UPDATE: For you RSS readers that missed it, there’s some interesting conversation in the comments about restructuring the journalism education system.
css Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design
Check out this pretty awesome example of the radical power of CSS style sheets. (…Which turned 10 recently.)
UC Berkeley Journalism – Events – Winter New Media Lecture Series
Vids from the Winter convergence seminars are available to the public. Although they’re in kinda a jacked-up streaming Quicktime format. Could someone at the Knight Foundation take some of that $5 million from the 21st Century News Challenge to freakin buy UC-Berkeley a copy of Sorensen so viewers don’t have to hop around trying different computers to see and hear this simultaneously? (One computer played video, but no sound… one played the sound with crazy video. One was juuuuuust right.) BTW: The 21st century news Challenge deadline for submissions is Dec. 31st. So get your pens scribblin’
A tale of three tapes
Jarvis goes behind the scenes on “pro” video vs. “amateur” video.
The Public Editor – Too Much of A Good Thing? – Opinion – New York Times Blog
Oh, media ego fed by the billions and billions of journalism contests–you so crazy!
Holiday hatchet handiwork at Time Inc.
Time Inc. tells 27 employees that “You” are the latest to be fired, with a special shiny pink slip. Interesting fact: They’ve cut 577 jobs since last year! THAT … is a bloodbath. (via Romenesko)
Communicating the urgent need for change
Bottom line: Hierarchal leadership fails in the new media.
Do I Need Experience to Teach Journalism?
Is this guy serious? Given the way the industry has flipped in 10 years, J-profs should have to return to the work force every 5 years–or better yet, continue working professionally and teach in the spare time. Sometimes I’m not sure who’s more clueless newspaper leadership or college professors. While the profs may be better ‘well read’ on trends, they’re not on the streets and in the florescent-bathed cubicles. Corduroy sportcoat with the brown suede elbow patches-clad tenure track profs can teach English or Geology. This is an evolving (collapsing?) industry. There are way too many clueless profs that haven’t sat in a newsroom for decades teaching the generation that’s supposed to save this business. Just as they need to instill in their students the importance of getting real world experience while they’re in school, J-profs should be getting the same real world experience. … And having a blog or getting published ‘traditionally’ (by trades or book publishers to feed the University ego) doesn’t count.
In Sales Ploy, ‘Chicago Trib’ Hands ‘RedEye’ a Scoop
Rewrite is the news hotness… Although the Trib/Red Eye has been doing this kind of thing for news content since the tab was created.
NYTimes looks to start youth tabloid
Sounds like a Red Eye clone, it’s about time they rocked it.
Weekly ‘Toledo Free Press’ Tab to Go Head-to-Head With Sunday ‘Blade’ Broadsheet
The little free weekly tab that could in Toledo moves its publication date to Sunday, boosts circulation to 150,000 and starts home delivery. Not bad at all for a paper that just started from nothing less than two years ago. Now if only they would only go ‘Rob Curley’ on their website–redesign, start posting continuous updates, blow out multimedia, go hyper-local, database and social media crazy and get their RSS feeds to work consistently (my personal suggestion there). 
Going with a robust weekend print edition and a intense online effort could be the model for the future of metro newspapers. Many have theorized (I think Cauthorn was the first I heard it from) that daily print newspapers could become a thing of the past in metro markets. So the TFP could really be in the catbird seat with this move if their growth continues and they concentrate on enhancing the online venture as well as their print product.
Full disclosure: The editor of the Toledo Free Press is an old friend/mentor from school.
December 22, 2006 at 7:28 am
And having a blog or getting published ‘traditionally’ (by trades or book publishers to feed the University ego) doesn’t count.
Ouch.
There’s a bit of an unrealistic expectation involved here. Some of us would love to spend some time back in the trenches, but we also have bills to pay and mouths to feed, and jumping track to go back to the bottom of the ladder in a news outfit doesn’t do a lot of good for the old bottom line.
Just like in the industry, academia is progressive. You start low and work your way up. There’s substantial punishment for bopping back and forth, unless you get a sabbatical.
I like what Knight was doing with the summer training program, but that program ended before I was able to get in.
I should say I don’t disagree with your basic point, but these are living, breathing people we’re talking about.
December 22, 2006 at 11:27 am
The new Zen Garden entries are pretty amazing. I see your favorite was the monster movie house one as well.
December 22, 2006 at 11:27 am
First, don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for educators (mom teaches first grade, dad a college professor).
Yea, that assessment may have been a bit extreme, but the way many j-schools are set up right now just isn’t working and continues to perpetuate the ‘old school’ mentality.
I don’t have a perfect solution but many schools have relationships with news organizations and I haven’t found one that really works that relationship perfectly. Scripps / OU does a good job from what I can see.
At Medill, there was a handful of the old school, kind of ‘lifetime’ people but that base was augmented by a rotating,working professionals who assisted with courses as their schedules allowed. It was kind of a 40/60 split old school to working professionals.
