other schools receiving accreditation in 1948.
I consider you and Steve my friends and colleagues. But you both need to be aware that your arguments about innovation are being used to remove the journalism from education.
Brian Johnson, chair of journalism at Illinois, and several colleagues at Missouri and Iowa, are in the process of organizing a summit “To Save Journalism Education” or “To Preserve Journalism Education” as a direct response to my article.
Here are key points, on which we need both of you expound:
1. Administrators are forbidding the use of the word “journalism” in degrees and school names. The next thing we’ll hear is that we belong to The Association for the Study of Media and Strategic Communication. And we’ll be accredited by The Accrediting Council on Education in Information and Communication Technology.
2. Technology is a platform, not a pedagogy. We need to stop the nonsense that “everyone is a journalist” and define what that word means historically, legally and ethically. Conversely, if you believe “everyone is a journalist,” that point can be argued for making journalism education mandatory in the academy.
3. We should show how Internet can be used as a platform for principled journalism. My IHE essay was picked up by 188 Internet sites and tweeted in more. There is untapped power online if you know how to use it, and our summit should show others how–without forgetting the journalism in the rush to appear innovative.
4. Associations and organizations are promoting journalism alternatives such as “media studies” or “information and communication technology.” We need to define what those are historically and then assert how journalism education is different and required in a free society.
5. We should acknowledge that print has been associated with journalism for decades now. Journalism education should not be chained to a platform. We need to disprove the notion, “How goes print so goes journalism.”
6. We need to report on these and other concerns so as to attract those in academe to the summit because they care about journalism education and realize it needs to be saved before more administrators remove the word “journalism” from more programs, to stop techies from glorifying the platform at the expense of our profession, to provide methods to use technology to further journalism and journalism education as Fourth Estate, to acknowledge that a free press and an informed society are at stake without journalism education, and to admit that for too long we associated journalism with print and remedy that.
Please think about joining the summit with us. Contact Brian Johnson at Illinois for more information. I fear that you, Steve and others will be quoted by administrators as innovators who support Media Studies as a viable alternative to journalism education.
Please change that perception.
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High schools have been cutting journalism programs for 20 years, under the guise of cost-cutting. The same is happening at the university level.
If universities can keep the tuition dollars and enrollments, but get rid of anything that says “journalism,” they’d be delighted.
Journalists are nosey, questioning, nasty people who ask hard questions, particularly about spending tax dollars. It’s far better to have a “media” program that prepares people for public relations and advertising, don’t you think? After all, newspapers are dying. Everyone is a journalist. Why keep “journalism” in a college curriculum?
The reality is NOT that university administrators want to “update” the curriculum; they’d like to kill the discipline entirely.
This fight isn’t about one university that wants to get rid of some grumbling professors. It’s about an attack on the perception that “journalism” is a dead-end profession that should no longer be taught.
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Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Michael. However, we disagree (not for the first time: http://bit.ly/9ykp1i). I don’t care what you call journalism education. But I do believe that most journalism (and media studies and communication technology) schools need to innovate their teaching far more thoroughly than they have.
I should add that I include Iowa State’s Greenlee School in that statement (and I know ISU journalism graduates who would agree). Your boast that you are “one of the most converged” schools illustrates the problem. “Convergence” was the buzzword when: about 8-10 years ago? Greenlee still offers journalism majors separate emphases in “print” and “electronic media studies,” as though “print” were a separate silo where a student could pursue a journalism career. Your school teaches both beginning and advanced “print media editing” courses, but no course in data analysis and presentation, no course in entrepreneurial journalism and no course in the business of journalism (Tim’s syllabus gives you a great start for such a course).
Your argument is not helped by hyperbole. You say that “journalism education is different and required in a free society,” yet you also boast of being the first accredited journalism school, with accreditation in 1948. I’m pretty sure we had a free society before then, and before Missouri opened the first J-school in 1908. I do believe that good journalism benefits a free society, but journalism education needs to keep pace with the changes occurring in journalism or it becomes irrelevant.
If Brian Johnson, or anyone else, wants to invite me to this meeting (why is every conference these days a “summit”?), I will participate if my schedule allows. But my contribution will be to say that most journalism schools need to significantly update what they’re teaching. And that’s more important than what you call the school.
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[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Steve Buttry, Scott Leadingham. Scott Leadingham said: Overuse of "innovate" in journalism discussions devalues the concept. Case-in-point: comment on @stevebuttry's blog: http://bit.ly/cm47FO […]
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I agreed strongly with Mickey’s IHE column regarding the problems facing journalism education and told him so in a quick telephone conversation last week.
But I want to clarify the circumstances surrounding the change in the program name at Oklahoma State. The decision to exclude “news” wasn’t as draconian as it sounded in Mickey’s reply, but how the new name came about did reflect a threat to the teaching of journalism – at least on our campus.
The name change from “Journalism and Broadcasting” occurred as we overhauled our curriculum. News-editorial and broadcasting were merged into multimedia journalism. Public relations and advertising became strategic communications. We also have a fairly new sequence in sports media.
The faculty concluded that “School of Multimedia Journalism and Strategic Communications” was too long for a title. “School of Media and Communications” garnered the most votes. Not my first choice, but I was outvoted.
When that name was put forward, however, the English department objected and suggested the addition of “strategic” to differentiate us from their teaching of media and communications courses.
In my 12 years at OSU, we have had a losing battle with other departments deciding to teach journalism courses. Most recently, it’s been the English department. I believe these encroachments lower the quality of journalism education being taught and exist for the sole reason of protecting other departments’ budgets. But I don’t want to digress from the purpose of this posting.
“Media & Strategic Communications” was a compromise with the English department. But my director has pointed out that our advisory board members had proposed the same name.
When I and some other faculty members learned of the addition of “strategic” to the name, we proposed adding “news” so the name would be “News Media & Strategic Communications.”
At that point, however, the dean had accepted the new name and we were out of time if the name change was to occur when the new curriculum took effect this fall. So a majority of the faculty voted to move forward with that new name.
As one of my colleagues joked, if the English department had really had its way, our new name would be “School of Production-Based Media in Subsumed Communications and Non-Rhetorical Based Discourse Analysis” – assuming it let us exist at all.
Regardless of the name, our news-editorial and broadcasting faculty agreed from the start that excellent journalism, not technological proficiency, should be the goal of our new multimedia journalism curriculum. Unfortunately, what’s being taught in journalism courses elsewhere on campus is beyond our control.
My apologies to Mickey for the confusion.
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[…] and Communication at Iowa State University, and I aired a disagreement this week in comments on this blog and Tim McGuire’s McGuire on Media blog. Frankly, I enjoy a spirited debate and thought this […]
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[…] You can’t go back to the basics in journalism education; go forward with the basics (stevebuttry.wordpress.com) […]
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[…] wrote about how journalism professors can learn and teach social media and argued that journalism schools can teach the basics and still prepare students for the dynamic changes they face in […]
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[…] to the basics,” rather than focusing on digital tools. My response was that we needed to “go forward with the basics.” I teach students how to use digital tools such as social media and databases to do fundamentals […]
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