Campus Revolutionary
Last year, after taking over as the head of Northwestern University's highly regarded Medill School of Journalism, John Lavine vowed to "blow up" the curriculum, changing its emphasis to new media and marketing. Students and alumns have responded with anger and charges of betrayal.
Dean Lavine's opinion about turning out journalism students the old-fashioned way: "It is immoral."
It was a bare-knuckled accusation that seemed suited more for a blue-collar saloon in the bungalow belt than the ivied Evanston campus of Northwestern University. “You lied to me!” the graduate student angrily told John Lavine, the dean of the Medill School of Journalism. “I came here to learn to be a writer,” the student said, explaining that he had chosen Northwestern—and forked over more than $40,000 in annual tuition—because he wanted to hone a flair for writing that would land him at a publication like The New York Times. “But you’re having us do all this video stuff. I didn’t come here for that.”
Lavine scoffed at the notion that he had lied to anyone. At that meeting with disgruntled students during the summer quarter of 2006, he insisted he was acting in the best interests of their budding careers. “It would be unethical for us to educate you to only be able to write,” he said. “It would be like sending you out with your left arm and your right leg tied behind your back.”
The rancor could not have come as much of a surprise. After taking over as the leader of Medill earlier that year, the new dean had vowed to “blow up” the old curriculum at what has long been considered one of the best journalism schools in the country. He declared that students needed to be immersed in “new media”—Web sites, videos, filmstrips, video games, and podcasts. And the new curriculum would emphasize an understanding of “audience”—who the customers are, what they want, how to reach them. The concept of marketing—widely disdained by ink-in-their-veins journalists—would assume a key role in the teaching program.
Lavine’s revolution has set off a year of skirmishing and argument both in Evanston and among the wider community of well-placed alums, and the commotion is likely to culminate this fall when the new curriculum takes full effect. Whatever the merits of the changes, the angst mirrors the sense of uncertainty, even downright fear, in the real world of newspapers and other “old media” outlets. Circulation and advertising have been plummeting at big-city newspapers, owing to the Internet and changing tastes, particularly among the young. The Los Angeles Times, for example, lost about 25 percent of its circulation between 1996 and 2006. The New York Times and Tribune Company, among others, have eliminated hundreds of jobs. It is not impossible to find people making brave predictions about a rosier future for newspapers, but Wall Street has been betting against it. Stock prices at many large newspaper companies are half what they were a few years ago.
Against this backdrop, Dean Lavine argues, it is worse than wrongheaded to continue to turn out journalism students the old-fashioned way, preparing them for disappearing jobs in print publications and giving them little knowledge of the changing demands of consumers. “It is immoral,” Lavine says.
But some faculty members object to training future journalists to be marketers. “Marketing can get dangerously close to pandering,” says a Medill professor who declined to be identified, citing concerns for job security. “I don’t want my students to write to the interests of a particular audience. I simply want them to be competent journalists.”
George Beres, who graduated from Medill in 1955, and later taught in the school and worked as the sports information director, fears a blurring of the line between public relations and journalism. “This business of ‘understanding the audience’ is about manipulating the audience,” he says. He worries that when journalists concentrate on “making their product attractive to the customer,” they might “evade or color subject matter to avoid making it distasteful to the customers.” In Beres’s view, professional journalism has already strayed too far in that direction. One of the consequences, as he sees it, was a failure to investigate the motives and rationale for invading Iraq, especially in the early days of the war, when patriotism among “customers” was at such a high level.
If postings on the Internet are any measure, plenty of students at Medill are furious about the changes. “How can I possibly be going to ‘the best journalism school in the country’ if we don’t learn writing,” reads one recent posting.
Lavine says that he sometimes feels that his critics are simply shooting the messenger. “Young people don’t understand that if a paper doesn’t sell, it dies.”
