I got an interview at a major news organization fairly recently. One of the first questions the recruiter asked after looking at my resume was, "Why are you majoring in journalism? Why didn't you major in something else that interested you?"
That pretty much says it all. Some journalism schools need to figure out a way to stay relevant. There are four ways I think they can do that:
1. Make multimedia a mandatory part of their curricula.
Students are graduating from j-schools across the nation without knowing html. At a time when it seems like the only jobs posted on journalismjobs.com are multimedia producers, that's a sorry statement.
2. Require that students intern somewhere journalistic
Too many students simply don't know that no internships equals no jobs prospects. Providing students with internship opportunities is one of the most important things a journalism school can do. At the same time, schools need to make it easy for students to take off a semester to intern off campus.
3. Nix the electroninc, magazine, news-ed and broadcast journalism specializations
Everyone should be able to write in inverted pyramid, cut audio and post packages online. Period. With all this talk about convergence, why do journalism schools separate their students into stringent tracks right out of the gate?
4. Offer specialties
A j-school student's specialty shouldn't be "magazines" or "broadcast." It should be "health" or "business." Amy Gahran talks about this in the Poynter column E-Media Tidbits. J-schools should force students to choose a practical specialty--a topic that students can report on. Top departments to consider? Business, biology/chemistry, community health and political science. In exchange, journalism schools could offer courses on writing for non-journalism majors.
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4 comments:
I really agree that we should stop the broadcast, print, etc. barriers. I went back and forth between whether I wanted to do print or broadcast, and I really wanted to take Radio Journalism but I got an error message saying, "major restriction" when I tried to register for it. If we know we want to do journalism, why can't we dabble in both? So many things cross over, and to me, whether I'm in print or broadcast really depends on what jobs are available.
Agreed. Requiring journalism students to take online, print and broadcast courses will make us more competitive job applicants.
It is a necessity that internships become mandatory. I know other schools that due this, and it really helps students out a lot. Leaving it up for the student to find an internship can be very stressful, and so many never get one because they didn't know how to begin. When other schools are helping their students receive internships and have hook-ups to certain ones, it puts those of us who are left of our own devices at a disadvantage.
I got two words for you: institutional inertia. "Ivory tower" is just the phrase: academics -- even journalism academics -- lose touch with what is relevant, as you mentioned. But, more particularly, and as Professor Follis mentioned in lecture a few weeks ago, nobody knows why there are certain requirements within the major.
Basically, the red tape all over this major needs to be removed. Let's get with it.
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