Face it, journalism is an endangered profession. What with the years-long deluge of attacks on press freedom emanating from the White House and the declining numbers of traditional news outlets. Woes aside, the new wave of journalists entering the field overflow with ideas for what it will take to turn the tide. Ideas abound in “Reform J-School,” a tip sheet for injecting life, hope and purpose into a profession under attack.
Why should anyone get a journalism degree?
On paper, it doesn’t do much for you. Writing can be taught in so many other ways. Try a specialized major if the goal is to develop expertise in a topic. Most of the technical skills needed to be a great journalist are easier picked up in a newsroom setting than a classroom.
But what if the classroom was a newsroom?
Annenberg Media — the Annenberg-run student newsroom at USC — does this by putting students to work, requiring them to publish articles for one or two classes. But it could be so much more.
The newsroom should be the foundation of a journalism education at USC Annenberg, not the classroom. Though it is important to acknowledge that other journalism programs — even some of the highest-ranked in the nation — have it way, way worse: They don’t even have a newsroom at all.
Having conversations about coverage, building sourcing to eventually get a scoop, and spending late nights digesting the content of meetings or protests to turn out an article on deadline are how you learn. The uncertainty of what could happen on any given day and sorting through all the ways you could write the same story or cover the same event are what define the job.
It’s a challenge to inject the media center and publication into every class. But it should be our goal. Otherwise it becomes an afterthought amid busy schedules filled with lectures, midterms and homework. Such classes have value, but they simply are not how journalism works.
Learning on the job and getting real experience is the advice we get from real-life journalists every time they guest speak at our classes. So, I propose going all in.
Publication should be the emphasis of most things we do — that’s how we’re going to get better.
The people who have journalism experience coming into college and know they want to go into this ever-looking-worse-to-go-into career on principle or passion will always find a way to get their experience, through freelancing, student papers or personal connections. The program should make that path easier, and accessible to everyone else.
Yes, people need to learn their history and the basics of lead writing and it’s not always smart to send people on assignments they aren’t ready for. But journalism has always been learned on the job and college, unlike a professional environment, offers people a chance to fail and learn from it rather than get fired or not get another freelance gig.
Students start by covering events and getting feedback both from professors and student editors. Then they start pitching enterprise and features, write breaking news, and develop a beat. Incorporate multimedia if the school has the funding. Sports classes cover sports, arts and entertainment head to concerts, and opinion classes spread their takes.
It makes sense, and the expertise of professors at great schools like USC, or UC Berkeley or Northwestern would only make this learning easier.
The industry is volatile enough. Students who spend their money and time going to school for journalism need to get enough out of it to justify the decision. The more published work, especially solo bylines, investigative pieces and other kinds of enterprise stories, the more valuable students will be to employers right out of college. And the better the odds a school’s graduates have of succeeding.
Let’s give future members of the White House press corps, Super Bowl reporters and red-carpet questioners a chance to see what their world will look like while they still have the support to fail, learn, develop and not need to worry about job security.
Maybe, in this ideal world, we’d all have hopeful conversations in our classes on the fourth floor of Annenberg Hall. I believe it’s possible.