A word about Columbia J-School's 'Existential Crisis'

Former New York Sun editor Erica Orden wrote an interesting post today on New York magazine's Daily Intel blog entitled "Columbia J-School’s Existential Crisis," detailing the difficulties that the school is having adjusting to what it calls a "new media mindset."

Orden writes:

The media bloodbath hasn’t made for happy days at Columbia Journalism School. When the Times recently announced that its new, hyperlocal blog experiment “The Local” would be assisted by journalism students not from Columbia but from the City University of New York, you could practically hear the collective gasp echoing in the hallowed halls uptown. CUNY? Since when does CUNY trump Columbia? Well, since digital journalism became the single ray of hope on an otherwise dark media horizon, and Columbia’s vaunted ability to train students as print reporters began to appear obsolete. And so the school is trying to change. Fast.

To back up that statement, Orden notes the arrival of Bill Grueskin, former managing editor of WSJ.com, and the upcoming change in curriculum to focus more on digital endeavors -- which has, according to Orden, "raised the ire of some professors, particularly those closely tied to Columbia’s crown jewel, RW1."

“Fuck new media,” the coordinator of the RW1 program, Ari Goldman, said to his RW1 students on their first day of class, according to one student. Goldman, a former Times reporter and sixteen-year veteran RW1 professor, described new-media training as “playing with toys,” according to another student, and characterized the digital movement as “an experimentation in gadgetry.”

Orden goes on, accurately and with great detail, as to the "zero-sum" struggle of new media vs. old media resources; of hiring professors who know the former better than the latter and training those who know the latter and not the former.

Orden details the struggle at Columbia deftly:

Part of the problem is the perception that the situation is a “a zero-sum game,” as one person put it, where adding lessons in video production or law for bloggers will dilute or displace the school’s long-heralded focus on journalism’s core precepts: concise prose, ethical reporting, and sophisticated editorial sensibilities.

But the hurdles are practical as well as philosophical. Because many of the tenured professors haven’t worked in new media themselves, their classes require the addition of tech-savvy adjuncts, which has Lemann worried about “blowing out the budget.”

Orden wraps up the story with a sentiment I think all of us can agree on: that the real issue isn’t whether j-schools can afford to change, but that they can’t afford not to.

I believe this article reveals, faithfully, the administrative and honest struggle that journalism schools are having coping with a sudden rush of new media. The temptation to "dive in" headfirst without figuring out how to apply it, or without looking at return on investment for new storytelling methods. The struggle to convince "old media" journalism professors that new media is worthwhile, and vice-versa. 

It's a game of politics, but I think everyone is equally concerned for the same reasons: j-schools must continue cranking out the best journalists. But how?

I believe this article is framed incorrectly, however. The meat of the article is accurate, but the lede and the style used to make the point is misleading.

I've written before about my experience in the new media program at Columbia, and I mean in no way to be an apologist or defender of Orden's claims about the school. But I feel the obligation to clarify some of her inferences about and references to the school using the reality I experienced there.

• The CUNY vs. Columbia "slight" in the lede is a creative way to play off Columbia's establishment position as the training ground for the New York Times, but Orden infers, without directly saying so, that Columbia has suddenly snapped out of its print mindset to catch up to the new media forerunners. 
  
  That's simply not true. The new media program has existed at Columbia, albeit in a much smaller form, since the 1990s. Much of its development is thanks to chief new media evangelist (and dean of students) Sree Sreenivasan, who has taught at the school since 1993. The program has evolved over time with the technology it covers, and has in recent years seen a noticeable bump in students who apply for the "new media" program. So it seems to me that the program has changed to address student demands, rather than trends in journalism directly.

• Secondly, Orden credits Grueskin with that change, who arrived on June 4, 2008. I don't know firsthand just how much Grueskin has contributed behind the scenes. What I can say, however, is that the curriculum change for new media students was in the works long before he arrived, because Sreenivasan showed us a working draft of it sometime late that spring. 
  

