Why We Teach Journalism to Specialists, Instead of the Other Way Around
I’ve been saying that journalists have to step up their game to become experts in their beats, not just reporters. they will need to advocate solutions based up on their findings, not just echo quotes and pose problems. I’ve been saying that acts of journalism can be committed by anyone, just as someone can cook like a chef without being a professional chef. So to be a professional journalist, you have to be more… because experts can become journalists on their own.
Around the same time, the Knight Foundation and the Carnegie Corp. were pouring more than $6 million into 11 journalism schools for curriculum reform. By the time they reported on the initiative in 2011, none of the schools had changed much beyond adding some interesting specialty courses. They were still producing general-assignment reporters, not deeply specialized correspondents. In fact, quite the opposite occurred at some places: Columbia used the funding to design a new Master of Arts program that teaches mid-career journalists a range of subjects, but, as Dean Nick Lemann wrote, “What may have been somewhat sacrificed is (a) focus on the traditional beat reporting that had been Columbia’s hallmark.” Now, the University of Toronto is cultivating specialized journalists in a different way and is on the verge of some striking results. In only eight weeks, more than 125 people from around the world have told us they’re applying for one of 10 Fellowships in Global Journalism, a program we’ve designed specifically for scientists, economists, business professionals, health professionals and other specialists who want to work as journalists in their own fields.
(Source: pbs.org)