* * *
Photography: Anna Knott
 Old school: The magazine department is based in the 1899 Fisk Hall. |
Northwestern has long stood as a grande dame of American journalism education. Since it began as a department in 1921, Medill has built a national reputation as a top training ground for aspiring journalists, emphasizing traditional reporting and newswriting, and churning out graduates capable of walking into a newsroom ready to cover a fire, a big crime, or a political squabble. It has produced a long list of stars: Howard Tyner, the former editor of the Chicago Tribune; the syndicated columnist Georgie Anne Geyer; the former New York Times sports columnist Ira Berkow; the sportscaster Brent Musburger; and, on the advertising side, Scott Bergren, who is now the president of Pizza Hut.
And with its illustrious reputation, Medill continues to draw many of the best and the brightest aspiring journalists from around the nation. One of them is Sarah Sumadi, a San Antonio native who chose Northwestern over Dartmouth, even though the Ivy League school offered her a better financial package. “I came for Medill,” says Sumadi, in a quiet voice that hints at some second-guessing. “It’s unfair to judge the changes too early, but it’s been rocky so far.” The training in technology has eaten up time that could have been spent developing skills in reporting and writing, and she’s skittish about so much emphasis on discerning the audience. “I’m a little worried about this idea that we’re supposed to be focusing on ‘the consumer,’ like news is just another product to be sold.”
The changes at Medill are being closely watched by schools across the country. “Any time there is an innovation at Northwestern” and a handful of other prestigious journalism schools, “people sit up and take notice,” says Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based think tank for journalists.
Columbia University’s journalism school—usually regarded among the top with Medill—has also been re-evaluating its curriculum, but it won’t follow the new direction at Medill, according to Columbia dean Nicholas Lemann, the prizewinning author and writer for The New Yorker. “It’s not going to happen at our school,” he says of the emphasis on marketing, “not on my watch.” He acknowledges that classes at Columbia have become more “Webbie” in response to employer demands that students have technical skills. Columbia has also recently revamped its curriculum, with tracks that go deeper into subject matter, so that graduates emerge with a firm grasp of specific disciplines, such as the law.
But Lemann said Columbia would continue to follow the guidelines set down by Joseph Pulitzer, who endowed the New York journalism school and laid out a manifesto on how it should be run. “Business instruction of any sort,” Pulitzer declared in 1904, “should not, would not and must not form any part of the work of the college of journalism.”
Of course, in Pulitzer’s day, readers and advertisers were not defecting to Craigslist and other Internet sites. The journalism school was named for Joseph Medill, the former editor of the Chicago Tribune, and he gave it his own motto: “Follow the line of common sense.”
* * *
Before Lavine’s arrival, a student at Medill could concentrate on, say, print journalism and pay scarcely any attention to emerging technologies or marketing techniques. The staple of a Medill education was the ability to identify what was newsworthy and write a story about it, mastering the basics of who, what, where, when, and how. Students were drilled in one of the bedrock principles of American journalism: that a wall existed between the editorial side of a publication and the business side.
Under Medill’s new system, all courses are taught “across platforms,” so that students must learn storytelling in video and audio media, as well as in print. The aspiring journalists are also required to discover more about their audience and what those people want to consume. In one basic reporting class, students operate out of a storefront newsroom in Rogers Park, fanning out across the neighborhood to ask people what issues are important to them—much as a focus group might. The students gather demographic information on the community, then crunch numbers to better understand their potential “customers.” It is a much more intensive effort to “understand audience” than Medill has traditionally done.
“The increasing challenge for journalists is how to get their work read, watched, or listened to,” Lavine says. “We teach students how to gain insights into the people they are trying to reach—what their lives are like, what kinds of news and information are relevant to them, what they need to know.”
As it turned out, Medill and Lavine were well positioned to teach that kind of demographic research. Medill has long offered a master’s degree with an emphasis on advertising. About 15 years ago, that track was incorporated into the new Integrated Marketing Communications program, which includes emphasis on public relations and other marketing-oriented skills, and offers a master’s degree. IMC has coexisted somewhat uncomfortably with the journalism side at Medill since then. (The graduate school includes about 350 students working toward master’s degrees in print, broadcasting, magazine publishing, new media, or marketing over 18 or so months; about 650 undergraduates study for four years to earn a bachelor’s degree in journalism.)
