"You're not going to go to work
for Gannett or a lot of big media companies."
-- Professor Tim McGuire of Arizona State University, speaking to The New York Times for a story today about the growing number of schools hustling to figure out how to teach journalism.
Most journalism schools did a poor job of teaching journalism in the first place.
ReplyDeleteWhy would we think for a moment that they would suddenly learn how to teach it now?
I have been a journalist for 35 years, and a successful one at that, yet am unable to step foot inside a J-School because I don't have the "proper" PhD.
Yet, when these students from the J-schools (when I actually hire one) have to literally be retrained and debriefed when they enter a REAL newsroom because most J-school instructors are clueless about how a REAL newsroom operates.
They never was in one, and never will be - because that is where the REAL work of journalism is done.
Is there a J-school prof out there who disagrees... hummmm?
I thought not.
Ps - And any j-prof who tells a student they won't be going to a Gannett newspaper is actually offering rare and sound advice, not just a prediction.
What's funny (in sad way) about the story is that ASU students from the Cronkite school have more bylines in the Arizona Republic than AZ Rep reporters have. Every time we endure a round of layoffs more kids are brought into the newsroom.
ReplyDeleteThe Republic is a training ground for these kids and Gannett has no problem taking advantage of their efforts.
I don't know why anyone would get into this business today. There is no money, and no prospect of it coming back anytime soon. And there is precious little romance in trendy stories or Lindsay Lohan's latest. I wasn't once so jaded, but I don't see any future in traditional TV or newspaper journalism today. Perhaps there is a future in blogging, but as Jim's monthly begathons show, there is not yet the money to pay the bills.
ReplyDeletexxx have been a journalist for 35 years, and a successful one at that, yet am unable to step foot inside a J-School because I don't have the "proper" PhD.xxx
ReplyDeleteActually, 3:52, there are jobs as adjunct professors at most J-schools, and I know former reporters and editors working in universities. But some of them I have talked to say they now feel part of a fraud of teaching students techniques and skills they know will never be used.
4:58 here again. I should have mentioned that those adjunct professors don't have Ph.Ds, and most I know only have B.A.s.
ReplyDelete"Adjunct" - Look that word up in the dictionary and you will see that it is defined as ...
ReplyDelete"Slave labor instituted by colleges to bring in people to teach who really know what they are talking about but with no real wages or any benefits that actual tenured professors get."
Adjunct is a scam by universities. If they really appreciated these people, they would actually hire them, not use them as underpaid slave labor.
People on this blog hate technology. Now, it appears they also hate advanced degrees as well? Sad.
ReplyDeleteJournalism as we know it is dead. The values, the integrity, the objectivity and its rightful place in a democracy have faded away. I have nothing against technology, and in many ways see such potential for it in terms of journalism, but as of right now, that potential is being squandered.
ReplyDeleteUntil the J schools start teaching the basics of journalism to this tech-oriented generation, this disturbing trend will continue. I see bad journalism every day on every TV station and web site. And it's getting worse. Web sites in particular make a mockery of the news. And now, with so many journalists gone from newspapers, I can't even trust what I read in the best of publications anymore. What's particularly sad is that the new folks coming into the business with great tech skills won't have the experienced editors to learn the other fine points of journalism from anymore. As we know, that on-the-job education is worth far more than what has ever been taught in colleges.
So the schools are failing. The media outlets are purging all senior journalists. What's left is a bunch of tech gimmicks and sloppy reporting on various platforms from people who simply do not have the foundation to be good journalists. What we needed was a blending of technology and good journalism, but what we ended up with is a new wave of folks who really don't have any clue as to what it means to be a reporter, editor, news photographer, etc. Many are so young that their people managing skills are also lacking.
But this is what companies like Gannett have done to the business. They used technology and the bad economy to strip the heart and soul from the biz.
9:21 -- Couldn't have said it better myself. Excellent post.
ReplyDelete9:21 - VERY well said!
ReplyDeleteI too see the kiddie day care journalism at many newspapersw, medium size, large and small.
It is distressing that those people most able to give the advice, steer the young reporter in the right direction - even the basics of getting a piece of public record - has all been wipe away by the in-my-opinion illegal firings of so many veteran reporters and editors!
How pathetic! How Gannett
In agreement with 9:21
ReplyDeleteWe marvel at the miracles of technology, but what we as journalist must always remember is that the power we have is in the words, not in the technology we use to transmit them.
Bob Schieffer National Press Club, Feb 21, 2002, acepting an award and talking about Danny Pearl
9:21 - good points, but I think it's unfair to blame Gannett for creating the problem. I think the real issue is the rate at which information is being consumed and delivered and probably the delivery method itself.
ReplyDeleteIt used to be you would sit back, relax, and read the paper. Now we're palm piloting and black berrying and cell phoning our news in itty-bitty bitsize pieces.
Maybe it was all the Ritalin we doled out like penny candy a few years back that left us with the attention span of gnats. I can't say for sure, but the new "grown ups" grew up zoning out on handheld nintendo games, and now talk to their BFF in a perverse adaptation of morse code instead of actually talking to them. I guess Gannett had the option to ignore all this and just become obsolete, but instead they chose to get into the quicky-news biz and try to migrate the business over. Unfortunately, In typical Gannet style, it was too little too late, but I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that I think it's more a reflection of a fast-paced society that's driving many of the content changes in modern news reporting than the news delivery companies themselves.
I completely agree that the loss of in-depth news reporting is nothing short of a national (perhaps even global) tragedy.
12:20 -- You make good points, although I think newspaper companies could largely ignore things like Twitter without a negative impact. The Web, no, but we could re-evaluate our use.
ReplyDeleteThe only strength the paper has to sell is depth.
In the market I live in, the local television stations are still better at breaking news because that's what they have always done and they are better equipped to broadcast live from a breaking news site.
TV is horrible, however, at getting beyond the Who, What, When Where and putting a story into context.
In our race to outdo them as the best breaking news source, we reallocated our newsroom resources and started doing a poor job of the in-depth reporting that people read papers for.
Now the newspaper in my market is second best at breaking news and poor at in-depth coverage. In essence, it has made itself irrelevant. Sadly, it's not as good as TV, so I don't need it anymore.