Iowa Remarks
Dr. Charles C. Self
The University
of Oklahoma
These are exciting and challenging times for journalism education in the
United States. And with challenge comes opportunity—so these are also times
of great opportunity.
We are challenged on three sides: journalism is changing; higher education is changing and the discipline of journalism itself is changing.
Clearly the field of journalism is changing. Corporate consolidation, new media technology, changes in professional standards, globalization--all challenge journalism educators. We have commitments to core values in our field. We are obligated to teach enduring principles and sound journalistic practice. But in times of change, it is sometimes difficult to sort out lasting best practice from transient bad practice.
Higher education itself is changing. Public commitment to higher education continues to shrink. At many state universities, public funding has dropped below a quarter of expenses. Tuition has increased, faculty salaries (in real dollars) have declined, we use more temporary faculty at even lower wages. We have been asked to raise much of our budget from private funding sources. Some universities have consolidated disciplines with different objectives and traditions into single programs to try to save money.
And our discipline has changed. We have always given our students strong professional skills. And that task is itself growing more complicated by a wide rang of new media technologies that have proliferated new media forms with new standards and new distribution methods. It has also been complicated by what appear to be changes in the profession. Kovach and Rosentiel's popular book The Elements of Journalism lays out the traditional core commitment to truth, verification, independence and relevance. But current practice raises serious questions about what media companies actually hire and promote. It creates a dilemma for journalism education in skills and concepts.
But we also teach a deeper understanding of journalism. News is not simple—not in its production—not in its impact. Year after year, our research reveals a more complex process—a more complex text—a more complex discourse. As our knowledge becomes more sophisticated, we are required to teach more about this textual discourse that we now know functions at the heart of our graduates' work.
Journalism education is caught between conflicting demands for a broad liberal arts education outside of our discipline and a deeper understanding of the complex process that we know news work to be.
These challenges present very practical opportunities. At the most obvious level, we have to find new ways to fund journalism education. Universities today demand a greater commitment from faculty and deans alike in finding resources, especially from private sources. They demand that we do more with less. They demand that students pay more for their educations. They demand that we be more efficient in our teaching. They demand that we find more efficient ways of teaching—including online teaching. Our field demands that we prepare students with new skills to use new technologies. This means more equipment and new classes.
At a deeper level, these changes demand that we rethink the curriculum. How do we teach the practice of journalism and teach critical thought about journalism? How do we integrate new technology? How do we deal with the shifting sands of convergence, blogs, and information on demand: when you want it, where you want it, the way you want it? How do we integrate what we know about media, hyperreality, discourse, text, and news framing with accepted “elements of journalism”—truth, verification, independence, audience loyalty and personal conscience? We certainly have examples of the issue. From politics to courts to hurricane coverage—the examples reinscribe themselves almost daily.
At its deepest level, this challenge involves conflicting ideas about the social contract at the heart of democracy. This challenge is about the constitutionally protected obligation of journalism to inform the public. It is about how journalism, in the hyper-real media discourse of the 21 st century, can remain authentic to its users. How do we teach our students commitment to truth in the polarized, hyper-real world of media spin—when truth is measured against a complex system of symbols whose referents are themselves symbols quickly and, largely, severed from any “real,” physical referents? How do we ground our students in the pursuit of fact in a world where perception is deliberately manipulated by officials, commentators, and advocates dedicated to severing the relationship between symbol and referent—perception and the Real? How do we teach ethics in a post-modern world dedicated to image?
All of these challenges create, for me, a surge of excitement. They represent opportunities to update our model of journalism education to define and protect core values in ways appropriate to the 21 st century.