A Mess At Medill: 'Basket Case' Education Awaits Journalists

If there's one thing a journalism school needs, it's a good reputation.

Already plagued with being left out of the U.S. News & World Report Graduate Schools guide as well as having little to no visibility on a national level, journalism schools can only rely on the quality of their institution -- and a reputation, especially among the public's disdain for a biased press, is paramount.

So it makes me a little sad to read a few days ago that the faculty and the administration at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism -- you know, arguably one of the "top 3" along with Missouri and Columbia -- is at an impasse in the form of, well, reform.

Chicago Reader's Michael Miner reports that the faculty senate at Northwestern has formally accused the university's administration of abolishing democracy at Medill. Only the worst can come of it, Miner writes:

"The backdrop to this blunt resolution is a series of internal and external audits in recent years that judged Medill--which enjoys seeing itself as a journalism school without equal--as an academic basket case."

A basket case. I'm pretty sure most news organizations try not to hire those! (operative word: "try")

The problem stems from Medill's future vision, Miner writes. "A new curriculum is going to be introduced over the next four years, and although professors have been consulted individually, one told me, 'We don’t vote on anything. We have no vote. Anybody who dissents is labeled "antichange." ' Another outsider heads up the new curriculum project--Mary Nesbitt, who'd been director of the women-in-newspaper-management project at the Media Management Center until Lavine brought her over."

Now I'm not sure of the details surrounding this alleged stifling of democracy, but what I do know is that right or wrong, those involved in this conflict must look at the bigger picture. Northwestern itself has a sterling reputation and its journalism school just as much. To have such a strong conflict -- and escalate it to public levels, even if we're talking about journalists here -- risks a journalism school's reputation. And if we can't trust a journalism school to churn out quality journalists, well, we're really in a pickle then, aren't we.

So, Medill faculty and administration: Please take the time and listen to each other. You're a bunch of people who advocate democracy on the page -- let's start practicing it. Because clearly someone's feeling cheated. And sooner or later, it's going to be the students.

Some of the comments are revealing:

"Current Medill Student" writes that "[Nesbitt] is very happy imposing her viewpoint on others, but, right or wrong, she seems unable or unwilling to listen to anyone else."

Robert Mentzer writes that he "just graduated from Medill's grad school and I found John Lavine's dictatorial management style appalling."

Another current student writes that the administration "has brushed aside all complaints that students currently enrolled in the school are getting a subpar education."

And another: "I feel sad that I, as a Medillian, am finding myself telling students who want to go to Medill to look other places, because of such poor organization and the lack of communication between the administration and professors."

It's hard to say there isn't something wrong when that many current and recent students sense a problem. It might even be damning.

Clearly, I'm a big advocate for the educated journalist. In fact, I'm a big advocate for working together to achieve change, in the form of synergy between journalism schools to raise the discipline's profile. But if we can't depend on our journalism schools to adapt amicably and benefit from withstanding internal and external pressure -- especially those at the forefront like Medill -- the whole system's at risk. In the non-journalism world, it's the equivalent of Harvard suddenly encountering great internal turmoil and tension. And with history as an example (President Summers, anyone?), we all know how well that reflects on the public perception.

As one of my old professors used to tell me: "Find a way." Medill grads out there -- what do you think?

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?