Links between Professional Education and the Penalized Campus Press

Abstract

Perhaps the most compelling issue in journalism education today crystallizes a traditional tension between the academy and the profession. To move into the 21 st century, some educators now say, journalism and mass communication curricula must shift away from an antiquated green eyeshade mentality, toward a theory-oriented general examination of human communication. The purpose of this study is to examine one sphere of this controversy. College newspapers are an immediate product of journalism education in academic environments; so, we sought evidence of a relationship between the kind of journalism education available to students who produce college newspapers, and the performance of those papers. Observers' opinions vary widely on the merits of differing kinds of journalism and mass communication education. For example, Blanchard and Christ (1993) say traditional journalism education that emphasizes expensive, hands-on training for entry-level positions in specific professions is unwelcome on modern cost-conscious campuses. They contend skill and technology training is better left to extracurricular experience that ... is neither mandatory nor the center of the curriculum. It does not absorb a great deal of faculty time and effort, and only a little of it, if any, is for academic credit; it is mostly co-curricular. Students seek this experience on their own extra-curricular, `rest-and-recreation' time. By so doing, they demonstrate their interests, initiative and motivation-attributes that cannot be taught in required, lock-step courses but that media practitioners profess to prize so highly. (p. 71) On the other hand, Mencher (Reconstructing, 1994) observes that reformers emphasize concept-oriented courses while the current technology-heavy communications environment dazzles students. We have forgotten the necessity to train those who would put the messages on the hurtling electrons, he says. Yet this is the kind of training that some would replace with programs in generic journalism and the like, one of which, a leading exponent of the changeover says, would consist of a journalism program in which no student would be required to write (p. 72). What impact would the proposed reforms in curricula have on the quality of the products journalism students produce? What results when journalism programs move away from a professional model to what some derisively call communicology (Highton, 1967, p. 10)? Aside from the rhetoric generated by the controversy, there is scant evidence regarding the effect such a shift away from the practical in communication education would have on the performance of journalism. Literature review Expressions of concern regarding the role of communication and its various subfields in the academic world have taken a tone of urgency in recent years. Authors from within the academy have noted that although considerable numbers of students enroll in communication programs each year, the field of communication is in a weakened position relative to traditionally accepted fields such as history or philosophy. It is young in academic terms and badly fragmented among speech, interpersonal communication, rhetoric, mass communication, journalism, cultural studies and other areas (Rakow, 1993; Swanson, 1993). In addition, there are suggestions that because of its various roots, communication as an academic field has no unifying theory (Shoemaker, 1993). With neither tradition nor solid academic credentials, communication programs have become a large target of opportunity for administrators in the modern atmosphere of downsizing (Avery, 1993; Kosicki and Becker, 1994). Journalism and mass communication programs have been targeted directly, with threats and outright actions to abolish or subsume journalism units (Beasley, July 1994 and September 1994; Dennis, 1994). Journalism educator and researcher Everette Dennis warns that journalism and mass communication programs are threatened because of university budget cutting, duplication of program content, questions about programs' centrality to university missions, and an absence of visible, effective leaders from journalism and mass communication programs (1994, p. …