Until Lavine arrived, the IMC wing operated as a separate faculty. His mission has been to “integrate” the two sides. Some on the journalism side, with a measure of arrogance, regarded their own mission as a noble quest for truth and the marketing side as a sellout to corporate interests. Not surprisingly, some on the IMC side chafed at being seen as second-class citizens and even considered breaking away from Medill and moving to another school within the university, perhaps the Kellogg School of Management.
Lavine boosted the profile of IMC. It now gets equal billing on the school’s Web site, and the site has dropped the phrase “school of journalism” and goes simply by Medill. (The official name is still the Medill School of Journalism, but Lavine has suggested that a new name might reflect some of the marketing training done at the school. Such a move would require approval by the board of trustees.)
* * *
Photography: Kim Thornton
New school: The McCormick Tribune Center, completed in 2002, houses the broadcasting and new-media facilities.
At 66, Lavine looks the part of a grisly desk editor at a big-city newspaper: bald, stubbly beard, rimless glasses, and no shortage of attitude. He comes off as exceedingly bright and just as cocksure. In 2005, after internal and external reviews found Medill needed to make dramatic changes to keep up with the transformations in the media landscape, Lavine, whose specialty is media strategy, was asked to provide his prediction for the future. After he did so, he was offered the position of dean by the provost, Lawrence Dumas. “He was seen as the change agent,” says Abe Peck, a professor who served on the original curriculum review committee.
But Lavine is not cut from the traditional mold of people who have led Medill: journalists rooted in the editorial side of nationally prominent media, immersed in the culture of news, but not focused on corporate financial strategies. In contrast, Lavine comes from the business side, having owned a chain of small-town newspapers in Wisconsin, where he grew acutely familiar with the marketplace. A native of Superior, Wisconsin, he bought his first paper, the Chippewa Herald-Telegram, at age 23. He went on to own four dailies and four weeklies and later expanded his business to documentary filmmaking and medical publishing.
After teaching at the University of Minnesota, he came to Northwestern in 1989 and founded the Newspaper Management Center, now called the Media Management Center (he has sold off his newspaper holdings). A joint venture between Medill and the Kellogg School, the Media Management Center trains graduate students to run media outlets. The center does not confer degrees, though professionals returning for training can receive a certificate. He later started the Readership Institute, which researches the views and tastes of news consumers, largely through surveys and focus groups. Today, Medill students draw heavily on the research of the Readership Institute to learn about catering to an audience. Among the findings of the institute: Today’s consumers want “news they can use” and information that is relevant to their own lives and communities.
Lavine acknowledges the criticism among some faculty and students. “They’re upset with change. I understand that. My response is, If you really care about journalism, you can’t ignore the reality. Doing more of what we’ve done doesn’t work.”
The Media Management Center and the Readership Institute also hire themselves out as consultants for news businesses—a source of money for Northwestern. The Dayton Daily News employed the Readership Institute, and Jana Collier, the paper’s managing editor, says the research was helpful in reminding editors, writers, and photographers to focus on the desires of readers. “In all honesty, journalism has been a lot more about us than it’s been about our customers,” says Collier. She adds that if Northwestern is teaching students to learn more about readers’ interests, they are far ahead of the game. “In general, journalism schools are not producing what we need for the future,” says Collier. Journalists have “got to know more than how to write a lead. They need to understand our audience.”
* * *
If the new technological demands pose challenges for students, it’s an even higher hill to climb for teachers, especially among those older than the generation born with a mouse in their hands. Eric Ferkenhoff, a lecturer who has 15 years of experience as a writer and reporter, including a stint at the Chicago Tribune, says the tech-savvy environment at Medill means that “instructors are playing catch-up at the same time the students are playing catch-up.” He lauds the goal of preparing students for whatever technological demands they face on the job. But he says a great deal of material has been crammed into classes. “It’s as if you were teaching basic math and then shoved in some calculus and statistics,” he says. “Some of the people aren’t going to learn two plus two. And that’s the danger here.
Ferkenhoff counts himself a supporter of the dean’s new direction and says most students and faculty members are coming around to it—“not to say they’re falling in love with it.” Few teachers would argue that it’s not going to take a while to work out the bugs.
