21st Century Journalism: The New Curriculum
EDITOR'S NOTE: In December 1999, John Burks, acting chair of the Journalism Department, traveled halfway around the world to participate in the Second Journalism Academic Annual Conference on "Thai Press in the Next Century" in Bangkok. Here is the text of his speech.
By 1996, the Department of Journalism at San Francisco State University, where I teach, had earned a strong national reputation.
Our student newspaper and student magazine consistently won top awards in regional, statewide and national contests. Our students consistently won top awards for their writing and photography.
They were in demand for internships on newspapers, magazines, and online websites. They competed successfully against students from more prestigious universities.
Our department often turned up in stories about the top-ten or top-dozen American journalism programs --on the basis, to quote the Columbia Journalism Review, that our graduates "hit the ground running."
In other words, they were so well prepared for careers in journalism that they immediately performed at high standards without need of additional on-the-job training. Probably as a result of this, considerably more than half our graduates succeeded in finding work in journalism--a record few other American journalism programs can match.
Every year, dozens of recruiters from the national broadcast networks, the top regional and national newspapers, leading magazines, and up-and-coming websites visited our department, seeking to hire our best.
Yet we, the journalism faculty, were not satisfied.
This dissatisfaction, and the self-study and re-conceptualization it inspired, has caused some colleagues in the press and some colleagues in journalism education to wonder aloud whether we have gone crazy.
They fear we are moving too fast to embrace Internet journalism.
Sometimes, when the wheels of academia grind slow, I fear we are not moving fast enough.
Until recently, ours was a traditional all-print journalism program. We had only gingerly begun exploring the Internet for news dissemination. We were nagged by the probability that with the dawning of the 21st century ours might remain "one of the great journalism departments of the 1980s."
Here we were, bordered by Silicon Valley to the south and Multimedia Gulch to the east, dazzled by the Digital Revolution exploding in our own back yard... And too immersed in print-on-paper to get on board.
That wasn't all we were missing.
In all the best American newsrooms, writers and editors were entering into a new way of relating: A "coaching" approach, augmented by writing workshops and seminars, was gaining terrific results.
This was radically different from the way we, the faculty, remembered our formative days in the profession. Instead of barking out orders, the best editors now sit down with their reporters to shape stories. Instead of shouting disparagement at reporters, these editors collaborate to sharpen the writing.
Encouragement and support were replacing authoritarianism.
We thought "coaching" might represent a better way of teaching. But how could we move beyond the traditional stand-and-lecture style? Was it possible to coach a classroomful of students?
Fact is, we had been considering curriculum revision since the early 1990s, exploring these and other questions. But it was all talk, little change. We were too busy teaching to make the necessary moves. By 1996, we knew we needed help--and where better to turn than the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Poynter is an organization devoted to helping working professionals improve their craft, and to helping journalism educators pass along the tradition to their students.
Several of our faculty had flown to Florida to participate in Poynter programs. Indeed, I had earlier won a joint Poynter-Associated Press Fellowship for the teaching of journalistic writing. Our faculty is comfortable with both Poynter's rigor and its professionalism.
This latter - professionalism -- is key. The San Francisco State faculty is unusual in that nearly all of us come from long careers in journalism, rather than coming up through the ranks of academia. We are journalists who teach.
Our university confers what is called "doctoral equivalency" -- the equal of Ph.D.'s--based on our professional experience. But the university sets a high standard; one's career experiences must surpass what one would gain in a Ph.D. program. In that regard, our faculty earned their stripes at such pillars of American journalism as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, CBS, the Black Star photo agency, Time magazine, to name a few.
My own 20-year professional career, for instance, includes stints as a correspondent for Newsweek magazine, managing editor for Rolling Stone magazine, investigative reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, editor-in-chief of San Francisco Focus, the leading regional magazine in the San Francisco Bay Area, authorship of five books and hundreds of freelance articles.
After being seduced into teaching in the early 1980s, I continued editing magazines, freelancing, consulting, and do to this day.
I point this out because my background and experience typifies our faculty: journalists who teach. We did not learn about the profession theoretically; we lived it, and continue to live it. Thus our dedication to preparing students for journalism as it is actually practiced.
In late 1996, we made a proposal to the Poynter Institute to spend a year working with them to redefine our curriculum, and, happily, Poynter agreed. Our one-year project, "Redefining the Journalism Curriculum," began in June 1997, when Poynter flew us all to Florida for a week-long retreat.
That's right--Poynter flew ten of us round-trip across the United States, and paid for our hotel rooms for a week. They paid for everything. Poynter is richly endowed; they subsequently flew some of us back to Florida during our project, and flew several of their staff to San Francisco to work with us.
