Comments on: Improving journalism education: Join us tonight!

By: John H.

John H. — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:53:52 +0000

The problem is that so many students at the community colleges in California (and are part of JACC) are not taking the next step as journalism students. They view the newspaper as just a newspaper, and more problematic, on the same level as an interest club, with work being optional. It isn’t until the university level that it becomes a more serious environment. For these people, a lot of them just want to write – they don’t make the connection that its more than ink and paper.

I think, with new media, its what I will call the “Dr. Cheers” effect – the constant nagging for students to do something with no knowledge of how it works or how much actually goes into it. Many professors on the community college are going at new media with reckless abandon, but never take the time to cut something together or do it. They don’t see how some tools are useful, and many of them don’t learn enough to be effective teachers of those tools.

By: Johanne

Johanne — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:28:43 +0000

Your right. Print can still service certain niche markets. Although the value of print diminished, I don’t think it will completely vanish.

By: Dave Molloy

Dave Molloy — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 19:30:53 +0000

Excellent points. I’ve often thought about how the college press seems to be immune to the changes in the industry, because they’re highly localised, free, and convenient.

And have incredibly low running costs. As a matter of fact, when it was recently suggested that sub-editors were irrelevant and should be the first to go, I was struck by how quickly student journalists pick up the knack of sub-editing when they’re forced into it by small staff numbers.

I think the problem with the new media uptake is simply that college societies and organisations tend to be niche enough that there’s likely another body in most colleges (audio visual, computer clubs) sucking the talent away from the traditional media organisation. It’s not an unwillingness to change- as a matter of fact, I’d say that if the manpower and talent existed, we’d see plenty of college papers experimenting.

By: Gina Chen

Gina Chen — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:27:17 +0000

Speaking as someone in the field — working at a newspaper — I think you make some great points about how j-schools need to change. I work with a lot of interns, and, honestly, they don’t know as much as they need to about multi-media or blogging or new media.

Much of that, I think, is because new media is as new to j-professors as it is to working journalists, as you point out. And, just like in newsrooms, there is a bit of a class between the old and new ways of thinking. (Let’s have both. Please.)

I hope that will change. I also hope that student journalists will understand the need to embrace new media, social networking, crowdsourcing ideas and even enterpreneurship.

When I graduated from college in 1989, I had a tough time finding a job in my field. I was lucky to get a job at a weekly, making too little to live on my own. It’s never, at least in the past 20 years, been easy for journalism grads to find jobs, and the jobs don’t necessary pay well compared to other fields.

Now things will be much harder. J students won’t have the luxury of learning on the job as people in my cohort did. They’ll need to hit the ground running, ready with the print skills and new media knowledge to kind of do it all.

It’s easy as a student to think: “Oh, things aren’t that bad.” I don’t want to depress you, but it is. I don’t think that means abandon journalism. But I think it means you must embrace the future of journalism as students, and you must “get it” even more than the people who will end up hiring “get it.” The bosses who hire you likely won’t know half about new technology as you do, but you’ll get the job because you know this stuff.