Educators, journalists can work together
Commentary
By Charles L. Overby
Chairman and CEO, The Freedom Forum
03.15.99
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Why don't journalists and journalism educators help each other more?
The answer from both sides: too much trouble, too little payback, not enough mutual respect.
The presumed conflicts between "theory" and "practice" deserve more discussion. With the news media industry changing dramatically, research from journalism educators could be very helpful. But many media leaders have written off research from mass communication schools as irrelevant to real-world conditions.
It doesn't have to be that way.
There's an inside joke in academia that professors get embroiled in major disagreements because the stakes are so low.
These stakes are not low.
Many questions facing mainstream media today cannot be answered solely by gut instincts or a committee of newsroom staffers who go on a retreat for a day or two. Many journalists have a natural disdain for theoretical abstractions. They would never call themselves anti-intellectual. But maybe they are. A few top schools — Columbia, Berkeley, Maryland, North Carolina, Nebraska, Kansas, Northwestern, Arizona State, Missouri — have good relations with news professionals.
But even those schools — especially those schools — should be doing more to provide relevant, milestone research to improve today's media.
There is virtually no encouragement from news professionals — no collaboration on ideas for the future and certainly no monetary incentives to prime the research pump. Either would help immensely.
How did we get to the place where many, if not most, news professionals don't consider the 108 accredited journalism schools a major source of information and long-term assistance to the news media?
First, most news professionals have lamented the move toward mass communication schools over journalism schools. Many news professionals see this as a retreat from basic journalistic principles, a triumph of theory over practice. Many reports, including a few from The Freedom Forum, have addressed this issue.
I have visited enough campuses to know that the mass communication philosophy is not going away. News professionals should focus on the journalism being taught within mass communication schools and not worry about other disciplines.
For instance, the dean of the College of Communication at the University of Texas, Ellen Wartella, has been one of the leaders in advancing mass communication, but there are more than 800 journalism majors within the college. Dr. Wartella has been portrayed by some in the industry as anti-news-paper.
She categorically denied that when I visited there recently. Several faculty members pointed to specific accomplishments that show UT's work with newspapers and news professionals.
Some news professionals worry that the push for doctoral degrees over experience for faculty is reducing the quality of journalism instruction.
The Freedom Forum stepped into this debate four years ago and began underwriting a program at the University of North Carolina that encourages newsroom professionals to get adoctoral degree and teach at the university level. A few of the participants brought their newsroom cynicism with them, but it quickly vanished. They are the first to say that newsrooms could learn a lot from relevant research.
Betty Medsger, former chair of the journalism department at San Francisco State University, discussed the emphasis on doctoral degrees in her "Winds of Change" report in 1996. She said: "Increasingly, the essential requirement for being hired to teach journalism is a doctoral degree, without regard for the quality or the length of experience as a journalist."
Many journalism educators took issue with the Medsger report. Some said it wasn't true. Others said it was true, but it didn't affect the quality of teaching.
Stephen D. Reese, chairman of the Department of Journalism at the University of Texas, has prepared a well-reasoned paper on recasting the academic vs. professional debate. Its publication will ensure more debate on this subject. Dr. Reese advances the provocative theory that media and media-oriented foundations are trying to co-opt academia in order to recoup journalism's sagging respect.
That's too conspiratorial for me, but his conclusion is worth heeding: Journalism academics and journalism professionals need to find common ground so they can work together on an equal basis.
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