Nomann Merchant, a junior, agrees that the problems will eventually be fixed. But the problem for students who are here now: They’re here now. “It’s a lot to ask a professor who has taught newspapers for 25 years to suddenly teach new media,” says Merchant. “Eventually, things will work out. But we’re paying $45,000 a year now. So there is some bitterness.” (The university does not disclose the number of applicants for Medill. But Mary Nesbitt, an associate dean, described the situation as “healthy.”)
In his office on the second floor of Fisk Hall—where he sits at a desk with a three-screened computer—the dean cheerfully admits some missteps. He says he tried his own blog, which flopped, and started a Medill bulletin board, which didn’t catch on. Some students complained about the sequence of courses, and so changes were made. Lavine acknowledges that the innovations have required some tinkering. “The best time to teach a class is the third time,” he says.
In early June, Northwestern’s general faculty committee passed a resolution charging that the curriculum changes had been implemented without a vote of Medill teachers. The resolution warned of “curricular changes that are ill considered” that could demoralize faculty and cause “damage to the national reputation of the school.” On the defensive once again, Lavine said the Medill faculty had, indeed, been deeply involved. He acknowledged that the changes were being put into place faster than the university usually moved, a pace required because of the “unprecedented extent and rate of change happening in the world in which Medill graduates will work.”
Although the committee vote was simply a resolution and carries no specific power, it suggests a significant measure of discontent with the changes and perhaps Lavine’s bold style, which has been described as autocratic. In any case, Lavine is not about to step back from his grand vision: that Medill needs to produce students who are techno-savvy and consumer-wise. He argues that many working journalists, and even some students, are unwilling to broaden their views about the ways to tell a story. People’s ways become calcified. “I tell some of the students, You’re too old—bring me your nine- or ten-year-old siblings.”
To make his point, he clicks his computer and up jumps an interactive tool created last year by Medill’s newsroom in Washington. “Who Are You?”—an animated Flash application produced by graduate students—leads the “player” on a quest to see how many agencies keep information on him or her, and just what kinds of personal information they have. “Video games have all the elements of storytelling,” says Lavine. “If you think about it, the video game is the typewriter for an eight-year-old.”
It is a notion that makes some Medill students cringe. But Andrew Gruen gets it exactly. He says he grew up on his father’s lap playing video games, then went to Northwestern and “majored in indecision” for more than a year. In the changing cyberworld of journalism, he suddenly saw exciting new possibilities. He jumped eagerly to Medill, and it has paid off in spades. Gruen’s Web skills landed him an internship at the British Broadcasting Corporation in London. When he graduated in June, he had job options to weigh, including one from Microsoft. In the end, he took a position at WESH-TV in Orlando, Florida, to be a digital executive producer on the station’s Web site. “It’s amazing what can be done in journalism with technology,” he says. “And we’re going to be seeing even more amazing things to come.”
Loka Ashwood, who graduated last winter, sees it a different way. She wrote a scathing piece for The Daily Northwestern about the changes at Medill, a place she once saw as “a shining pillar of journalistic integrity.” She became disillusioned with the new direction. “I haven’t forgotten why I came here,” she wrote. “But it seems Medill has.”
As it charges into the future of an uncertain media world, only time will tell whether Medill is making smart innovations or detouring recklessly from the principles of journalism education. But those aghast at Lavine’s embrace of marketing principles might look back at the school’s history. When journalism instruction started at Northwestern, it was part of the School of Commerce. And during the 1930s, one of its instructors was already teaching students about the importance of knowing the views of their audience. He was soon to be famous. His name was George Gallup.
Photography: Kim Thornton
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Reader Comments:
careful... lavine is no gallup.
This is a dangerous direction for Medill. Teaching a few interested students some Web and/or marketing skills is one thing; revamping the curriculum and changing its emphasis is another. Get rid of this guy before I'm forced to delete "Medill School of Journalism" from my resume.
There's nothing inherently wrong with teaching journalism students New Media tools. Lavine is probably correct that their future involves familiarity with new technology. Moreover, journalists should learn about how to understand their audience. Matching coverage with audience needs is as much a tradition in journalism as the "nut graph" in articles.