It made the experience exponentially richer for learning the real world expectations and situations students face. (Also, Medill has a very heavy practical practicum. Most things you do there are for publication or research working with a real company facing a real world problem … like the “Your Mom” teen publication I worked on for Lee Enterprises.)
It also opens the students up to much more opportunities for networking, jobs and freelancing.
The bottom line is there’s a great, great chasm between the way newspapers operate and do journalism and the way schools teach journalism. It’s time for media organizations and schools to collaborate and save the evolving craft of journalism.
December 22, 2006 at 12:21 pm
In that Q&A you linked to (with your journalism professor ream-out), Joe Grimm wrote: “In fact, you might not ever need the doctorate to be a great journalism professor. But you can’t skip the newsroom. If you do, you’ll be teaching second-hand, and your students will know it.”
I agree 100 percent with the second part of that. And I agree with you that many of the people teaching in j-schools today are very out of touch with how newsrooms work now — even if they spent 20 years in a newsroom in their past life.
But the first part of what Joe wrote (and some of what you wrote, Will) ignores the reality in today’s universities. It used to be that guys with just a bachelor’s degree — heck, even some guys with no college degree at all — could get a gig teaching journalism in an actual university (not a mere community college). But those days are gone.
A huge number of factors boil down to one thing: You must have a master’s degree to teach journalism in a university today, and increasingly, you must have a Ph.D. to be considered for the job. This is a university-wide requirement, and there’s a multitude of reasons for it — not all good, but not all bad either.
Another piece of this puzzle is in the newsrooms. People from newsrooms like to complain and tell the professors what they ought to do and how they ought to teach. But I would respectfully submit that this is akin to a bunch of rich people waltzing into a rural village and saying, “You people really ought to get a source of clean drinking water. You have diseases because you are drinking this foul stuff.”
There are constraints and practices in universities with which the working journalists are not familiar. What it looks like from outside (we choose to drink this dirty water) is not the reality (we have no tools or materials to make pumps to bring clean water up out of the ground). Those outsiders could make a difference if they chose to work with the villagers.
So, Will, I know you didn’t mean to trash all journalism professors — many of whom have crushing workloads and little or no administrative support and lower pay than you might imagine — but it did sound that way. And that’s not fair.
December 22, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Word, Mindy. I think we’re arguing the same point–the journalism ‘education’ system is broken and someone needs to, as Jarvis would say, “Explode the ___(journalism education system)__.”
In the move to become accredited and officially stamped by “X” prestigious university, schools forgot that journalism isn’t something you just learn in the classroom or in the library–I would argue that 70 percent of the craft is learned on the job (or internship). And very few schools have their curriculum based around that experience.
It’s a never ending cycle of unnecessary education. Just as j-school profs can’t get a job with out at least a masters, most journalists can’t get a job without a j-school degree (and as much as some editors say otherwise, they tend to hire j-school grads and wait for others with biz or science degrees to prove themselves).
The j-school degree is the safe bet.
The j-school prof with a PhD and elbow patches is the safe bet.
The journalism industry has coasted on safe bets and now they’re finding that system isn’t working.
It’s an exciting time to be in the media. Everything’s getting flipped upside down. Upstart bloggers with no j-ed. are scooping the big dogs (TechCrunch.com), programmers with no j-school experience are pooling diverse photo resources that the big media is drooling over (Flickr.com), automated and public-driven news sites blossoming out of no where (Digg, Google News) and let’s not even get into the business side of how newspapers are getting owned.
December 24, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Re: Will & J School comments
Your points are true of nearly every non-specialized (medicine) profession,
and one might make the same argument for
medicine… the age old argument about the importance of a notebook versus a textbook.
The problem is that those in charge come from the old system… life everywhere in life, as you grow up you will find. It’s called life. Get used to it. You will, anyway.
It’s great to take your youthful lack of experience and call it insight, but the reality is that life was moving along just fine without you, and will when you’re gone. Work on that, and change yourself… the world will follow if you are right. Perhaps.
Good luck! Just don’t get frustrated, keep your mind open to the next gen that is going to call your thinking antiquated and obstructionist, as surely as you live that long. Cheers!
December 24, 2006 at 2:57 pm
Upon rereading, I realize, aside from the typos, my comment sounds negative, and that was not my intent. My intent was to offer another perspective, outside the J box, and crack open the Life box, because Will’s points are valid in every corner of it, but the reality of every corner cuts against his solution. Don’t forget the papers only exist to sell ads and reward shareholders. If you don’t get that, you’re really up the wrong creek.
If you want change, show the corporate puppetmasters that there is a profit to be increased, or a loss to be stemmed, and you’ll find staunch support… but not for the reasons you hold dear, in fact, your goal can only be accomplished by selling out your underlying principles. Ironic, life is.