• As for RW1 -- Columbia's core reporting class, the nuts and bolts course -- Columbia "webified" the course for the first time for the school year 2007-2008, adding a content management system so that students could post their stories. Many of the difficulties Orden details about convincing old-time professors certainly do exist. However, Orden singles out one professor as an example of the skepticism -- and I must take issue with that. 
  
  I had the pleasure of taking a course from the professor that was singled out, and we produced a fine website for the class. In no way was my imagination limited by the professor with regard to that site. It's true that several professors at Columbia are new media tone deaf. And why should they be anything different? Some of them, particularly those of an advanced age, don't have a perceived need to be trained in new media. But that's not to say they aren't receptive to using it, even if they don't understand how to do it. 
  
  What's more, to debunk one of my own points, some of the oldest professors at Columbia are actively involved in the new media program. And I think that shows a lot of heart and willingness to learn, if nothing more.

• Finally -- and most notably for Orden's lede -- the new media coordinator that she quotes was, prior to taking a full-time position at Columbia this past May, a new media adjunct at both CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and Columbia. For someone trying to start a new media war in her lede, that's a serious omission -- as are the other adjuncts who pull double-duty at both schools.
  

But Orden knows that -- she graduated from Columbia's j-school in 2006.

Still, I think the takeaway from Orden's post is far more valuable than the clarification I attempted to provide above. In every journalism school -- like as in every printed publication -- there's a generational, fight-or-flight, ROI-questioning debate about the place and weight with which we should approach new media and the storytelling techniques it provides. 

And for that reason, I believe we're all in this together -- it's not at all a race to be the "new media" king. Especially if the publications at the bleeding edge of adopting new media prefer computer science grads to journalism grads. 

Among j-school grads, I believe there's a kinship, a knowing bond that has developed from being in the experimental incubator together -- be it in New York, Missouri, California or Illinois (or Arizona, or Ohio, or...). From what I've seen, no one knows the answer to the great "new media" question -- especially j-schools. That's because the publications the schools are supposed to prepare their students for don't know, either. 

I don't want to appear as though I look through rosy lenses -- I have my criticisms of the journalism programs I have graduated from. But they seem to be far more prepared to handle the change than most of the publications I've worked for.

The policy is that there is no policy. As a journalist, I think that's wildly exciting.

UPDATE: Via Twitter, NYU's Jay Rosen directed me toward these meeting minutes from an NYU journalism school think session. It's a revealing look into what journalism educators are grappling with at this moment.

Hard Copies of Newspapers, and the State of Journalism at NYU.

Is New York University behind the times in journalism education?

NYU student Alana Taylor made journalism news headlines last week with an interesting missive on PBS MediaShift about the journalism program at the university, once referred to merely as the "Department of Journalism" at NYU and now branded as the "Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute" at NYU (with revamped curriculum to match), by stating that, in so many words, the NYU journalism curriculum doesn't serve the new media needs of a Generation Y student.

An undergraduate at NYU, Taylor blasts the paper-only mindset of the school, lamenting that she has to bring a hard copy of the New York Times with her to class, among other old-media, MSM things. The reaction around the journalistic blogosphere, acute and forceful, turned the barrel back on her for complaining. "You are wrong," "back to the NY Times," "learn how to write news" and "take some classes" were among the responses, criticizing her for being critical and generally missing her point entirely.

Well, this whole thing is not about her. It's about NYU.

A card-carrying Gen-Y'er, I found my love for journalism at NYU as an undergraduate, like Taylor. But when I attended, the curriculum was ad hoc at best, lenient and directionless with no ultimate goal. Had I not joined the school paper, the Washington Square News, I would never have been able to truly flex my journalistic muscle -- albeit in the old-style way, as in hard news -- nor befriend people on the same path, since the NYU journalism department was one of the largest majors at the university while I attended. My classes generally did not account for the computer as anything more than a tool for research. To most, it was not a publishing platform.