However, the real separation between journalism and marketing is in the ethical differences. Journalists need to be committed to public service and I have heard very little from my alma mater about maintaining that commitment and the ethical tradition of the profession.
Also, I'm concerned about how faculty have been treated. The day-to-day responsibility of the faculty is curriculum and it doesn't seem that the Medill faculty has been allowed to fulfill its responsibility.
Len Strazewski
Journalism Faculty
Columbia College Chicago
Medill BSJ 1975
I'm a recent graduate of the masters program at Medill. I've been up to the Evanston campus a couple of times since June and I think someone scratched "Medill School of Journalism" off of the bumper sticker that was on my back window. First I was upset but I guess I see why the random person did it.
Does the "Medill School of Journalism" even exist anymore?
“The increasing challenge for journalists is how to get their work read, watched, or listened to,” John Lavine says. He is wrong, and he is wrong in a way that will produce the exact opposite effect.
The challenge for journalists is, was and always will be to be better journalists. It is not the job of a journalist to even think about audience. If Lavine wishes to teach young people how to run a marketing department, or become advertising executives or work in the business office, his approach is sound. But those things are peripheral to actual journalism, which involves the truthful telling of stories in the most elegant fashion one's talents allow.
Mike Hudson
Managing Editor,
Niagara Falls Reporter
"It is not the job of a journalist to even think about audience."
This reminds me of the push against diversity in newsrooms decades ago. "Why do we need to recruit women and minorities? We already know what `the news' is." Turns out, getting to know the audience by bringing more of them into the process showed there were plenty of things that are "news" that the white male newsroom had never really considered. What incredibly obnoxious thinking it is that we have nothing whatsoever to learn from our audience. Good thing I don't live in Niagara Falls.
I am not a Medill alumnus. (I was accepted at Northwestern, but couldn't afford the tuition.) But let's be honest here: there are plenty of fine schools out there which teach people the 5 W's. People go to Northwestern for the networking more than the curriculum.
Good point about diversity, anonymous (9:39 AM). However, I would disagree about your assessment of Northwestern. The networking is definitely in place and has been helpful to some, but as an alumnus, I valued the education itself much more. Teaching Media was what rekindled my love for reporting/writing, and many of the professors shaped my way of doing journalism.
I am concerned about Medill's future (and don't care for Lavine much), but I think there are enough folks there who can ensure that good journalism is first on the list.
Mizzou, Columbia, and others are reveling amid all this controversy, but once things settle down at Medill, it'll still be the best j-school in the country.
These are healthy changes, and this is a healthy debate. Lavine is, in the process of reforming curriculum, rightly telling the emperor he has no clothes. Believing that journalism was ever somehow about "pure" agenda-free fact-telling is naive and dangerous. Journalism has always been about framing and shaping stories to sell to particular audiences. Lavine is simply a visionary who invites us all to wake up and acknowledge that there is no "pure" information in journalism, that there are always vast bodies of information left out of every story (and what journalists leave out is as significant as what they include), and that it's time for faculty, alums, and current students to come into the 21st century of convergence journalism.
"lavine is simply a visionary..."??
is that you, john, trolling the chicagomag comments boards?
Oh my goodness, 10:34. Please leave suspicion and bitterness aside so the issues remain at the forefront of this discussion. Actually I'm an assistant professor at another university, and we are going through similar curriculum reform discussions.
As a recent Masters's graduate from Medill's IMC program, i'm all for the changes outlined at the school. I work for a large media company struggling to remain relevant in an era of changing consumer tastes. I went to undergrad at University of Missouri's Journalism school (#1 J-school to Medill's #2 at the time) and learned how to write, report; always with a message about understanding who your audience was -- even when providing an unbiased story. Many who are upset at the changes at Medill have probably not even read the Medill 2020 plan. It is vital for the school to remain a leader as the world changes. Consumers of media have more choices than ever. Good writing will always find an audience if it is delivered in a manner the readers want. It is the "long tail" theory -- we all have tremendous choice -- you can satisfy the niche and the masses. But if journalists don't see the distinction...the masses will go elsewhere to find their news.
As a 1974 Northwestern alumnus, a long-time journalist in print and broadcast and a professor of journalism, I think the curricular changes are muddled.
