CU-Boulder announces potential closure of journalism school, sparks criticism

When Sarah Golden applied to the University of Southern California’s graduate broadcast journalism program, she wanted to learn technical skills that would win her a job in the field she loves; she didn’t expect the program’s emphasis on storytelling and reporting. “I was under the naive impression that I could already kind of do those things,” she said.

“Since going to a program that has a strong writing and reporting curriculum, I now realize it is more valuable than I could have known.”

When officials at The University of Colorado at Boulder announced that it’s considering replacing its journalism school with an “information, communication and technology” program, they drew fire from journalism educators concerned that the new program will emphasize technological mastery over developing reporting and writing skills––skills seen by many journalism employers and educators as essential.

University officials say the move will better prepare students for jobs in information services, enhancing the value of their degrees and make them more qualified job seekers. But they have not given a clear outline of their plan for the future, and reporting and writing skill development are missing from their announcement.

Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State, worries faculty dysfunction and budget woes are more responsible for the potential restructuring of the journalism school than the push for a new model of journalism education, and that the new model will place technical knowledge ahead of writing and reporting skills.

Bugeja, in an article printed in the September 13 issue of Inside Higher Ed, wrote that Paul Voakes, dean of journalism at CU, rebranded the likely changes in his department as a transition and opportunity, rather than as a failure in order to “save face.”

Voakes wrote in an August 26 open letter to students and graduates that the University “has begun a review process that will enable our transformation into a truly cutting-edge program.”

Two separate committees have begun the “discontinuance” process that determines whether the University should close a department. CU officials expect the process to be completed by the end of the year.

Len Ackland, a professor at the University of Colorado and co-founder of the school’s Center for Environmental Journalism, worries that Voakes’ vision neglects reporting and writing education. “In these discussions about the closure of the journalism school, journalism education is missing from the pronouncement of the chancellor,” He said.

“The problem is, this process is really opaque. We don't know what this new thing looks like.”

Establishing a school of information and communications technology is not new to journalism and mass communication instruction. There are more than 30 similar programs at universities nationwide, including University of California at Berkeley, Cornell and Rutgers.

At the University of California at Berkeley, the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism is the only degree-awarding journalism education program on campus. Though it collaborates with the UC Berkeley School of Information––a program seen as CU’s model––the two programs have no formal ties.

The two schools are likely to remain separate. In a September 2 article in Inside Higher Ed, Berkeley’s journalism dean Neil Henry said of journalism education that, “We believe very strongly in the independent integrity of this enterprise on campus.”

Media employers like Mike Wagner look for applicants who have a mixture of storytelling, reporting and technical skills that will make them competitive in the workplace. As Manager of Information Content at SourceMedia Group News, Wagner looks for storytellers “you don't mind looking at and listening to as they tell a story,” but who “also need to have equally strong reporting skills.”

“You have to tell me a story about the facts instead of just puking out facts in a story.”

Shannon McDonald, an executive producer at the University of Iowa’s Daily Iowan TV, works with reporters and technicians with a range of skill levels and educational backgrounds. “You can essentially teach anyone how to use the camera,” she said.

But as the producer of a student-run television station, she prefers educated and experienced reporters, whom she says find and produce better stories. “You need to dig and look for the bigger story that may be hidden,” she said. Storytelling and reporting––“those are the skills you learn in the classroom.”

“You can’t develop the things it takes to become a really good journalist all on your own.”

A letter I wrote to Katie about why I'm still on Facebook

I suppose the new privacy changes implemented by Facebook are concerning. Yes, I'm a Facebook user and yes, I'm aware of Facebook's cavalier attitude towards my personal information; but I also understand that at its heart, Facebook is a marketing tool designed to make money.

No, I've not removed information from my profile for any reason other than to better express who I am to people who are interested. If anything, I've updated and even added to the information there with the express intention to (again) better express who I am to people who are interested. Does it concern me that my email address may fall into unscrupulous hands? From time to time, yes, it does. And am I aware that by being terribly specific about my interests––from the books I read to the TV shows I watch to with whom I've shared romantic relationships––I'm enhancing the ability of marketers to better target me as a consumer? Of that I'm keenly aware. So why do I seem to be choosing to expose myself?

From an early stage in my use of the Internet, I'd been warned about where I put passwords, to whom I give my email address and credit card numbers, etc., because even in the mid to late 1990's, people had learned to take advantage of other people's naivete about those kinds of things. I'm still wary of phishing schemes, pop-ups and digital tiger traps in general.

But a lot of the targeted advertising we see on the Internet is based on keystroke analysis and algorithms that log what links we click on, the pages we visit regularly––everything. The Internet is no longer a place where we can move freely and anonymously: Just because you haven't signed into your Google-based cloud computing account with the name on your Social Security card doesn't mean people who want to advertise to you or people who want your personal information don't have the data they need to target you. The Internet is a panopticon, sort of like Great Britain.

That said, the Internet is playing less and less of a role in my life. While I appreciate the connectedness Facebook offers, that connectedness isn't as satisfying as it used to be, and increasingly I'm coming to see that spending exorbitant amounts of time online isn't as satisfying as it was in the past. I find myself reading more and spending more time with friends. I'm more productive. At some point, I decided that the Internet has its place in my life, but pleasures should be tangible, so I should seek them out in the real world.

Concurrent with that trend is my feeling that the Internet isn't the powerful democratizing force some people claim it is (and for more expansion on that point, I might refer you to "The Myth of Digital Democracy"). I've noticed that the "open forum" quality of the Internet doesn't translate to action in the real world. Take, for example, the iPad: When the iPad was released, Apple put strictures on what applications can and cannot be run on that piece of equipment; and while open source advocates and armchair democrats bitched and moaned in their blogs about what is obviously tyrannical behavior on the part of Apple and the evil Steve Jobs, there's been exactly zero market resistance to the iPad, which has been selling like hotcakes.

My second gripe with the Internet as a whole is the false notion that anyone can have a voice there. Obviously, established blogs and websites get more traffic than amateur blogs; but what I think escapes most observers is just how wide that rift actually is. Sites like ESPN, which is a subsidiary of a huge, multi-national corporation, get hundreds of thousands of hits every day. By contrast, my personal blog––which no doubt contains more incisive observations about society and keener insights into relevant topics than ESPN––is lucky to garner 50 hits when I post something new. The Internet isn't any more efficient or effective a marketplace of ideas than a soapbox in Times Square, and online speech is as subject to branding and corporatism as any other medium.

Facebook was supposed to be some MySpace 2.0. When I first joined, it had the reputation for having more interesting features than MySpace without the SWMs seeking underage females to lock in their basements. And for the most part, it remains that way. It was this eForum that connected real people in a virtual world, and that was cool to us because, you know, it was online and shit. But at the time, we all assumed that Facebook was this innocent place where people could keep in touch and engage in the pithy gossip that constitutes the remainder of the Internet that isn't porn. And this assumption feels like a slap in the face now that we're beginning to appreciate Facebook's modus operendi.