JOURNALISM EDUCATION IN SLOVENIA

Abstract

This article presents the findings of the first research into editors’ views of journalism education in Slovenia. The results of a mail survey and in-depth interviews reveal that although the vast majority of editors are not particularly familiar with the curriculum of current journalism studies, they identified a broad general knowledge and practical journalistic knowledge as the curriculum's advantages, with—inconsistently—the latter also being described as the curriculum's main deficiency, together with the lack of any knowledge of special fields such as law and economics. The editors’ negative attitudes to journalism education are grounded less in actual knowledge of what the Journalism Faculty offers its students than a priori convictions and stereotypes about journalism graduates being incompetent theorists. Factors in the media and in society that might be hindering journalists’ professionalism are overlooked, while the blame for editors’ negative experiences with journalism graduates is almost exclusively ascribed to the Faculty. Although the Slovenian university journalism curriculum has been reformed several times in the past few decades, the old image of the Faculty of Social Sciences as a remnant of the old communist political school is still firmly grounded in the mentality of Slovenians, yet rejected by the editors.