Values and Competencies from the Clash of Professional and Academic Cultures

Abstract

College-level journalism education was advanced as early as 1869 by the Missouri Press Association, whose members pointed to the beneficial results on both the preparation of professional journalists and on the influence the press would have on the destiny of the country. This attitude stood in contrast, however, to the general scorn and ridicule that most nineteenth-century journalists heaped on the notion of journalism education, including the first, short-lived program established at Washington College that same year by Robert E. Lee.1 When Willard Blyer at the University of Wisconsin articulated his vision for journalism education in 1906, he specified a four-year degree program that included one-fourth journalism courses and three-fourths science and humanities courses. In contrast, Walter Williams' freestanding professional school at the University of Missouri opened in 1908 with an emphasis on hands-on training and the practical aspects of journalism.2 These two competing visions for journalism education have defined the culture ever since. In addition to the academy's own schizophrenic approach, five national newspaper associations worked alongside the major educational institutions at the time in creating the first journalism accreditation organization in 1939. Hence, the cultural transmission of knowledge to succeeding generations of journalism educators has included both a deeply embedded defensive reaction to the scorn of professionals who discount the entire endeavor, and an attempt to court professional endorsement (through the accreditation process and efforts to help students secure jobs upon graduation) while meeting the standards of the academy. Of course, this is not unique to journalism education. Professional fields such as law, medicine, architecture, and engineering have faced the same issues in navigating the proper balance between transmitting a set of specific professional skills, and preparing students with as much analytic and reasoning ability as possible for facing any situation that may arise. One observer argues that medicine and engineering education tends toward the first model while architecture and law education tends toward the second.3 This same observer argues that journalism education (along with social work, nursing, teaching, and librarianship) falls into a third category in which educators are unable to agree on the knowledge base or the appropriate pedagogy for their profession. According to this argument, because journalism education suffers from ambiguity of purpose, the students who graduate from these programs suffer a lack of status relative to the graduates of programs that have a coherent set of beliefs and values. These problems, among others, may have provided the impetus for the recent changes in journalism accreditation standards, which include an articulation for the first time of the core and that journalism and mass communication graduates must master in order for the educational institution to be accredited. The very terms values and competencies suggest that journalism educators may be trying to locate the balance between habits of mind and skill acquisition that could resolve some of the historic ambiguity of purpose in journalism education. At the same time, sweeping social, economic and technological trends are influencing the practice of communication and the traditions of the academy. Both media organizations and academic institutions are finding it difficult to meet the diversity standards that a global society requires. Both are under severe ettonomic pressure. And both the media industry and educational institutions at all levels are struggling to understand and keep up with the technological changes that are challenging every assumption they have had for decades. These much larger social, economic, and technological influences on both higher education and the media professions color the relationship between the two. …