This is an interesting story from the New York Times. Five major journalism schools have set out to raise the status of journalism education to better prepare journalists. I believe the real purupose behind the $6 million project is to raise the status of journalism itself in America. Reporter Kathrine Seelye writes "their goal is to revitalize journalism education by jointly undertaking national investigative reporting projects, integrating their journalism programs more deeply with other disciplines at their universities and providing a national platform to try to influence the discourse on media-related issues."
Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, represents one of the schools taking part. (The others are Harvard, Northwestern, USC and Columbia.) "Journalism as a whole is clearly in something of a crisis," Mr. Schell said. As journalistic scandals crop up with more frequency, surveys show trust in the news media eroding, newspaper circulation declining and young people disengaged from newspapers and television news. Those of us who run journalism schools are confronted with the prospect of ever fewer distinguished media outlets – especially in broadcast – to which we can aspire to send our students to work."
The effort has three purposes, Seelye writes: to develop national investigative journalism projects, to gather data on media issues and education, and develop more innovative curriculum by pairing journalists with other scholars such as economists, scientists and historians. (I think this is a great idea; it’s why my master’s degree isn’t in journalism). Here is the site for the new project. And great commentary by the Poynter Institute about the study.
This is very interesting. Share your thoughts.