Many schools have been teaching convergence long before Medill, so Lavine has created nothing new. This adaptation is a useful change.
The influence of marketing in the media is nothing new. That influence, however, is part of the reason more and more people don't read, watch or use the "product" journalists create. Here is what is problematic about what Lavine has introduced into the mainstream journalism program. Should a reporter worry about the demographics of the audience and marketing a story to this audience? That skews content, framing, placement and perhaps balance of a story.
Some knowledge of these elements would be useful for journalists, particularly those who would like to go into news management. Should these issues be a centerpiece of a "journalism" program? I don't think so.
Christopher Harper
Temple University
I once had a news director who declared "if we say it's news, it's news." And I thought "what arrogance." Journalists need to be sensitive to their audiences.
If readers/viewers are primarily interested in their local schools, why not devote extra resources and space to education? It's a matter of degree.
If we want people to care about budget matters than we have to figure out a way to deliver that story so they do care. That's what it means to be audience-centric.
In response to anonymous at 11:15 a.m., I would like to know your source for a ranking of Mizzou as the #1 journalism school and Medill as #2 then, whenever that was. There are very few rankings of journalism schools done by anyone--news media, professional organizations, etc.--and those that are done often have far too many votes coming from alums of large and old journalism schools who seem to always rank their own alma mater as #1.
I work in a newsroom and teach a journalism class at one of the most elite colleges in the country, though it has no J-School. One of our classroom guests last semester was a top executive from a prestigious news organization. When asked by students what was the most important thing they could do to prepare for today's marketplace she said simply:
"Learn to shoot video.''
Troll any newsroom job postings and you will see that requirements are quite different than they were just a few years ago. The changes at Medill are realistic and reflect what is going in the industry. Students need to be prepared for that.
Many of the negative comments written here carry an undertone of fear. The fact is "traditional" methods of delivering the message are dying a not so slow death.
What kind of school would prepare its students for careers that will not exist in 10, 20 or 30 years?
Lavine, at 66 is demonstrating the thinking of a man 40 years younger.
Don't be afraid of the future. Embrace the future of journalism and learn how to use the new delivery method so that the message reaches and impacts more of the people you're trying to reach.
I will be entering Medill in a few weeks to start a masters in magazine writing. I did not know about the reforms when I applied this past winter, and having read this article I am already annoyed at the market research I will undoubtedly be spending my time and humility to complete.
What Lavine is doing may be practical, farsighted and even necessary to the growth of the school, but that does not make it right. The idea that the media should report only what people are interested in means that an Anna Nicole story will receive more air time than one on Sudan, that the failure of the education system and intellectual apathy should be reinforced and even encouraged by a bastardized news media in an ever-downward-spiraling whirlpool of complacency and ignorance.
Shall parents only feed their children what they ask for?
Naive in Knoxville
Naive in Knoxville's concern about starting Medill in magazine writing touches on a key point here. Magazines have always understood the importance of audience. No one reads magazines to get just the facts, they want voice. If you are going to find your writing voice, you have to know to whom you are speaking. I will finish my master's degree in reporting and writing at Medill at the end of this week. Overall I don't feel the changes have been negative, though I sympathize with my classmates who have had a rougher time. I think I did well because I came in knowing how to write a news story and was able to hone that skill and built a repertoire of multimedia skills on top of that. So, to Naive in Knoxville and others just beginning Medill, I would say, don't despair. There is still a chance to get the experience and skills you want, as well as the network. Even if you can't write a news story, someone is still willing to teach you.
My advice to current Medill students - transfer to another school while you still have time to salvage your education and then sue Medill to get back the tuition money you've already spent ... because the Medill name won't mean a thing if you don't have the "nuts & bolts" skills needed to be a real reporter/writer. I went to a tiny, unknown journalism school, but throughout my working life, I've been hired over numerous grads from big name j-schools because I had better skills and experience. And having worked in both print and television, I can tell you that this guy Lavine doesn't have a clue. I agree that reporters need to adapt to and embrace new technology and communication techniques, but that can be done with out "blowing up" a curriculum that's turned out excellent journalists in the past. Lavine sounds like an ego-maniac who is more concerned about creating a legacy for himself than giving the students who pay his salary the education they deserve.
