Yes, communications and journalism majors need to learn about the possibilities of the new media. But, to be honest, I think they would be even better served if they learned a bunch of things they don't learn today that would make them at least minimally effective in researching and writing on the subjects they cover - economics, science and technology, military history/strategy/etc., philosophy and logic, etc.

In short, they need to learn how to think, and schools don't try very hard to teach that anymore. It's important for all of us, but it's absolutely essential for anyone who's going to produce content to inform other people.

The reason bloggers do so well in some circumstances (way better than the MSM) is that they know how to think. Many of them have studied several of the subjects listed above. Just knowing how to use a blogging engine is not enough. Having the nicest digital video editor available is pointless if what you're trying to say with it is stupid.

The only benefit of exposing these communications majors to new media possibilities is so that the small minority that are actually capable of producing good content will know where to expose that content. Until they learn the other things they need to know, giving them new media tools just hastens the day they find out they need to be in a different career.

Posted by: Billy Hollis at June 1, 2005 9:50 AM

Please see this column of mine below, re: J-schools need to intern with military and government rather than with each other or incestuously with added liberals in academia.

Augusta Free Press
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Journalism digs deeper into niche

Guest View

Bruce Kesler

Special to The Augusta Free Press

Did I say niche? Sorry, I meant ditch.

On almost any issue, on almost any measure, study after study shows major differences in political and social leanings between mainstream journalists and the public. Similarly, repeated surveys demonstrate a far higher skepticism among the public of journalistic product than journalists have of themselves.

Readership of newspapers and viewership of the three formerly leading networks continues to drop by major percentages, up to half or more from the 1960s. The most common response from leading news media figures is that the public is ignorant or misguided, and just doesn't understand the reality to which only they are privileged to know.

Their economic response is to increasingly become purveyors to their niche market, toward the more liberal readers and viewers. The purview and views of leading newspapers and TV networks increasingly narrows. Journalistic standards of fact, confirmation and balance are increasingly revealed as lacking.

The spiral continues as the leading media's market further contracts. Their staffs are increasingly reduced along with their ability to provide knowledgeable, on-the-scene value-added to their customers.

In short, this niche marketing, largely self-caused, and narrow-mindedly self-protective of cherished views, has become a ditch. And, the formerly leading media keeps digging the ditch deeper.

A correspondent in Mosul, Iraq, Michael Yon, recently wrote: "Finding or generating news can be costly ... the media squeezes news cheaply from Iraq." Yon describes, step-by-step, how actual news dispatches are created. Yon points out that with rare exception, the media condenses military action reports into collections of one-line U.S. casualty lists ending with the latest cumulative death count. Yon observes, "a consequence of these media releases is that they allow the press to appear omnipresent on the battlefield, when in fact they usually stay close to the Green Zone in Baghdad." Yon continues: "The math is easy: Send a dozen journalists to Iraq, or hire one cheaply to live in Baghdad. The media gets a bargain rate on instant credibility from their 'embedded journalist in the heart of the Sunni Triangle,' who spends a few minutes a day paraphrasing media releases, then heads downstairs for a beer at the hotel bar."

Yon concludes, "Nobody is well served by this arrangement. ... Yet, finally, the ultimate decision maker is the person reading or watching the news. We cannot expect mainstream media to give quality reporting if we accept drive-through service every night." More and more of the public avoid the poor news nutrition from the drive-through.

Daniel Okrent, reflecting on his stint as readers' representative at The New York Times, wrote in his final column that "economic pressures have spread finite staff resources." Several days later, the Times announced a further layoff of more than 100 from the newsroom.

Two major foundations just announced major grants to five prominent college journalism programs at Columbia, Berkeley, Northwestern, University of Southern California and Harvard. The purpose, in the words of The New York Times reporter, is to "find ways to prepare journalists better." The remedy includes an emphasis on "pairing journalists with scientists, historians, economists and other scholars on their campuses."

Broader education and knowledge of academic specialties is certainly to be welcomed among future journalists. Still, again without belaboring the reader with the reams of statistics, every study of academia has demonstrated an overwhelmingly liberal tilt, more than 9 to 1 in the humanities and 6 or 7 to 2 (yes, there are some apoliticals there) in the sciences.

Wouldn't future journalists, and their customers, benefit more from more partnering with the practical education and experience of mentors in government and the military?

The declining market of the leading media is rooted in the twin niche-ditch digging of alienating its customers by being so markedly more liberal in political and social viewpoints and from resulting corporate cost-saving providing a shabby product. It is difficult to see working harder at coordination with society's other most liberal constituency in academia as meeting the most pressing challenges for journalism's successful reform. In the '70s, General Motors kept its engineers in Detroit, while Nissan attracted engineers to Southern California. Today, GM has half the market share it once had, and Nissan's innovative designs increased its market share.

Both institutions, journalism and academia, are becoming less relevant than they once were to the discourse and direction of the country. Their closed-mindedness is evident to more and more consumers, and is the cause of their self-marginalization. The loss is not only theirs. We all lose vital cores necessary for a vibrant democracy when journalism and academia repress diversity of views, and even revel in digging deeper niche-ditches.

Bruce Kesler resides in Encinitas, Calif.

Posted by: Bruce Kesler at June 1, 2005 2:06 PM

I think J-schools should be done away with, particulary for post-graduate degrees. Having a degree in something else would make reporters better. Reporting is not such a diffcult concept that it takes four or more years to learn. Perhaps Communications Programs serve as farm teams for TV and Radio jobs. But what does a reporter need other than ability to ask a lot of questions and tell the story? J-schools are responsible for the idea that readers need interpretation of events, that reporters should have an adversarial relationship with just about everybody, and that they have the wisdom or right to "hold power accountable" but don't have to be accountable themselves.

I feel the same way about Education degrees. There isn't that much to be taught about teaching anymore, and so it comes to be driven by new fads in theory every 10 or 15 years as new PhD's try to find something new to say about it, and end up trying to debunk past practices and replace them with touchy-feely theories with soft focus goals that have turned out to produce worse results. Particularly, I object to the education establishment's antipathy toward rote memorization and recitation of things like the multiplication tables. Yes, they're boring and dull, but they are tools of learning. Did music education eliminate the need for practice, practice, practice? I don't think other kinds of pedagogy should either.

Posted by: AST at June 1, 2005 5:12 PM

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