By KRISTINA SHERRY
news@ColumbiaMissourian.com

COLUMBIA — On April 1, 2005, at 1:23 p.m., the FOX News Channel broke the news of Pope John Paul II’s death, however, the pope didn’t die until several hours later.

In 2003, CNN’s chief news executive admitted that for more than 12 years the network had suppressed stories of murder, torture and planned assassinations in Iraq for fear of losing its Baghdad news bureau under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

And in a similarly injurious “oops” instance by the news media: Only one mainstream publication, Fortune magazine, questioned Enron’s reputation prior to its 2001 collapse. Many prominent editors at other publications had accepted payments of more than $100,000 as they wrote glowing articles about the company.

Yet somehow, in the wake of such glaring journalistic gaffes, no professional licenses were revoked. FOX News went on to cover Pope John Paul II’s funeral; no malpractice suits were filed against CNN; and the journalists who sang Enron’s praises continue writing under salaried bylines.

And why shouldn’t they?

The “profession” of journalism is unrestrained. No one needs accreditation to host a radio show, become a news anchor or write magazine articles about multibillion-dollar energy-trading corporations.

Unlike airline pilots, engineers or licensed attorneys, journalists learn on the job, garnering professionalism story by story. According to recent estimates, more than half of today’s working journalists never attended journalism school.

What’s more, the Internet and new media have ushered in an era of converging storytelling platforms — audio, video, photo, etc. — greater audience interactivity and a wide-open blogosophere in which any hobbyist-journalism can participate.

Because these changes seldom occur in a top-down manner, many journalism schools are left struggling to stay ahead of the curve, preparing students for media jobs that might not even exist today.Which raises the question: What’s the purpose of journalism school in the 21st century?

One hundred years ago, Walter Williams founded the first journalism school in the country: the Missouri School of Journalism. He was guided by a belief that journalism should be professionalized and journalists should adhere to what is now called “The Journalist’s Creed,” a set of standards and values ­— truth, accuracy, independence, fairness and commitment to public service.

At the same time, Williams knew that journalism was a profession of doing. So in partnership with the School of Journalism, he founded the University Missourian, the predecessor of the Columbia Missourian, a community newspaper in which students could gain hands-on experience. This practical, learn-by-doing approach is known as the “Missouri Method.” It has found a suitable home in Columbia where, as faculty like to say, the ordinary resident has probably been interviewed several times by journalists-in-training.

The merging of learning and practice has long been the premise of journalism education at MU and to some extent at the more than 450 journalism programs that exist worldwide today.

But what, exactly, should be taught and practiced? As print news bends toward Web-centrism, “the media” takes on newer and slipperier meanings. In response, J-schools have been rewriting mission statements and rethinking their purpose — not unlike the industry itself.

A 2007 survey cited by the American Journalism Review indicated that more than 90 percent of J-school administrators were “actively reviewing” curricula to incorporate more multimedia instruction.
MU is no exception. Journalism faculty recently met to discuss how the school’s curriculum would change if the future of news were to be multimedia- and digitally-based.

Esther Thorson, associate dean of graduate studies and research at the MU School of Journalism, said instructors have tended to be territorial about their areas of specialty — such as print, video, photo, history, etc.

But “each of us has to get over our own little silo,” Thorson said, suggesting the need for greater openness and flexibility throughout the curriculum as new media platforms continue to emerge and converge.

Thorson said she has already seen a change in faculty attitudes. “I’ve been incredibly impressed with how our faculty are starting to say, ‘I get it. The new media structures are going to be completely different,’” Thorson said.

One concern is whether it is realistic for students to master multiple platforms within a finite curriculum; e.g. should a print-focused student also be expected to produce network-quality videos?
Thorson dismisses the notion that cross-media training would be anything but beneficial to students.
“Think about the bosses all over the United States who are saying: ‘Here’s a camera. Bring back video,’” Thorson said.

A report by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, “The State of the News Media” for 2008, showed that many newsrooms are training print journalists to shoot video. For instance, it cited a decision by the Tampa Tribune to train 60 of its 275 member news staff in online video. Janet Coats, executive editor of the Tribune, said that soon “pretty much everybody in the newsroom” will know how to use a camera.

Thorson also cited the case of Brian Storm, who earned his master’s degree in photojournalism from MU in 1995 and went on to launch MediaStorm, a New York-based multimedia production studio.
Thorson said she thinks that the foundational skills Storm garnered at Missouri, along with his own creativity, enabled him to succeed.

“The way he tells stories is amazing,” Thorson said. “Now he’s considered a quintessential leader.”
Thorson also thinks Missouri’s flexible curriculum and openness to the future is what gives students opportunities to succeed in the field.

