Carnival of Journalism quick hit: The role of the university
Author: Suzanne Yada Date Posted: January 20th, 2011 (8:19 pm)
This post is the first of mine in the Carnival of Journalism. And this one is my second. Go forth and be a part as well!
I have written so much on the subject of journalism education, I wanted to make a condensed post of some of those ideas first before I jumped into a point-by-point response to the Carnival of Journalism’s questions.
In February 2009 a group of journalism students held a massive online chat to talk about how journalism education needed to be revamped. Here are the highlights. It’s a great read.
In August 2009, I had the good fortune of appearing on a panel at AEJMC with the likes of Dan Gillmor and Sandeep Junnarkar. Before the panel, I hosted a #collegejourn chat and asked participants what I should tell the room full of educators. Here are the key bullet points of what I gathered:
- It’s going to take much more than throwing social media classes into the curriculum to make real changes needed. Read Daniel Bachhuber’s thoughts on this.
- There’s a lesson plan in comparing ethics policies, legal quandaries and best practices of news organizations using social media. Less emphasis on teaching the tools, more on teaching principles.
- Students who know social media should become TAs or peer teachers, or help organize a bootcamp/BarCamp at school to teach both students and the professors about social media.
- But, professors, please still keep hammering fundamentals. Don’t get lost in the latest buzzword. Everything taught about social media should point straight back to the basics.
A few ideas I wrote about after the panel:
- Students want the ability to experiment and fail. There needs to be a grading system that allows for this.
- Educators and even some students feel queasy about marketing themselves. With all due respect, they need to get over it.
- Don’t teach social media tools, teach concepts behind them. Don’t teach Twitter, teach why Twitter.
- Too many students think someone’s going to fix the industry for them. Sorry. It’s all on the students now.
- From what I’ve heard of Arizona State’s program, it has a lot of things going for it. Gillmor sets up a Ning for each of his classes and has students write and correct Wikipedia entries. There’s also an entrepreneurial class, and (if I remember correctly) students edit each other’s work on live on WordPress.
But to be more on point with the topic of Carnival of Journalism — “the changing role of Universities for the information needs of a community” — I really want to focus on another idea altogether: going outside of j-school to get this done.
Watch for my follow-up post.
Category: journalism school, journalism students
January 20th, 2011 at 8:55 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Bora Zivkovic and Suzanne Yada, Suzanne Yada. Suzanne Yada said: This is my first entry into the Carnival of Journalism. Planning on a follow-up: http://ow.ly/3HB2B #cjourn [...]
January 20th, 2011 at 9:26 pm
Agreed, good post, although I can’t imagine how it’s even possible to teach a class *just* emphasizing the tools and not the principles. Do people actually do that? What in heavens name would you even talk about for a whole semester? I mean the tools themselves aren’t all that hard to use, and mostly you just have to practice and fiddle to get them anyway.
Fascinating how we are in such a chaotic time right now. I’m still occasionally hearing the “the blogs, they are the evil!” in the academy, so I’m fascinated that it’s even possible for the ivory tower to get seduced by the buzzwords, but I guess that must happening at some extremely ahead of the game places. Crazy.
At least for my class, I envision the new social media class I’m teaching as being a way to explore and practice utilizing all the reporting and writing skills and core values in a new, interactive online environment, and having the time and place to think big thoughts about how the new landscape will look, what it means, and how we apply our values in the most meaningful way possible. It is also a chance to try out some new tools, but yes, definitely always with specific purposes and principles – but also with a spirit of some experimentation.
January 20th, 2011 at 11:35 pm
[...] Carnival of Journalism quick hit: The role of the university [...]
January 21st, 2011 at 9:36 am
[...] indefatigable and recently graduated Suzanne Yada had a blossoming of links that give us the students view of j-school in her first post. In her second post (over-achiever) [...]
January 21st, 2011 at 10:03 am
[...] indefatigable and recently graduated Suzanne Yada had a blossoming of links that give us the students view of j-school in her first post. In her second post (over-achiever) [...]
January 21st, 2011 at 11:19 am
[...] indefatigable and recently graduated Suzanne Yada had a blossoming of links that give us the students view of j-school in her first post. In her second post (over-achiever) [...]
February 19th, 2012 at 2:33 am
:)