By Elliot King, Loyola University Maryland
History • Among the widespread upheaval underway in journalism is a redefinition of the role of the academy in journalism education. Outright scorn for the study of journalism in college and universities has long been one of the odd and rather remarkable features of the journalism profession. It is hard to think of any other professional occupation in which it practitioners denigrated what students could learn if they studied a field as their undergraduate majors. Students interested in journalism were urged by professionals to study something else. The journalism was best learned on the job, the argument went.
Well, those days are over. Nobody pretends that any organization has the time or resources to teach entry-level journalists the tools of the trade. In fact, the opposite is true. The most common entry-level position in broadcast news is that of a backpack journalist, somebody who can report, use the camera, and edit the package. These are skills learned in journalism school these days, not in the field. In fact, for the first time, I have heard several job seekers report that people in the field are telling them to get masters degrees in journalism and master’s degrees give people a big advantage in the job search.
But teaching skills is only a very small part of what the academy is being call on to do in this time of crisis. The new technology is posing a challenge to the entire culture of journalism. Increasingly, what journalism is and what journalism should be is not being defined in the field. It will have to be defined, at least in part, in the academy. These was a time when different newspapers and other media organizations used to have their own newsroom cultures. For a long time, the name Henry Grady really meant something at the Atlanta Constitution—and it meant something long after Henry Grady had passed away. The Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, even the Baltimore Sun had long and storied histories. Recently, a veteran columnist for the Sun recalled the thrill she felt when she first started at the Sun and sat at H.L. Mencken’s desk. Young journalists could learn the lore of their newspapers from seasoned veterans.
These days, seasoned veterans more likely to take buy outs (if they are not laid off) than acculturate younger journalists. And I think that it is telling that the names of Grady, Medill and others live on as the names of journalism schools, rather than as living memories in newsrooms.
With the utter devastation to and depletion of the senior ranks of journalists, it is up to the academy to define journalism and draw our students into its culture. Journalism cannot be reduced to a set of technical skills. It is a way of looking at the world, a way that has changed over time as conditions have changed. Those of us in the academy are the only ones now positioned to take the long view of what journalism was, is and should be. We are the stewards of the culture of journalism.
Ironically, the academy is not that well positioned to teach the new technical skills currently in demand. As soon as we could get course about Web design on the books, we had to worry about blogs and then Twitter. As soon as we got non-linear editing suites, we had to worry about mobile devices. What we are well-positioned to do is to educate our students that as they become journalists, while the tools they have at their disposal are new, the way that journalists go about doing their jobs, and have gone about doing their jobs, and why they go about doing their jobs the way they do, is anchored in a long and contentious history. While convergence and citizen news and instant feedback may be new, people have thought about, and worried about, the role of journalism in society for a long time. Some have even given up their lives for their belief in the need to bear witness as a journalist.
In 2005, Michael Yon, a former member of the U.S. Army Special Forces went to Iraq with the intention for staying for a month and blogging about his experience. He wound up being embedded with U.S. troops longer than any journalist. When he first started, Yon has remarked, he did not know the “rules of journalism,” but over time he came to see himself as a journalist. That is the challenge for the academy in creating and maintaining the culture of journalism. How do we get our students to see themselves as journalists? If we can succeed there, it will make little difference if they deliver the news via print, broadcasts, Web, blog, Twitter or whatever comes next. They will see the world as journalists.
While journalism may be being reinvented today, it is not being reinvented for the first time. Journalism is being fashioned from something that already exists. Helping our students understand what exists and why it exists will help them fashion the future.
Elliot King is a professor of communication at Loyola University Maryland, and author of Free for All: The Internet’s Transformation of Journalism. The book provides the first comprehensive account of the origins, challenges, triumphs, failures and impact of online journalism. His teaching areas include news writing, free speech and expression, media culture, public affairs, research experience, reporting on urban affairs.