“Focusing” on What Presidents and Provosts Think of JMC Education

Abstract

If the word from a group of university presidents and provosts is indicative of how journalism and mass communication education is doing in the United States these days, our discipline is doing extraordinarily well-there are no problems with JMC's place on campuses, and no negative or unresolved effects on journalism schools resulting from crises in the mass communication industries and professions. In mid-April, I had the opportunity to attend, as an observer, the Focus Group: University Presidents/Chancellors/Provosts, held in suburban Chicago by the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication (ASJMC), the sister organization to our Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). Comments about their own campuses' programs were informative and interesting. For example, Jo Ann M. Cora, president of Ball State University, told of her College of Communication, Information and Media raising $40 million-$20 million for !-communication projects and $20 million more for digital exchange projects. Joan Robinson, provost of Morgan State University, told of how her university, now classified as a research university, is launching a communication school in fall 2008 with a new building. Carol Cartwright, president emeritus of Kent State University, pointed to that institution's journalism school moving into a rehabbed building. George Dennison, president of the University of Montana, noted that his university's journalism school (second oldest in the United States) is moving into a new 50,000-square-foot building. Leo Lambert, president of Elon University, mentioned communication and other students on his campus being involved in Project Pericles, a twenty-campus effort in which teams of students work on social issue initiatives to develop senses of social responsibility. Henry Bienen, president of Northwestern University, said that the Medill School of Journalism is setting up a campus in Qatar. As focus group moderator Jim Spaniolo, president of the University of Texas at Arlington and former dean of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University, said, the focus group participants did not disagree with one another at all. That was not surprising, considering that most of them were engaging in some well-earned bragging. But assuming that journalism education is more than buildings, administrative structures, foundation-funded special projects, and overseas campuses (Qatar gives a whole new meaning to the term distance learning), the presidents and provosts still touched on some substance. Alvin Thornton, associate provost at Howard University, encouraged journalism schools to hold government officials accountable on public policy affecting mass media. North western's Bienen said the Medill School could and should be doing more public policy analysis generally. And they seemed to have generally agreed that the core areas of journalism education are ethics, and (where public relations and/or advertising students fit into that model wasn't addressed, apparently because this group interpreted a conversation about journalism education to mean just that-journalism [print, broadcast, online, photo] education only). Participants and observers had been given copies of the Carnegie Corporation of New York's 2005 report, Improving the Education of Tomorrow's Journalists, in hopes that they would comment on, or at least be inspired by, its recommendations (collected by McKinsey & Co. from more than forty journalists and media company executives). The reporting, ethics and use of technology rhetoric among the presidents and provosts was consistent with the 2005 report. For example, it prescribed, Emphasize the basics of the journalism craft... and a strong sense of ethics. Projects at Ball State, Elon, and Kent State, plus those recommendations of the Northwestern and Howard administrators, certainly satisfy the 2005 panel's emphasis on serve the public interest and protect our democracy. …