How much longer, for j-schools?
I found this on a lawyer’s blog:
Unfortunately, for new media companies … and traditional main stream media companies, graduating journalism students are woefully unprepared for the real world. A world where online investigative reporting via blogging and the effective use of RSS, citizen journalism, and social media are as, if not more, important than print. …
The people who should feel guilty are the deans and directors of journalism schools at Universities who took hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition moneys without telling students and their parents the school will be graduating your sons and daughters without the skills they need to get a job.
I found this on a journalism student’s blog:
The journalism program at Penn State has only recently added a ‘Convergence Journalism’ class, where students can learn to shoot and edit video as well as audio. It’s a class I will be taking in the spring, along with the only web design class I could find, oddly enough under ‘Arts.’ In that class, I will learn XHTML.
I received an email last week about a new six-week course called ‘Webcast Production,’ where I could learn how to set up and produce a live Webcast. So why didn’t I rush to sign up for the course? It is meant for broadcast communications majors and has two requirements, one of which is the base level course called ‘Cinema Art.’ The description for that course — “The development of cinema to its present state; principles of evaluation and appreciation.”
I know this is an old refrain — we are not doing what we need to do in the j-schools.
What is your j-school doing? Not not doing, but doing. My department had a meeting yesterday and resolved to form three results-focused subcommittees and move ahead rapidly, this semester, on curriculum reform. Overdue, yes. But for the first time, no one said we couldn’t get it done. No one put up any roadblocks. No one said, “I can’t.”
It might not sound like much to you, but it was a big step for us, and I feel good about it.
Excellent points and congratulations! I just did a little rant about this subject and was pointed to you. Hadn’t read your blog yet, today.
My old refrain was that we have been addressing these students, and their needs for the future, in courses already. But, some complained. They said I didn’t know what I was talking about. They said, courses that addressed these needs are not necessary. ~sigh~
It is possible to make this happen for students. It should be done. The students deserve it.
August 20, 2008 at 10:30 am[...] McAdams ponders how far j-schools are moving with integrating new media skills into their curricula. What is your j-school doing? Not not doing, [...]
August 20, 2008 at 10:56 amYay! What kinds of subcommittees? What changes are being proposed? (Mandatory multimedia class?)
August 20, 2008 at 11:35 amAs you might imagine, yes, a mandatory multimedia class — tied to Reporting! — is one idea. A mandatory viscomm class is another (that would include online). Some people seem not to understand the role of having two. It will be a struggle even from this point, I would guess.
August 20, 2008 at 1:00 pmI remember only a few years ago, maybe 3 years, I was in a journalism program at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. I left, thankfully, for the reasons you have laid out all over your blog. I wouldn’t have been prepared to do anything. I didn’t even know what a newsroom looked like.
I left, went to work at a paper as an intern, and now am running my own magazine. I prepared myself. I learned web development, how to edit video, how to edit sound, and everything else I use everyday.
They taught us how to write, how to edit an article, how to be unbiased, how to interview with pen and paper. There was no web. There was no video. There was no sound. And the program is a big, 100 or more per year graduate with a degree in it. Its sad. I can’t even hire an intern from the program today, they have no idea what they are doing. It is truly sad.
I would love to chat with you about things off the blog sometime.
Best,
Matt Blalock
August 20, 2008 at 2:14 pmEditor
http://www.Vewd.org – For documentary photographers.
The University of Iowa is requiring a five-week multimedia introduction course for all new majors beginning this fall. That will hopefully lead to students better prepared for the few online, audio and video production classes the school offers.
August 21, 2008 at 12:29 amThanks for sharing my frustrations from a lawyers perspective Mindy. Leading a growing network of leading law blogs, I thought it would be a no brainer to bring journalism students into the company as we began feature and syndicate via new media models the content being produced by our lawyers.
I was shocked that the students were not even taught the basics in investigative journalism through Blog Search and RSS feeds.
Matt’s right – journalism students need to prepare themselves as entrepreneurs. Two reasons. One, the traditional jobs are not there. You need to create one through the effective and innovative use of new media. Fortunately, it can be done.
Second, entrepreneurs force themselves to learn what they need to learn. Otherwise they go hungry. Guys like Matt end up learning more than most j-schools are prepared to deliver.
