"September 13, 2006

Jan Schaffer Critiques Journalism Education

Jan Schaffer, director of the J-Lab at the University of Maryland, recently took a few pokes at the way journalism is taught.

Here are the key parts of a just-posted talk she gave at the AEJMC entitled: What's Next for Newspapers and Journalism Education?

I read several newspapers a day now. I read them now first as a citizen, second as an old Type A assigning editor. So often, I find myself unsatisfied with the stories and angry at the coverage.

I worry about the CONVENTIONS of journalism that we are teaching our students. I worry that some of the conventions that were used both to define "news" and to safeguard fairness and balance in journalism are being gamed by media strategists for their own ends. The result is a journalism that is not serving the public well - and that the public doesn't much trust.

She adds:

I think the academy itself needs to create some oxygen for entrepreneurship and innovation in journalism. We need to rethink our RECRUITING. We reward long-time professionals, who often don't have the skills to bridge the new media environment. Indeed, one of Maryland's marquee professors doesn't even do e-mail. When I suggested this year that all professors be required to put their course syllabi online, I was told it was not the kind of thing that the school could require and besides a lot of people wouldn't know how to do it.

We reward long-form storytellers and feature writing, even though a lot of newspapers and even magazines don't run long stories or features. We reward Ph.D.'s when often their research is not very relevant to the future of journalism - and in many cases, in my view, doesn't really add a lot of value to the knowledge base of journalism.