But, as evidenced in Taylor's description, NYU journalism is much better off than when I attended just two years ago. Yet it's clearly still not up to par.

Like Taylor, I'm new media-inclined, and I, too, blogged and "plugged in" as part of my journalistic experience there, mostly outside of class. I, too, complained about bringing a hard copy of the Times to class, because I read it online.

So, with all the "convergent" changes NYU has made, it is a valuable critique that the department's -- sorry, institute's -- new media instruction pales to the competition. Sure, Taylor is an undergraduate, and that group in particular receives far less specific training than the graduate level.

But when I attended NYU, the only new media class I took was called, amusingly, "digital journalism" -- and it was a blog-focused affair that looked at the ethics, practices, writing style and issues of online news and opinion taught by the affable Patrick Phillips, of I Want Media (another was taught by the media storm of a man that is Jay Rosen). And this was all in 2006.

So, in two years -- light years for the Internet, and just look at any webpage from 2006 to see it -- NYU's new media outlook hasn't changed that much. It's lamentable.

I was lucky enough to attend Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism after NYU, for new media. And one of the reasons I attended was to do everything I wasn't able to only had a taste of as an undergraduate at NYU. Video, audio, interactive design, blogging -- that was something I used to do in my spare time. At Columbia, I did it for my degree. At NYU, it was a grand experiment in an entire class blogging.

NYU's undergraduates either study "general and investigative reporting" or "media criticism," and graduates study one of 10 subject-related fields. Columbia's M.S. graduates study "print," "broadcast," "magazine" or "new media," and it's M.A. graduates delve into the subject-specific matter.

I don't intend to compare NYU's undergraduate curriculum with Columbia's graduate instruction as apples-to-apples. I merely want to show how radically different an experience can be in just one year's time, from one school to the next. How different an approach to journalism education can be with regard to categories.

Categories or not, Taylor's taking to the challenge by learning on her own, like I did. Good for her, I say. She knows she's ahead of the curve anyway, and she's getting an education by learning what she doesn't like.

So why is NYU behind? Allow me to posture. From what I've seen as a student, lots of staff changes in recent years, with a revamped curriculum (undergrad and grad) and a new building entirely. NYU's journalism school is a department within the greater College of Arts and Science, so it does not have the dedicated resources that it would if it were a separate school, instead bureaucratic red tape and a lack of funds. The department's never had much of an identity (a "department" is now "the institute," which helps greatly) and, given its size, hardly any community at all, with a serious lack of alumni relations (and I mean no disservice to the single alumni coordinator).

I was speaking with a former editor-in-chief of WSN, and we agreed that, had we not joined the paper, which is (was) not promoted by the department at all, we would never have made journalism student friends. Which is hard to believe, since j-students are a tight-knit, give-a-helping-hand group of professionals. When I simultaneously created NYU and Columbia journalism groups on LinkedIn, the popular networking site, the "join rate" of Columbia's dwarfed NYU's, even though Columbia is a much smaller program and lacks undergraduates entirely. (To date, Columbia's has 130 members, while NYU's a paltry 24).

The reason I say all this is because NYU's journalism program is in the midst of profound change -- much like the kind of change newspapers are going through all over the country, one of identity and mission. The department is turning a corner, slowly, but it remains to be seen if Taylor's concerns about new media are a part of the new direction of the department. Perhaps there is no reliable system of feedback for its own, many, graduates. Sure, NYU now has great new facilities for such instruction, but is it actually a part of the practical, bootstrap, nuts-and-bolts instruction? Apparently not, according to Taylor. And that's a real shame, because there exists few journalists in this world that don't have digital copies of their clips these days.

I don't fault anyone for not knowing Mashable -- as popular as it is, it's easy to miss. But to not account for a journalism student's desire to eventually write for the web -- and not a paper, or magazine, etc. -- that's bad news in my book.