August 21, 2008 at 1:33 amRe: “A world where online investigative reporting via blogging and the effective use of RSS, citizen journalism, and social media are as, if not more, important than print.”
It’s rare that a blogger is able to do investigative reporting. A lot of blogging is more about expression of opinion, or reblogging of what a handful do find by being close to some event or source. What is it that you think a prospective journalism student would actually learn from blogs per se in terms of their craft? Can you cite an example of a story that you feel could never have been unearthed if not for a blog? And no fair merely taking the echo-chambers of stories like Scooter Libby, where blogs are merely sounding boards for leakers. Take a story where a blogging “citizen journalist” actually had to do their own work. Go ahead, I’m sure there are such stories.
There is no substitute for the cold call. Email and twitter and Facebook and such may help, but at the end of the day, you need the cold call, the face-to-face interview.
RSS? Well, sure, anyone can click and fill up their Google reader with all kinds of stuff. How does this contribute, really, to acquiring the skills to become selective?
Citizen journalism? I have a link for you on this. It often doesn’t work, where it is most needed:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/citizen-war-reporter
If you look closely at how papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post have transformed themselves in recent years, they’ve harnessed all these newfangled social media tools to encourage more reader participation. But that’s not about journalism, it’s about democratic participation. If anything, they’ve dumbed themselves down too much on quite a few stories in blog format where they are trying to play to readers’ tastes. But to accuse the mainstream media of being bogged down in old-fashioned print is out of date as a concept. They’ve all caught up and use all the tools they are “supposed” to. The question is whether tools product journalism. Likely, they only help; you still need to be a good reporter with skills, not just tools.
August 21, 2008 at 1:37 amI went back to school for an j-school alum event and on the surface of it was fairly impressed. The post about it: http://tinyurl.com/67×32w You can skip the first portion, its more of me just feeling nostalgic. The most important point is that they have standard-def vid cameras for the 20000 students on campus to use. Not a camera for every student all at the same time, but any student can check one out, whether they are a media major or a history major.
I think its something that could be a game changer. If a history major uses a camera for a project, they might not become a pro with it, and might pick it up once or twenty times while in school, but if they understand just what doing video is all about, I think they are going to be that much more of a discerning viewer for years down the road.
One of the problems that I see with colleges is that many students are young, and many don’t know what they’re doing at 18 or 19. I certainly was that way. And they don’t have a whole lot of experience, they really haven’t been working yet, and getting real world experience as opposed to college experience changes things and how you look at what you need to know and whats important.
I kinda wonder if it might not be better to stretch the college experience out over 5 or 6 years to allow students to carry a little lighter course load and to work part time to gain some of that experience.
August 21, 2008 at 11:19 amHa, quite a few students nowadays DO take five or six years to complete the bachelor’s degree. Alternatively, some others come in with advanced credits and whip through in as little as three years. I don’t think we need to build in any extra time, frankly. I think the ones who don’t know what they want are very good at spending plenty of time not graduating.
What we might do a better job of is advising those students about what to expect, and what to look for, in a career.
August 21, 2008 at 11:28 amWe are on the same path as Mindy’s program – curriculum review and rebuild. I’m hoping we have a plan for the review, so we don’t spend too much time deciding how we’re going to do the review …
We’ve started putting things in courses – using blogs as class communication tools, audio in some reporting classes. We did two, new multimedia classes this year – one a semester long one, one as a Maymester. We’re gutting our “Documentary Photography” course in the spring and making that our big multimedia journalism course.
A start, at least …
August 21, 2008 at 2:49 pm@Kevin – One note about what students know after graduation:
Last year I sat in a room full of students while an experienced online news editor was giving a guest lecture. He said all j-school grads should have URLs to send to their prospective employers.
A young man raised his hand and said the students in our j-school are not taught how to do that. Of course the online guy said you’ve got to teach yourself. (Grumble, grumble, from the student.)
After the lecture, a colleague told me that student had taken her online news class, in which students are taught how to create and manage sites, and are assigned to do so. He must have turned in the assignment(s), because he passed the course.
So you can lead those ponies to water, Kevin, but you can’t force them to drink it.
August 22, 2008 at 11:24 am[...] people have taken issue with journalism education, especially in the U.S. One major concern is that journalism education appears to be behind the [...]
August 27, 2008 at 1:01 pm