I am growing increasingly aware that my perspective on journalism education is far different from that of my classmates. I entered the graduate program at KU so that I might study why journalists do what they do, both good and bad. I came here thinking that I would be among a community of scholars that wants to think about what we are doing as journalists. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that just isn’t happening here.
I didn’t come here to be taught how to be a journalist. Personally, I don’t think that requires much training. I guess the only training I think you need to be a journalist is complete when someone hands you a pad of paper (or a digital camera or a digital recorder) and says, “Go find out what happened!” The rest is interdisciplinary.
You need to be a good writer, you need to take good pictures, you need computer skills, you need to be able to think on your feet, and you need to have an ethical frame of reference that recognizes the duty that journalists have in society, not a re-hash of Aristotle. Journalists are no less important than lawyers, yet are far less revered. I happen to think they are more important. Lawyers do not control the public’s perception of the world around them; journalists do. This is an awesome power that needs to be recognized and contemplated.
My classmates, at least in open discussion, do not do that.
They want job skills.
They are here to learn how to be journalists.
They are here to make good grades.
This is a problem.
This is not going to be the most popular blog entry of the week. People are going to be angry about this. I can see it now: “How dare you tell me what I am thinking?” “Who are you to sit in judgment of journalists?” I am a citizen. That should be enough. Moreover, I am a citizen in their midst. I am simply finding out what is happening. I am a journalist.
The future of journalism education is bleak unless we start talking about our impact in a serious manner. Let’s start today. Leave me a comment.
#1 by rmusser on September 21, 2005 - 6:09 am
There is a disconnect between graduate and undergraduate education. The undergrads are much like you describe them: “Tell me the 14 things I need to do to get and A and I will do it.” And, yeah, jobs are important to them.
The graduate students are not always that way, though. You spend a lot of time swimming in a sea filled with UG fry. You mistake their mission for your mission. And you mistake your mission for my mission in serving those kids.
That said, for the last five weeks I had thought we were discussing the fact that the why-we-do-things and the how-we-do-things and the things-we-should-be-doing as journalists are all spinning out of our hands and our control.
Did I miss something?
#2 by plafferty on September 21, 2005 - 6:09 am
Rick,
Thanks for the comment. I agree that we had been discussing that in class, though I don’t know how much of it has been a reflection on the power of journalism as much as how things are changing. This piece is clearly designed to spark some fire in people. Unfortunately, it seems to have sparked it in the one person who A) I knew would read my blog and B) doesn’t need the fire. I am aware that it was a blanket statement that inevitably covers some great thought going on and I contemplated addressing that in the post. In the end, I opted to use the shotgun instead of the sniper scope. My grave concern, and you can come witness it in J803 any Monday afternoon, is that all but a handful (literally) of the people in my graduate classes are thinking the heady thoughts that I was writing about. The others are still in the UG (or worse) mindset that you describe.