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Newsroom, classroom leaders: natural allies

Commentary

By Charles L. Overby
Chairman and CEO, The Freedom Forum

07.26.99

There are many reasons why some of the best thinkers from newspapers and journalism education should gather here this weekend.

Uncertainty and even turmoil are churning the waters within the academy and within newsrooms.

Respected outsiders are discounting the future of newspapers.

Newspaper insiders have never been more pessimistic or unsure of themselves.

Many are questioning the future of journalism education in the context of the bleak predictions for mainstream media.

Some media practitioners are questioning the viability of 'real journalism' within the ever-expanding mass communications field.

And some educators are wondering what role, if any, media companies and media-oriented foundations should play in helping shape the future of journalism education in the next decade and beyond.

We have asked you to come here this weekend to talk about the things that will surely change the nature of what you are doing in the classroom and the newsroom.

As we enter the new millennium, the uncertainties have never been more fundamental:

• What will our media look like 10 years from now?
• Where will the jobs for students be?
• Will the changing shape of media attract different kinds of students and faculty?
• How will courses in journalism and mass communications change, if at all?
• What role will academic research play in the development and practice of new and traditional media?
• Will the prospect of these changes alter in a significant way the leadership in classrooms and newsrooms?
• Will the practicing journalists of today need to be reeducated and retrained?
• Are the journalism classrooms and newsrooms equipped to give the public what it wants and what it needs?
• Can the leadership within the academy and within the profession attract significantly more minorities to keep pace with America's increasing diversity?
• And can our classrooms and newsrooms provide the intellectual and professional activity to keep the First Amendment alive with the public?

These are daunting questions. Any one of them could consume the entire weekend.

We want to begin a conversation about these core subjects with you — the leaders in the classroom and the newsroom.

Representatives of journalism classrooms and newsrooms are natural allies. But because of the built-in skepticism of both groups, the alliance has never reached its full potential.

The alliance is not needed to validate the importance of either the academy or the profession. The alliance is needed to protect and promote journalism.

It should not be necessary to march in lock-step to realize that we all are on the same side.

The issues of the future go far beyond Ph.Ds vs. non-Ph.Ds or professional emphasis vs. research emphasis.

The journalism tent is big enough for many different orientations. We are not threatened by the journalism tent growing too big. We are threatened by the prospect of it becoming too small.

Our democracy in the next decade will continue to depend on an informed public. That public will continue to need news gatherers and news explainers. Those gatherers and explainers will continue to come from classrooms and newsrooms.

By the end of the next decade, those classrooms and newsrooms will almost certainly look different, perhaps dramatically different.

It is the changing nature of those classrooms and newsrooms that will occupy our thinking this weekend.

This is the first of several meetings that The Freedom Forum will convene with deans, editors, faculty members, reporters, students and the general public.

This is a work in progress. No 10 Commandments will be handed down by Jerry Sass when we finish Sunday night.

We are not seeking a single Freedom Forum answer to these questions.

In fact, we recognize the inherent value of your classrooms enjoying different strengths and approaches and your newsrooms representing the distinctness of your communities.

We are interested in developing a SHARED wisdom that contributes to modern, diverse initiatives, while preserving journalism's best values.

Wisdom. Initiatives. Values.

The more things change, they more they stay the same.

Simply put, we want to make sure that journalism classrooms and newsrooms flourish as an important part of society in the next decade and beyond.

There are three ideals that I think can make our classrooms and newsrooms more vital in the next decade and beyond:

1. New and dramatically more meaningful partnerships between journalism practitioners and journalism educators.
2. A renewed major commitment to diversity that recognizes the pipeline for minorities begins in the classroom.
3. A bold and unabashed new approach to promoting and protecting the First Amendment.

It is ludicrous for our practitioners and our educators to operate so far apart from one another. The relationships vary from state to state, but as a rule, very little collaboration beyond job references ever takes place. We must move from nodding acquaintances to comrades in arms.

Partnerships
I recognize that not all of you will agree with this. But if we can't all embrace the common values of journalism, then the cause is probably lost anyway. I challenge you to consider these partnership needs:

1. Enlightened leadership in the academy and in the profession who will tackle some of the big issues facing journalism at every level.
2. More meaningful academic research that can advance professional goals and values and contribute to ways the public consumes information.
3. A new look at mid-career education and training.

Diversity
Newsrooms are falling miserably behind in keeping up with the pace of growth in minority populations. The newspaper industry alone must find 1,250 new minority journalists this year just to increase its minority employment by 1 percent.

Dramatic new approaches are needed to recruit and retain those minority journalists.

The classroom offers newspapers their best hope of filling that pipeline with qualified minority journalists.

We all must abandon the status quo in this area. It is not working.

Creative, bold thinking is needed in newsrooms and classrooms to solve this growing problem.

The Freedom Forum is committed to assisting in efforts that will move beyond incremental change and into bold new leaps forward.

First Amendment
The First Amendment is in trouble. Few people in newsrooms and classrooms really believe that.

But the evidence is mounting that the public is more willing to allow the government to control some aspects of media practices.

In my judgment, the First Amendment, as we know it, will cease to exist sometime in the next century. The only thing that can save it will be leaders from classrooms and newsrooms doing more to explain it to the public.

In a recent Freedom Forum survey, more than half the people said American media have too much freedom to do anything they want. I am amazed that Americans think we have too much freedom in anything.

We must find ways to explain the First Amendment in more than historical terms.

We must improve the ways we explain the basic concepts that allow minority, unpopular expressions to exist within a majority-rule democracy.

I believe that new, meaningful partnerships between classrooms and newsrooms can have a positive impact on society in general and on our media in particular.

Your presence this weekend will help us all understand the changes that are going on around us.

Together, we can forge a new understanding and a new respect for working with one another.

Together, we can energize two of our most important links to democracy: the classroom and the newsroom.