Oh, and you know what, Alana? In all my time at NYU and Columbia, I've only read a paper New York Times twice (I read it several times a day online). Both times, NYU professors were "to blame." But I'm happy I had to, just those couple of times. It's easy to forget how some people read the news.

But there's a vice-versa to that, too.

(Much thanks to Lam Vo and Simon Owens at Bloggasm for the heads-up on this.)

Why The New York Times Might Not Want A Buyout By The Nation's Wealthiest Universities

In today's Chronicle of Higher Education, by former Fortune senior writer Lee Smith:

The time has come for the nation's wealthiest colleges and universities to rescue its leading newspapers — resources almost as vital to higher education's purpose as libraries, laboratories, classrooms, and concert halls. The plan I have in mind would call upon the richest institutions to set aside 3 percent of their endowments to buy The New York Times. That's for a start. Additional purchases of other newspapers by other endowments should follow.

His argument in convincing, with one caveat: who, then, will cover the nation's wealthiest universities? How will the Times cover Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, Columbia, and Penn? (The Ivy League is certainly a favorite topic in the Education section.)

Must we leave it to the Washington Post? Or are they too suspect with their Kaplan higher education ties?

Ahmadinejad, Schmadinejad

Note: This post was also published on The Huffington Post. -Ed.

You know all this coverage of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's appearance at Columbia University?

Well guess what -- it’s all a bunch of baloney.

While everyone from CNN to The New York Times gets caught up in the politics of Ahmadinejad’s remarks, the real story behind the podium is how much this event – wait, pseudo-event -- is a victory for both the Columbia University and Iranian public relations teams.

That’s right: Columbia and Iran 1, U.S. Media Sources 0.

While the press debate in newsprint and over the airwaves whether homosexuals exist in Iran and the existence of the Holocaust, the real story is how Ahmadinejad’s visit to the Ivy League school is a non-event to most people and, in the words of the late Daniel J. Boorstin, a pseudo-event to the press covering it.

According to Boorstin’s definition in his highly-regarded 1961 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America, the Bollinger-Ahmadinejad prizefight met all four requirements of a fluffed-up circus of hot air, er, I mean a pseudo-event:

1) The event is not spontaneous but instead a planned event;

2) It is planted primarily for the media to report on it;

3) The reality of the situation (academic discourse?) is ambiguous;

4) It is intended to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

By this measure, our beloved news outlets shouldn’t have reported on this story at all. Do I even need to ask who reported on the presidents of Turkmenistan, Chile and Malawi who also spoke that day? No, probably not, because Geraldo Rivera was too busy asking people who were locked out of the university’s campus to shove their protest signs in the camera lens.

In just once piece of evidence of this truth, Bollinger’s heated introduction to Ahmadinejad was far more extensive and planned than his introduction for the other three aforementioned foreign heads of state. You can agree with him or not on his take on “academic discourse,” but there’s no denying that his day’s efforts got him leading stories on all the major national and regional news outlets all day.

So who really wins in this scenario? Certainly not the protestors, journalists or average Joe America. But investors in Iran and Columbia trustees? Start rejoicing. That’s coverage that money can’t buy.

My Colleagues Liveblog the President of Iran at Columbia

Want to hear Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Forget The New York Times. Read A President Visits: Ahmadinejad at Columbia, authored by my colleagues and fellow Columbia Journalism students. -Ed.

Columbia J-School Moves Toward New Media, "Tradigital" Journalist

Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism isn't exactly thought of as a school on the bleeding edge. After all, with all of its history and close-ties to mainstream media, it's rarely expected to be the preferred choice of the blogger-cum-citizen journalist set, and of all things, it's headed by a guy who has been deemed the "Pope of MSM."

(In full disclosure, that didn't stop me from attending, however.)