Our week in Florida was an intense reality check. Under the guidance of the Poynter faculty, we re-thought and re-conceptualized virtually everything we knew and believed about journalism.
Early, we decided we could not abandon the basics: The fundamental building blocks of journalism. The great newspaper editor Henry Bayard Swope said: "The first duty of a newspaper is to be accurate. If it be accurate, it follows that it is fair."
Nor would we turn away from the counsel of the 17th century British statesman John Sheffield: "Of all those arts in which/the wise excel/Nature's chief masterpiece/is writing well." We would remain sticklers in pursuit of the well-turned phrase grounded in solid reporting and research.
As faculty we are relentless on such matters as accuracy and well-crafted writing. We constantly ask for rewrites. We demand that student work meets professional standards of publishability. Fortunately, we attract journalism majors willing to endure what we demand.
At Poynter we agreed to maintain a strong emphasis on teaching journalistic ethics and the critical importance to our society of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which protects press freedom.
In our country, one cannot really practice journalism lacking a profound sense of the importance of allowing every voice to be heard. Senior American journalist Walter Cronkite expressed it well: "Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy."
We reaffirmed our belief in practicing a journalism of social responsibility.
We agreed upon a new focus on urban journalism, directing our reporting students to cover society's underdogs--the disempowered.
In an effort to change the culture and complexion of American newsrooms, my department created the Center for the Integration and Improvement of Journalism a decade ago. The idea was to shake up the priesthood. To populate American newspapers and magazines with non-traditional professionals whose concerns would relate to a broader segment of the public.
Many of our journalism majors have returned to the university after abandoning other careers. Their average age is 27, and they represent all the ethnicities who have converged in America. Those who graduate are determined to enter the profession and committed to do what it takes to get there. Those who are not committed quickly "wash out."
The San Francisco State journalism faculty is dedicated to teaching our students to think for themselves: to arrive at their own concept of what is newsworthy, and what will best serve the interests of their readers. There's no point in asking them to copy what past generations of journalists have done; their most critical task is learning how to address their own generation.
For this reason, we never tell our students what they must publish. Our role is to help them decide that for themselves. We serve as their advisors, their coaches. Student reporters, photographers and editors are free to ignore our advice, and frequently they do.
Do they ever make mistakes? Of course they do. We believe they learn best from their published errors. There are powerful lessons to be learned from writing a retraction, or, perhaps worse, from a typographical error staring back at you from a headline.
Next time you will think twice, even three times, to avoid the embarrassment.
Maryland educator Philip F. Gainous eloquently expressed the necessity to imbue young journalists with freedom: "Instead of putting restrictions on , we should be sure to help them handle their responsibilities and give them the freedom to fly."
We decided to add two new courses that relate specifically to the Information Age, and both of which are being offered next semester, in Spring 2000.
One is a one-unit course called Digital Skills for News, which acquaints students with online news research, with database and spreadsheets, with design software, and more. Many news organizations now require these skills, and within another five years, our research indicates, all will.
Our other new entry for Spring 2000 is called Visual Storytelling, a three-unit course we will soon require all majors to take. With the dawning of multimedia, it becomes incumbent on all journalists -- not just photographers and designers -- to present stories in image and text. For us, the days of reporters conceiving of news simply as a parade of words is ending.
It is our embrace of digital journalism that has proved upsetting to old-guard newspaper traditionalists, who view the World Wide Web as both a threat and a sham.
The excesses and indiscretions of journalistic amateurs and wanna-bes -- of whom Matt Drudge, of the Drudge Report, is the most dramatic example -- provide significant fuel for this argument.
"Cyberspace ...is as adept at spreading rumor and innuendo as it is in transmitting facts--and it is often blind to the distinction," Elizabeth Weise, correspondent for USA Today, has warned.
"The Information Age could leave us with no information at all," asserts Washington Post reporter Joel Achenbach, "only assertions."
Warnings worth heeding. But online journalism is becoming an increasingly powerful force. At its best, it serves its public at least as well as its print counterparts.
No print publication covers the computer industry with greater verve and accuracy than Cnet's News.Com. And no print publication could begin to match News.Com's speed, often "chasing" breaking developments through five and six stories in one news day.
Mercury Center, the pioneering site of the San Jose Mercury, is a model of responsiveness to its readers, and its full-length treatments often convey far more information than there's room for in the newspaper.
Salon, (http://www.salonmagazine.com) which began as a sort of monthly online magazine, stepped up its tempo to match the Internet, moving to a weekly format. Today it moves even faster. Salon represents almost a contradiction in terms -- something like a daily magazine, capable of dealing out attitude and analysis, reporting and writing at a rapid-fire pace that leaves print periodicals in its dust.
