I’m going to have thoughts on this, I know it. But it will have to wait.
You have to look at who “we” is when you’re answering the question “Do we need J-schools.” Almost invariably “we” refers to aspiring professional journalists.
And as I tell my (undergraduate) students, no, YOU do not NEED J-school. It’s right for some students and not for others. Cost IS a factor. I was lucky to be able to afford a master’s at @columbiajourn
But I’ll say this as well, and this is related: I think it’s my year at that institution that made me want to be a teacher of journalism rather than a full-time journo myself. Because of my frustration with it.
In 1999-2000, when I was there, Columbia was a very professionally-focused program. More training than education. And I think that is what most critics of journalism school are critiquing.
Sometimes (don’t tell my dean—shhhhhh!) I even advise some of my strongest students that it’s ok if they don’t even want to major in journalism as undergrads. I didn’t. I was an English major.
One student last fall switched to a journalism minor but a political science major. It was a terrific choice—for HER. She knew she could figure out the nuts and bolts of how to do journalism and she wanted that more social science oriented background. Great.
The nuts and bolts of journalism aren’t really that difficult. Ask questions. Read documents. Write it up. Or video it or put out a podcast. You could get a lot of that kind of stuff on the job or even figure it out yourself. All true.
And that, I think, is at the heart of a lot of the critique of journalism schools. It’s an instrumentalist critique. It’s why the “we” in “Do we need J-school” is so important. Most aspiring journalists probably do not… BUT!
I do a lot of work around press criticism and anti-intellectualism. Even though most journalists (in the US) now are college-educated, there is still a kind of pride in not thinking much about what they do. Journalists are surprisingly unreflective.
Thoughtful press criticism can do a lot to push journalists into thinking about what it is that they do and why they do things the way they do, and what kind of effects they are having on society.
And I think that the best J-school programs can and do do the same thing. @columbiajourn is among them now. You could even find some of that when I was there, but students ignored Fridays. Fridays were for law and “critical issues.” Students wanted the hard-nosed training.
University education should not just be about job training, but I suspect that’s what people are thinking about when they think about J-school.
But journalism schools should be pushing aspiring journalists to think of themselves as critical thinkers and innovators. Both by educating them (educating, not training!) and by doing that critical research AROUND journalism that may not have a direct effect on current students.
Look at @niemanfdn at Harvard, for instance. They’re one of our most important “journalism schools” but they’re not really a journalism school. But they foster ideas and give journos a place to think about themselves and their work. That’s vital.
So let’s break this into two different questions:
Should you go to J-school? I don’t know. I don’t know you. Let’s talk.
Do “we” need journalism schools? Yes. Now more than ever.
Should you go to J-school? I don’t know. I don’t know you. Let’s talk.
Do “we” need journalism schools? Yes. Now more than ever.