But today I sensed a new change at Columbia, months after Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism decided to revamp the entire curriculum. Today, I was told that the "New Media Newsroom" class for "New Media" majors and interested non-majors (such as broadcast, newspaper or magazine) was under the close watch of Dean Nick Lemann -- yes, the aformentioned Pope -- and a series of affiliated committees with interest in the school. It's the "most watched class," apparently, and "Dean Lemann's baby."

Hmm. For a man who penned "Amateur Hour" in The New Yorker, that's an interesting change, no?

This year, for the first time in the school's history, "New Media" majors were brought in two weeks earlier than newspaper and magazine concentrators to learn production techniques for websites, flash, photography, audio recording and video editing. In addition, the school-wide required Reporting and Writing I class now includes a "web-ified" element to it.

Pulitzer Prize administrator Sig Gissler summed up the outlook perfectly with his own coined term: "The tradigital journalist."

Has the "gray lady" of journalism academe finally come around on the topic of a new journalist guard? Or was Lemann too-quickly judged by more technologically savvy critics such as NYU/PressThink's Jay Rosen and CUNY/BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis?

Is Columbia's perception as a slow-moving traditionalist truly accurate?

I don't know, and due to my affiliation, I'm happy to avoid passing judgment. I await reading others' thoughts. But what I can say is that the tide change is readily apparent in the halls, and it's no secret that students from the others sections have expressed demand for new media skills.

Is Lemann backing down his criticism of amateur journalists in the field by teaching his own students the techniques they use to scoop MSM?

Is Journalism Closer to Seduction or Betrayal? Are Bloggers Unifying?

I recently attended a discussion between journalists on what journalism's role is (for example: are journalists obligated to be the "verifier"? Do we need verification to produce journalism?) and how the journalist is supposed to play the field between the experts and the people. The forum, held at Columbia University, was a jump-off from discussion about the updated version of The Elements of Journalism.

Pretty heady stuff, as usual. We journalists just love to talk about ourselves.

But one question was posed that really perplexed me: Is journalism closer to seduction or betrayal?

The question, posed by longtime broadcast journalist and Columbia Journalism Vice Dean David Klatell, really threw me for a loop. Since when is journalism stuck between those two?

Klatell prefaced the question by explaining that every part of life contains some element of seduction or betrayal. We can be seduced by good food, or betrayed by a city council, or what have you. And I can see his point there. But is it possible for journalism to be stuck in between those two?

The question, posed among a slew of others, quickly was buried by a series of tangential responses and never really re-addressed. But the question was so interesting to me that I wished we were able to come back to it (we were not).

I personally think the question is slanted -- after all, why must journalism be stuck between the two? Can't it have elements of both (i.e. seducing a reader with a headline or lede, betraying a reader by not covering an important topic or not fully reporting a story)? Why one and not the other?

The whole question makes me uncomfortable, but maybe it's just me. What do you think?

Oh, and another question based on what, in my opinion, is a limiting assumption that didn't sit well with me from the discussion:

"Citizen journalists/bloggers are, for the first time in history, atomizing discussion instead of unifying it. Why?"

Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Why We Need Journalism School Rankings

I knew this post would be controversial.

Why wouldn't it be? Ranking colleges and universities has been under fire for years, a convoluted and unnecessarily complex way of measuring a qualitative quality quantitatively. University presidents despise them. Incoming students feed on them. Rankings are seen as the parasite latched onto the Ivory Tower, turning the high-fidelity value of an institution down to a spotty, low-fi MP3 of the real deal.

So why on earth would I suggest to start ranking journalism schools?

Because most journalism schools aren't visible on a national scale.

In a recent, small study posted on Journalism.org, journalism students expressed confidence in their chosen profession, despite its apparent ongoing transformation. And I continue to hear that the popularity of studying journalism in school is on the rise. Hell, the journalism department of my alma mater, NYU, recently moved into an expansive, comprehensive new space next to the headquarters of the once-great Village Voice, complete with a full newsroom, broadcast studio, radio studio, and so on.