David Weir, founder of Salon, explains: " are no longer responsible for the final word. We're responsible for the first word."
The Internet already burns bright with a new style of journalism. Yet, as is obvious to all observers, this is only the beginning. With technological advances that surely lie ahead, the Internet will one day deliver wonders in news presentation that we can only dream about today.
My colleagues at San Francisco State and I are aware that we are preparing our graduates for a most uncertain media future.
Will the Internet make newspapers obsolete?
Will newspapers and the Internet and the broadcast industry form an indissoluble partnership, each delivering what it delivers best in concert with the rest?
Can the astounding explosion in the number and circulation of magazines continue in this new media environment?
Interesting points for discussion, certainly. I would be totally skeptical of anyone who claims to have the ultimate answers.
Our solution at San Francisco State is not to declare print or the Internet or broadcast news the winner. Instead we are creating a brand-new kind of student publication to replace our present line-up of student newspaper, student magazine and student online new site.
It combines elements of all existing media. It debuts in Fall 2000.
Called the Golden Gate Xpress (an homage to the Golden Gater newspaper, which it replaces), our new periodical will have both a digital face and a print face.
Online, it will publish daily. Its print component will publish in tabloid/magazine format weekly.
Student reporters and photographers will shoot and write for each version of Xpress, and sometimes both at once. The same reporter, for example, might chase developments on a political controversy Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, writing a series of shorter breaking news reports online, and prepare a longer story looking into long-range implications for the Thursday paper.
Requirements for writing (and photographing) online differ from the conventions of print, and we are confident students will learn a great deal by having to perform in both environments.
We believe their experience on Xpress will give them the sort of flexibility they will need to confront tomorrows media frontiers, where it is likely journalists will work in several formats.
And, in the short run, the good news is that upon graduating they will be able to command significantly higher incomes.
The media magazine Brill's Content recently carried a short item comparing starting levels of pay for beginning journalists fresh out of university with degrees in communications or journalism in the USA.
Those who enter broadcast news start at $18,000-plus.
Those who enter print journalism, newspaper or magazine, start at $24,000-plus.
Those who enter online journalism start at $30,000-plus.
Actually, I want to amend that final figure, localizing it to the San Francisco Bay Area, where online journalists are more likely to start at $40,000 to $45,000.
There's more to it than the paycheck, of course. Many of us are convinced that online journalism represents a new order of news delivery.
It means that those who live in the hinterlands where timely newspaper circulation is impractical can receive news as quickly and fully as their big-city brothers and sisters. This is already happening in South Africa, where citizens in outlying regions suddenly find themselves in touch with the world with a simple click of their mouses.
Globally, the effect is similar. The Web knows no borders. In the 21st century, citizens of all nations will tap into the latest news from all corners of the planet, uncensored by local authorities who might prefer to keep them in the dark.
Of all people, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, seems to grasp the implications of this admirably well. "In a free society," she has said, "we want the spread of information to the widest audience. It's going to be more and more difficult to keep the truth out because of the Internet."
At San Francisco State, we want our graduates prepared to play their part in this revolution.
Our curriculum restructuring goes beyond what most journalism programs in the USA have attempted. This I know from our colleagues at the Poynter Institute, who are quick to assure us that San Francisco State is running at, or near, the head of the pack.
But we are not alone. The University of Florida, runs a robust multimedia news laboratory that predates ours. And just a few days ago I read a Freedom Forum story about a remarkable development at the University of Kansas School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Their new service is called Digital Jayhawk, offering its users a customized mix of news and information culled from the student newspaper, TV station, radio station and university databases.
After users dictate preferences as to what sort of news each prefers to receive, they begin receiving a personalized version of what they want on their computer screens.
Digital Jayhawk director Christopher Ryan says: "We are trying to build a news management system that retains the best of traditional media's quality control, while giving the flexibility to distribute news in as many ways as possible. We see this as media convergence in action."
As we ponder the future of journalism, it may be tempting to wonder whether, say, the University of Kansas or San Francisco State University is more nearly on the right path.
Avoid that temptation.
The important thing about both the Kansas program and ours and dozens more digital pioneers across the planet is that we are equipping our students with the tools they will need to create a 21st century media we can only begin to imagine in these dwindling days of the 20th century.
One thing of which I am certain is that this no time to stand pat, no time to pretend that tomorrow can take care of itself.
As journalists we are presented with a rare opportunity, one that does not come to every generation: the opportunity to play a part in creating our own future.
In conclusion, as we consider the promise of the Information Age, let us heed the words of the American folk singer and visionary Bob Dylan:
"He not busy being born is busy dying."
