“First, reform journalism school. It’s too late to be training new journalists in the classic mode. Instead, journalism should become a required course, one or two semesters for every graduate. Why? Because journalism like everything else that used to be centralized is in the process of being distributed. In the future, every educated person will be a journalist, as today we are all travel agents and stock brokers.”
How far off is that future? For some papers, it could be sooner than you think.
Comments
3 responses to “The obvious end of journalism schools?”
Let’s just make sure those one or two semesters of universal journalism training is at least slightly more practical than the 4 1/2-month class on manually laying out print pages that I was required to take during my late-1990s J-school days.
Except we still have stock brokers and travel agents. Not every educated person wants to be a journalist. While I’d love to have journalism be a required course (job security and all that), making it required is going to do little more for us than the required three semesters of English Lit that every student sits through.
I’d rather argue for a required Media Literacy course, so every student has the skills to use the media in a thoughtful manner.
The difference is between a course in making pasta and a course in preparing pasta dishes.
[…] Ryan Sholin referenced that idea, drawing the comment from Bryan Murley that what students needed wasn’t so much journalism training as it is media literacy. Not every educated person wants to be a journalist. While I’d love to have journalism be a required course (job security and all that), making it required is going to do little more for us than the required three semesters of English Lit that every student sits through. […]