Clearly the demand is high. But if you're a student looking to go into journalism, there aren't too many resources to turn to.

An aspiring j-school kid might ask: Which journalism school offers what? Which are better? Where do graduates end up? And what's the difference between communications, mass media and just plain journalism?

If he or she goes and picks up the U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Graduate Schools 2008, they'll find nary a mention of journalism schools among entries for business, law, medicine, engineering, education, science, humanities, fine arts and even library studies. In fact, you have to go back more than a decade to find journalism rankings in USN&WR.

What good are old rankings?

If you are interested in journalism school, you want to get a general sense of the playing field. Most journalists speak highly of their alma mater, so that's not exactly helpful for comparison. Message boards are full of self-proclaimed gurus. And journalism school websites are as full of fluff as those of their parent universities.

So where does the future j-school kid turn?

Using Google, the industrious applicant might find that Columbia, Medill (Northwestern), and Missouri fight for the top journalism honors ("the big three," some like to say). But what about the rest? What about journalism schools at Minnesota? Syracuse? Arizona State? Ball State? Michigan State? Temple? Ohio State? NYU?

Where do they fall?

Before I get a deluge of angry comments, I understand that great journalists can come from "no-name" schools and unethical duds can come from great ones. I'd also like to say that I support the notion that rankings should be released in groups and not single entries (strata, as opposed to a linear order). After all, when colleges are ranked, what distinguishes Princeton from Harvard? Penn State from Maryland? Ignoring all the arguments about the calculation methods for a moment, individual rankings are misleading just by the nature that one entry can follow another by virtue of statistically insignificant differences.

So really, there are two reasons why we need journalism schools to be ranked: First, because many of these schools need visibility beyond their own local spheres (and with an increase in applicants, would in turn benefit from the cash influx); second, because there's a huge difference between the new City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism and the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communication. Yet few people outside the journalism world can distinguish between a school that stresses reporting spot news and one that stresses studying, say, linguistics (because journalism might be a small subset of communication, but certainly not the other way around). But this distinction, as well as the smaller distinction of which school is better at creating newspaper editors than magazine writers or broadcast news anchors, is incredibly important to the aspiring journalism student.

By what measure can we rank these journalism schools? Difficult to say, although I would suggest that we must take note as to who's got a better handle on broadcast, print, new media, radio (which as categories themselves are changing) and so on (maybe publishing, press relations, etc.)

We might want to evaluate the following:

--Facilities
--Length of program
--Student Publications (number or quality, etc.)
--Graduation Rate/Retention
--Placement within X time from graduation
--Selectivity
--GRE score
--Alumni giving rank
--Student/faculty ratio
--Value (or some sort of figure that incorporates the cost of tuition)
--Town/gown relations (maybe not 'town,' but more 'local media')

Of course, these are only initial suggestions. But just seeing journalism schools side-by-side who would otherwise not be compared would expose more applicants to more schools -- and make us compare schools that usually keep to themselves.

The purpose of all this is to strengthen the fragmented network of journalism schools and identity as a whole, as well as encourage a little competition.We're a small bunch -- why aren't we keeping track of ourselves? Why must we rely on word of mouth? And aren't we all trying to get jobs at the same publications?

What if someone who lives in Manhattan wants to attend the University of Montana's School of Journalism? No one's stopping them -- except for the fact that few people know that Montana has their own j-school. I certainly didn't. Doesn't that pique your interest?

I'm told time and time again that Joseph Pulitzer wanted journalism to be as professional and respectable a vocation as law, medicine or business. So why are we left off the page by one of our own publications?

Young Journalists Are Lost - Here's Why.

"There are no jobs in the journalism industry."

"Going to journalism school is a waste of time and money."

"You don't need any prior experience to be a journalist."

I hear this time and time again from naysayers in the industry, and I think it's bullshit. Know why?

Because there are jobs.

Because education is personal.

Because experience teaches lessons.

