posted by Marie Rotter
The front page of the Boulder Daily Camera yesterday proclaimed “CU-Boulder takes steps to close journalism school.” As I pondered the fate of my profession, I, a former newspaper reporter, posted the story to my Twitter feed and my Facebook page. The fact that I chose to share the information online rather than blasting off a letter to the editor should tell me enough about the future of media to not make me upset about the issue.
However, I was upset.
For starters, I have a master’s degree in journalism. Is it going to be worth anything in 10 years? I knew when I got my degree that I could make a lot more money if I went to business school, but I chose journalism because I was fascinated by how people chose to communicate information and the different ways in which they share it. It was this fascination that drove me into the newspaper business almost two decades ago and it’s what led me to build my first website in 1996, and start my first blog 10 years later. Besides, I hate statistics classes.
Journalism schools, traditionally, have been horribly inept at providing a cross-discipline approach to the trade. There’s the broadcast department, the news-editorial department, and public relations. Never shall they meet. I remember as an undergrad at Colorado State asking about photojournalism classes and getting a quizzical look from my academic advisor because I was on the news-editorial track. I reminded her that they have pictures in newspapers too.
“But someone else will do that for you,” she said, as if the subject had been exhausted. Not anymore. Reporters are expected to write the story, update the blog, create a Twitter feed and post video to the website all before the 5 p.m. deadline. No wonder the quality of the reporting has been going steadily downhill. They don’t have enough time to focus on anything that could make an impact.
It is the spread of web-based information that is, ironically, leading to this need for better journalists. Increasingly, people are overwhelmed with information via online, on television and in print. In this overwhelmed state, they are developing more and more channels of information. “I’m a mom. Tell me about stuff I care about.” Enter the mommy bloggers. “I am passionate about politics.” Enter MSNBC and Fox News. These are just channels though, microcosms of information that provide no context or perspective. It’s more like a stream of consciousness.
Now, more than ever, we need people that can tell us what is important, why it’s important and explain it to us in a way that we can understand. As one of my old journalism teachers used to say, “Don’t just tell me what happened. Tell me why I should care!”
Despite my concerns, I think it can be a promising and very smart move for the University of Colorado to create a school of information if done correctly. You can’t deny the power or the influence of the Internet and social media in particular. If you stop looking at journalism in the silos of television, print, and public relations — and start looking at it as information sharing — then you get to the heart of what journalism really is.
I shared my thoughts with Sandra Fish, a journalist and journalism instructor at the University of Colorado who specializes in politics, government and interactive reporting. She wrote me back this reply:
“I think the potential to create something new that melds journalism and technology is exciting but we also need to keep in mind that journalism, no matter what the form or platform, is essential to our democracy.”
“What about ethics?” I asked. “And GRAMMAR?!”
Learning to understand and accept my own biases but not letting that overshadow my reporting was one of the most important things I learned in journalism school. I also learned people tend not to take you too seriously if you don’t know the difference between “there,” “they’re” and “their.” I see very little of either proper grammar or ethics on the Internet.
These are all issues that have to be taken into consideration when deciding what the future of journalism will look like. People still need information. Maybe we’ll need more “citizen journalists” who can bring an entrepreneurial culture to journalism and make money blogging, posting videos and podcasting. If that’s true, maybe there will be a need for some of those dreaded business statistics classes.
I can’t wait to find out. The fascination continues.
1 response so far ↓
1 Lisa Williams // Aug 27, 2010 at 1:43 pm
I like this post, but I've always been skeptical about claims that the average person suffers from "information overload." If that's true, why do people take on nearly every new platform for information that's offered them? The idea that they need professionals to sort out what they like or what's important to them seems unproven to me.
The news industry is going through a vast, simultaneous crack-up of all its major institutions (and that includes educational institutions). This happened to the tech industry in the US in the late 80s and early 90's — wave after wave of layoffs, handwringing newspaper editorials fretting that if the government didn't step in, Japan would become the world's technological leader and the US would be left in the dust.
Seems silly, since less than ten years after that you have the IPO of Google. That's not to say that everything went back to the way it was: job tenures got much shorter, and it became much easier (and more common) to start small businesses. Many of the titans of the earlier regime survived (HP, IBM) but they never regained their central leadership role in the industry.
I think the same thing is happening to the news industry. Big players in crisis, lots of startups, and lots of improvisation and hustle needed to survive and thrive as an individual in that environment.
The good news is that you'll never get stuck in a big sclerotic institution doing stuff you know is stupid unless you really, really want that job.
You're right about the "do everything" aspect of the change — in a startup, everyone does do everything. Also, careers aren't hierarchical. People don't start out at a little software company and try to work their way up to IBM the way they might start at a little weekly and try to work their way up to the Washington Post. You go where the work is that compels you the most — the container doesn't matter.
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