Teaching Journalism

Oct 24, 2008 - Posted by Fred Vallance-Jones

Election nights are great for journalism, but they turn out to be great for journalism instructors as well. Second-year students at the University of King's College covered the October 14, 2008 election live as a class project. CAR contributing editor Fred Vallance-Jones explains how he put the coverage together. See the class website site here and click below to read more.

Columbia's new dean urges students to make journalism healthy again

Sep 19, 2008 - Posted by Mary McGuire

Today's journalism students need to find new models to restore journalism to its former health. That's what the new academic dean of Columbia University's School of Journalism told the incoming class of j-students this month. Bill Grueskin, the former managing editor for news at the Wall Street Journal talked about current trends in journalism and warned that democracies work badly when the media is not healthy and vigourous.

Watch his address below.

Journalism educators need to be much more ambitious

Jul 30, 2008 - Posted by Mary McGuire

Mitchell Stephens says too many journalism programs are dedicated to teaching the tried and true and too many journalism professors are determined to defend standard practices rather than try new approaches to encourage better journalistic methods, styles and approaches. Stephens, the author of The History of News and The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word, is currently writing a new book called The Future of Journalism Education due out in 2009. The book will encourage educators to dare to do better. He has already created a website for this project, which includes a link to a set of resources which Stephens calls "Academic Efforts that Aim to Challenge and Improve Journalism Practice." Most are links to unconventional journalism courses being taught by people who are trying to do more than teach current journalistic skills. They are a good source for new ideas.

A guide to good journalistic practices

Jul 18, 2008 - Posted by Mary McGuire

This guide is unique. It is more than the traditional list of dos and don'ts that so many j-schools provide their students about acceptable journalistic practice. Instead, this one is posted online in a format that encourages debate and invites a conversation about the standard rules of journalistic practice. It's New York University's handbook on ethics, law and good journalistic practice online. It's extensive, well organized, thoughtful and an excellent model for any j-school developing its own set of guidelines. NYU chose this format to encourage a discussion about journalistic ethics and judging by the comments posted in the last few months it has succeeded.

A report card on Columbia's j-school

Feb 19, 2008 - Posted by Mary McGuire

It was never meant for public consumption. But thanks to the Poynter Institute for posting it, we can all read the Columbia j-school dean's personal assessment of recent changes at his school, one of the leading j-schools in North America. Nicholas Lemann reflects on the school's recent efforts to introduce multimedia instruction, add intellectual content to the journalism program to make it more than just a skills-based program, recruit students and build new facilities. He also discusses his successes and failures as dean.
The memo was a self-evaulation of his performance as dean for the provost of Columbia. But he sent it, by mistake, to his students instead of a course evaluation he intended to send.

The role of J-schools in a changing media world

Jan 11, 2008 - Posted by Mary McGuire

This thoughtful article from Insider Higher Ed explores the role of journalism schools in a world where journalism itself is in a state of flux. It follows a January 2008 meeting of journalism school deans and news executives in the U.S. at which the perennial questions about whether a journalism education is necessary for a career in journalism were discussed. Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times admitted he is now a convert to the value of a journalism degree because the more traditional route to a career through local and regional papers is not possible, now that so many of those papers are gone. The article is followed by many long, extended comments from j-educators and news editors.

Teaching courses online to virtual students

Dec 09, 2007 - Posted by Mary McGuire

One of the questions I am asked frequently, as a journalism educator, is whether we offer any of our courses online. We don't -- at least not yet, and I am not aware of any other Canadian journalism schools offering courses online, yet. But it's easy to see why j-schools may consider it in the future. There is a clear and growing demand for online courses from students who cannot attend university but want to take university level courses. Some U.S. universities are now trying to meet that demand, though not necessarily with journalism courses. National Public Radio in the U.S. recently ran a two-part series examining this trend. The link below will take you to the NPR site where you can read or listen to the series.

If your skills need a makeover...

Nov 25, 2007 - Posted by Mary McGuire

Many journalism educators and mid-career journalists are anxious these days about the aging state of their skills. They want to know more about audio, video and interactive tools, social networking and managing "citizen journalists", etc. But there are no weekend spas for such makeovers. In this piece, Steve Buttry, director of tailored programming at the America Press Insitute, offers practical advice for people who want to update their skills on their own. It's followed by lots of additional advice from other mid-career journalists and trainers, including Bill Dunphy of Toronto's Metroland newspapers.

Teaching j-students to be "citizen journalists"

Nov 22, 2007 - Posted by Mary McGuire

The University of Missouri's School of Journalism is experimenting with a new course in citizen journalism. Clyde Bently, an associate professor there, says its an attempt to get students to learn new skills and explore the community beyond the campus. They are required to take and share photos online using photo sharing sites; cover beats by finding contributors in the community to submit stories for them to edit; find and develop bloggers and write a blog themselves. As Bently says "we need to develop a journalism curriculum that focuses on delivering the story with the soft touch of a symphony conductor rather than the loud improvisation of a soloist."

In defence of j-schools

Nov 20, 2007 - Posted by Mary McGuire

There's a growing chorus of voices criticizing journalism schools these days for failing to prepare students for the dramatic changes happening in newsrooms as they move to distributing their news online. But in this thoughtful blog post, Mindy McAdams, who teaches online journalism in Florida, explains why some of the criticism is unfair. It's just too easy to blame outdated J-profs, she says, and ignore just how slow some news organizations have been to recognize the need for change.

Reflections for J-Educators

Journalism education in Canada is changing both because journalism is changing and the demand for post-secondary journalism programs is growing. This site is designed to help teachers of journalism in Canada find and share ideas, curricula, approaches and resources that might help them as educators of the next generation of journalists in Canada.

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