So many people in the blogosphere (yes, citizen journalists, I'm talking about YOU) dish rails like this all the time. It happens on blogs. It happens in forums. But most of all, it happens in the office and classroom.

This isn't the way to cultivate a new generation. We journalists sure like complaining about ourselves, don't we?

I've heard many big names give speeches about the importance of mentors. And that's great, despite the discrepancy as to if those changes are actually made.

But what are the entry requirements to be a journalist in the 21st century? Is it a college degree? (I think it should be.) Is it an internship? (I think one is good.) Is it a clip portfolio? (I think there should be at least three 300+ word pieces, no matter the publication).

Simply, the editorial journalism industry (note the difference from the media industry) needs to set a basic standard for entry into the field. And I think the generational disconnect between the "All The President's Men"-style journalist - that is, the Ticonderoga-slingin', steno pad-packin' rebel and the current version (the progressive march toward qualification by a mix of academia and craft) - is hindering this notion.

But really, let's get down to the basics: journalists can't even agree on the worth of a journalism education. More than 100 years after Joseph Pulitzer proclaimed that journalism should be a professional education - like that of medicine and law - we can't even decide that it's worth a liberal arts degree.

Hell, if lawyers are hated so much, how come we can hold them in such high esteem? Because they make so much money? (Boy, we hate them, but when shit hits the fan, don't we need them? Doesn't this sound similar to how journalists are perceived?)

Doesn't Brian Williams command a serious paycheck? Doesn't a publisher make solid pay?

This is 2007. College attendance has more than doubled nationwide since the '50s. And journalists can't even agree that a B.A. is necessary!

(I must say, however, that I am not encouraging hardfast rules or quotas. What I'm talking about is the ability for an engineer or a doctor to say, "well yes, generally you need to have a bachelor's degree or have gone to med school or have studied these courses" and for another to agree.)

Plus, there's all those bursting-with-sunshine journalism myths that I've heard most frequently as of late:

-You don't need a B.A. to get started in newspapers.
-You do need a B.A. to get started at a magazine.
-You need to be impossibly prolific to have any shot at a newspaper (Sewell Chang, anyone?)
-You need to be BFF with your superior at a magazine.
-Journalists are paid horribly. Unless you're a news anchor.
-You need to be really "pretty" to be in front of the camera.
-You need to have little or no ties for success - the better to be shipped abroad. That said, you also need to be fluent in eight middle eastern languages.
-You need to live and breathe the topic of your publication. (If you work for Glamour and choose your spouse over a pair of new shoes, you're out.)
-The only thing a journalism degree is good for is to make inroads at an alternative weekly.

And so on.

I'm really tired of hearing this. Journalists are so good at telling me what journalism isn't, and so bad at telling me what journalism is. Is it all to discourage competition? I don't think so, conspiracy theorists.

It's because there is no leadership. Not just on a personal level, as Chip Scanlan has mentioned - but from up on high. There are famous faces of those who practice their craft, but they're in it for them - or so it seems, doesn't it?

Will Katie Couric comment on this blog with her thoughts about her industry? It IS journalism, isn't it?

Maybe not. Maybe it's because the industry is actually guided by businessmen, and not journalists - the Jared Kushner effect. I don't know.

And we can't even decide our thoughts about j-school. Undergraduate or graduate or both? Who's the best - Columbia? Medill? University of Illinois? Newhouse? Cronkite? Scripps? CUNY? (Depends on where you're from, I bet.) And for what - Print? Broadcast? Radio? "New Media"? There isn't even a ranking for it. I know rankings can be stupid and misguided (yes, even USN&WR), but journalism needs them just to increase the awareness that journalism is a SPECIALTY and not just the purgatory that other profession's fallen end up in.

Without any of this guidance, young journalists are going to end up the same way the current generation is - a batch of mixed opinions and an overall lack of guidance for the profession.

Too many editors are worried about profits. Would it hurt so much to convene twice a year and talk about a lost profession?