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STUDYING JOURNALISM: A CIVIC AND LITERARY EDUCATION
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Copyright Year | 2009 |
| Abstract | In the 100 years since Missouri launched its program, the eld of journalism studies in the university has developed and prospered throughout the world. In the United States and Puerto Rico alone, there are currently more than 110 accredited programs and roughly 470 non-accredited schools where journalism and mass communication programs are offered. In 2006-2007, an estimated 49,930 students earned bachelor's degrees and 3,790 took master's degrees (Vlad et al. 2008: 4). There has also been a steady stream of doctoral students at the major centers and, in this respect, the discipline has generated a remarkable body of knowledge and commentary. It would be difficult to quantify the collection with any precision, but it is fair to say it is vast. Nevertheless, a continuing rumble of discontent and uncertainty has marked the field. In the 1980s, that discontent was expressed in the US in the Oregon Report (1984), which sought to connect the study of journalism and mass communication more rmly to the scholarly and pedagogical practices of the university. The report said forthrightly that many of the units under study were simply trade schools and, in light of this, its principal author asked in a separate document if journalism should even be offered as a university subject (Dennis 1986: 1). Such a question may no longer be moot, but it has been succeeded by a conversation reflecting similarlyinspired discontent. If the authors of the Oregon Report sought to promote a clearer conception of the scholarship supporting journalism studies, later reports and task forces have proposed alternatives to established practices. For example, the Public Journalism movement focused on democracy and governance. It promoted forms of journalism supporting a strong civic culture and its influence has been extensive and lasting. In a similar but independent vein, Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia University, turned up as an advocate on the stage of reform when he called for a fullreconsideration of the program at Columbia. He struck a task force in 2002 whose work would constitute a first step in a process leading to the appointment of a new dean. President Bollinger's view was that a school should immerse its students in the intellectual culture of the university as they acquire and master the skills of craft. He believed, sensibly, that journalism is thickened – is richer and more useful – if it constitutes in part the application of discipline-based knowledge to the description and interpretation of the events that mark the here and now (Adam, 2004). President Bollinger said forthrightly that “[i]t is the superficial skipping from event to event that produces both sophomoric journalism and unfulfilled journalists.” He also said that journalism “may be moving increasingly to a system in which reporters have an underlying expertise, and to the extent that is true, universities ought to provide opportunities for journalism students to develop that expertise” (Bollinger, 2003). He called for a comprehensive review of the curriculum. By contrast, the reforms introduced at the Medill School at Northwestern in this decade have been sponsored in part by a belief that journalism education should be tailored to the needs of the news industry, which, as everyone in the field acknowledges, has been experiencing severe economic problems as the digital revolution invades its territory. The architects of Medill's curriculum sought to connect the practices of journalism to a better understanding of business practices and marketing. Medill's new curriculum, rolled out in 2005 following a fifteen-month strategic planning process, sought to foster forms of journalism that would stem “the tides of circulation loss for newspapers and declining viewership for broadcasting” (Claussen, 2008: 337). Finally, an ongoing initiative announced in 2005 by the Carnegie and Knight Foundations is seeking ambitiously to change the basic way in which journalism is taught in the United States. The term “basic” is telling. The initiative includes an experimental online news incubator that recognizes the changed technological environment. It also includes a task force that promotes policy-oriented research. But more fundamentally, it includes a goal of curricular enhancement that would aim at enhancing the intellectual horizons of journalism students. Like the proposals advocated by Columbia's president, the Carnegie-Knight declaration promotes steps that will enable schools to face up to the emerging character of the craft and, at the same time, to engage with the sturdy disciplines of the university. So there is a vein of doubt that marks the field and has kept alive a longstanding desire to place journalism studies on a more stable and intellectually-demanding foundation. The question is how should this be done? This chapter seeks to provide an answer. It proposes an approach to the development of curricula, based in part on the philosophy of the late James W. Carey, that seeks to stock and strengthen the minds of students as it prepares them for vocational and, above all, democratic work. I start with a review of where Carey's philosophical pragmatism leads and then argue for a specic curricular architecture that brings such courses – in general arts and science, media studies, and professional practices – into a functional and productive relationship with one another. I conclude with observations on how such a curriculum should be managed so that stocking and strengthening the minds of apprentice journalists is blended thoughtfully into the more strictlytechnical skills that mark journalism practice. In short, I advocate in the name of the improvement of schools of journalism and journalism practice that students receive what can be thought of broadly as a civic and literary education. |
| Related Links | https://api.taylorfrancis.com/content/chapters/edit/download?identifierName=doi&identifierValue=10.4324/9780203869468-68&type=chapterpdf |
| Ending Page | 680 |
| Page Count | 10 |
| Starting Page | 671 |
| DOI | 10.4324/9780203869468-68 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited |
| Publisher Date | 2009-10-20 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Book Name: The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism Forms of Journalism Journalism Practice Journalism Studies Marks the Field Literary Education Schools Where Journalism |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Chapter |
