J-school faculty out of date
Are J-schools bad for the news business? A visiting professor at Ryerson University, Jeffrey Dvorkin asks the question this week on his blog. Dvorkin, a former chief journalist at CBC Radio, quotes a Facebook post which accuses j-school faculty of being out of date and guilty of teaching obsolete skills and ultimately contributing to the collapse of the news business.
Are J-schools bad for the news business? A visiting professor at Ryerson University, Jeffrey Dvorkin asks the question this week on his blog. Dvorkin, a former chief journalist at CBC Radio, quotes a Facebook post which accuses j-school faculty of being out of date and guilty of teaching obsolete skills and ultimately contributing to the collapse of the news business.
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February 16, 2010
What I’d really like to see
What I’d really like to see (and maybe somebody can help me find it) is some detailed accountability from Canadian J-schools, about how many of their graduates have actually found work in journalism one, three, five and 10 years after graduating?
When I taught at UBC (2004-06), and asked this question, all I got was anecdotal info. But my sense was that we sending people out into a dramatically-changing profession, without the skills to do the things that employers wanted.
Please, somebody, tell me I was mistaken.
February 16, 2010
Claude, there are no numbers
Claude, there are no numbers because the vast majority of grads don’t let us know what they do once they leave our hallways. Try as we do, they don’t return our surveys or e-mails. Maybe they don’t want to tell us.
Truthfully though, most of them don’t work in journalism, in spite of a guarantee I make them in their first year.
Here it is:
If you are willing to take our program, I can guarantee you a Canadian journalism job within a month of graduation, if not sooner, provided you do three things:
(a) Leave Ottawa;
(b) Be willing to work at a paper in rural Canada;
(c) Get a driver’s licence (at least, plus a car if you can).
Meet these three conditions, and you’ll have a job in journalism…100 per cent of the time. Using this formula, there is no reason why all 45 of my graduates shouldn’t be working as reporters.
Rather than take me up, though, many students opt to stay in Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal, pay exhorbitant rents and pay off student debts by carrying coffee for communications managers or trade magazine editors. Few want to work for little pay and long hours necessary to pay their dues.
My answer to you is that we don’t track those numbers because our grads, for the most part, don’t work in journalism, but love the skills they take with them upon graduation.
Hope this helps.
February 17, 2010
Thanks, Joe. You’ve answered
Thanks, Joe. You’ve answered my question. Although I have to wonder that if j-schools were more up front about the fact that the majority of their “grads . . . don’t work in journalism,” would applications not drop dramatically? Are the j-schools complicit in marketing the illusion of jobs aplenty?