“Who knows what the future of journalism is?“ she said. “Not you, not me, not anybody."

But at the same time, there are constants. There are fundamental, enduring values that distinguish quality journalism from the catchall “media” of the 21st century.

Jacqui Banaszynski, the Knight Chair in Journalism at MU, thinks a journalism education must be grounded in journalism’s core skills and values, which include curiosity, critical thinking, interviewing techniques, effective storytelling and knowing how to report for accuracy and truth.

She cites critical thinking as foremost among these. “It’s very dangerous to live in a society where journalists just read the press releases,” Banaszynski said.

Banaszynski acknowledges that journalism is going through a “tough transition.” Still, she hopes that both the industry and journalism schools will ultimately return to these fundamentals, which can then be applied to any medium — a photo story, a video story or an audio story.

“I think the revolution needs to be: Let’s plant our stake in ethics, critical thinking, interviewing, information gathering, public service — like watchdog journalism — and great storytelling,” Banaszynski said.

The key is to step firmly toward the future, but take all of the fundamentals with us, she said.

Thorson thinks these core values of the profession are best summarized by the “The Elements of Journalism,” a compilation by Tom Rosenstiel and Bill Kovach that bears great resemblance to Williams’ creed.

In brief, these elements are: truth telling, loyalty to citizens, verification of information, independence, acting as a watchdog over those in power, fair representation of views, good storytelling with a purpose, proportionality of coverage and individual conscience.

Thorson said: “It doesn’t matter what the medium is. Those principles need to be operating in order to have quality journalism.”

Another realization to emerge from the faculty discussions, therefore, was that these principles need to be integrated across the entire curriculum, Thorson said. The subject of ethics, for instance, should be broached in every course, and not just the media ethics course.

“What we’re trying to do is really work toward instilling our basic values and skills into and across as many courses as possible,” Thorson said. “And we’ve really never done that before.”

In truth, journalism schools have always been engaged in some form of soul-searching, in part because journalism’s platforms — from the penny press to television ­— are always changing. In 1998, for example, Missouri’s J-school sponsored a panel discussion titled “Can Good Storytelling Save Newspapers?”

Banaszynski, a featured panelist then, said the discussion was prompted by the industry’s push for more graphics and info-bytes.“Sometimes an info-graphic is the best way to get a story,” Banaszynski says. “But, again, you need to get the information, verify the information, and know what the story is and how to get it.”

More recently, J-schools have toyed with ideas including partnerships with other professional programs such as Northwestern’s Medill, Notre Dame and the University of Southern California; the “Chinese menu” approach wherein students design their own curricula (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); “apprenticeship” programs (Berkeley); and offering optional, additional semesters (Medill et al.).
The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism recently spent about $500,000 developing a proposal for a two-year master’s program like Missouri’s. Its objective is to extend its 9-month program to provide students with a wider range of learning opportunities.

The tinkering and re-tinkering of journalism programs makes sense considering their purpose. In a 2002 Columbia Journalism Review article, Brent Cunningham wrote: “Maybe the debate over what journalism schools should teach has never been settled because it shouldn’t be. If journalism is about making sense of the world, and the world is always changing, then there should always be people searching for ways to make journalism better.”

And some might argue that this goal has greater urgency in the 21st century. Along with new media come new obstacles, new challenges and new distractions that render well-trained journalists all the more relevant.

The blogosphere, sound-byte mania, diminished profit margins, consolidation and staff cutbacks and the never-ending deadlines created by a 24-hour news cycle — are circumstances that often conspire against quality journalism.

Even more than losing their jobs, today’s journalists fear not being able to do their jobs right, according to an April/May 2008 article in the American Journalism Review by Carl Sessions Stepp. Long-standing elements such as truthfulness, independence and accuracy may be given shorter shrift in the age of new media.

In addition, audiences’ understanding of what constitutes journalism is being increasingly conflated with “the media” at large.

“Everybody has a voice now because they have access to a computer, and that’s great,” Banaszynski said. “But journalism has a place that cannot be replicated with citizens jumping in on their free time.
“We have to stand up and be heard in the cacophony that is part of the whole open blogosphere.”
Thorson draws another distinction.

“So many people say to me: What do you think of (FOX News host) Bill O’Reilly as a journalist?” she said. “And my answer is that he’s not a journalist. He doesn’t adhere to any of those qualities as a journalist.”

This is part of Thorson’s explanation for why journalism school is so important. Without explicit training, she said, it’s easy for practitioners to miss out on the principles, ethics and skills that distinguish quality journalism from everything else.