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some not so encouraging news
There's a very interesting article in the 10/16 issue of Rolling Stone
about
journalism schools (discouragingly titled "The slow, sad sellout of
journalism schools) for anyone who has wondered (and may still be
wondering) what they're doing here (my apologies to the none j-school
people in the class).
Among the article's "highlights"(?) are:
* the job outlook for j-school grads (though we all probably knew this
already)
*brief snipet with NC State comm. professor Robert Entman about his "new
information profession" theory--that info professionals should seek
smaller audiences and provide them with info tailored to their wants and
needs, which means "abandoning physical newspapers in favor of the
Internet or some future electronic delivery system," enabling audiences
to "never
have to confront the 'news' as interpreted by some journalistic
gatekeeper."
[I'm curious what other people think about this brand of information
dissemination and whether it really needs to be adopted to the exclusion
of traditional methods. Personally, I don't think it's in anyone's best
interests to have this be *the* way news and/or information is delivered,
but that's just me.]
*the trend towards integrated communications curricula at many j-schools,
in which the journalism aspect is becoming increasingly indivisible from
the corporate communications aspect of journalism and mass comm. programs
(and from corporate pandering, for that matter)
UNC's not mentioned at all in the article, which could be good or bad.
The article doesn't go into much depth about the new media aspect of
journalism and
journalism education, but overall it touches
on a lot of the issues a lot of us in this program get rather discouraged
about, some of which are just as applicable to online
journalism. Ultimately, the article says, the issue is "how to teach
students to think about power and powerful institutions: Do you confront
the Pentagon, or do you coddle it?" It's a question that Flora's talk
Thursday raised for me when I started thinking about how huge media
conglomerates are becoming and what impact this is going to have on
jounalism and the quality of content made available.