Of course journalism students have to learn new techniques. The problem with Medill is that the instruction in new techniques is both bad and seriously taking away from writing and reporting instruction.
We're not getting drilled in the basics nearly as much as those who came before -- and I think it shows. Either require more classes, offer optional instruction, or trust that smart students will get the knowledge they need through extracurriculars, publications, internships, self-teaching, helping each other, whatever. Don't make them pay for a second-rate education in both new and old journalism methods.
-- a Medill Junior
In the interest of accuracy, Northwestern's tuition is $35,000 ($35,064, actually, according to the school's Web site). Room and board's another $10,776.
I don't know of one single editor or publisher who would hire a reporter who could not write for their readership. Why would I hire an ag reporter if I needed a religion editor? Why would I hire a Luddite to head up my mobile journalism team? I am in the market for young writers versed somewhat in new media. Is it too much to ask if they've ever heard of Flash or a content management system? I don't need a code jockey, but I would drool at the thought of a Medill grad applying for one of my positions who knew how to apply a bold tag in html.
Look, of course proficiency in new media storytelling is a good thing. Obviously knowing your audience is a benefit. Why even debate this? The crux of the issue, as A Medill Junior says, is that this on-the-fly curriculum revamp is such a mess that not enough time was given to teaching the basics.
I can honestly say that we spent approximately 90 minutes on the first day of graduate school learning how to write a lead. That's it. We spent 3x as long on the "rule of thirds" for photos. The instructors are mostly excellent, and they know how to teach the basics, but they're not given the opportunity. And if they speak up, they're forced out as dissenters to the new regime. Ultimately, we learned the basics by osmosis, but the fact that they're never taught is ridiculous.
Bottom line: we can speculate about the future of journalism forever, but I am 100% sure that had I gone to Columbia or Berkeley, I would be a better journalist right now.
-graduating this week
If a reporter spends most of his or her time learning the delivery systems for a story but not how to get that story, talk and develop sources, dig out the real facts behind the surface, the quality of news will deteriorate. The Fourth Estate is part of our check and balance process in a democracy.
Dean Lavine's audience centered approach will seriously undermine not only the skills accrued by Medill students but the public's ability to receive unbiased information about government, schools, health issues and yes-even celebrities. Stories on Anna Nicole Smith or Paris Hilton are fine, but a journalist's knowledge about the legal system would make these stories more meaningful. Under Dean Lavine's approach, graduate courses on legal reporting have been eliminated. He is also diluting the Medill News Service bureaus in Chicago and Washington D.C. which deprives students opportunities to gather news and video clips to use for getting jobs. Lavine's approach is dangerous.
AN ALUM
Media may be changing - but journalism is storytelling and reporting the truth, no matter what platform you use. If you can't gather facts, track down sources and tell the story coherently and compellingly, you can't write a decent article OR create a good video package.
Implementing these curriculum changes has been disorganized and haphazard at best. There are STILL students in our grade who can't write a decent lede or a standard quote-transition news story because we've wasted classtime researching the demographics of our audience or learning where the buttons on the video camera are.
All I can hope is that someone will hire me before they find out that my "journalism" degree is actually one in marketing and video production.
--Another Medill junior
I'm just glad that I got into journalism when we were still using typewriters and X-Acto knives and will miss most of this brave new world.
Yet I fear for the future of journalism and democracy when I see the medium become more important than the message and newsgathering reduced to marketing.
If you listen closely, you can almost hear Edward R. Murrow crying.
It also distresses to me to see nothing but anonymous comments. Anonymity is the evil offspring of the Internet. As journalists and journalism educators, we may not be able to stop this monster, but neither should we contribute to it.
-- Tom Henderson, Lewiston, Idaho
We live in a world where any person with an internet connection can become a blogger. We cannot say these people aren't journalist, because they most certainly are in their own right. I completely agree with Levine's approach, and many journalists that have suffered through endless and traditional journalism classes. I'm certain that these people are fine writers, but again, how will anyone know?
Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and shall I even mention some baffoon named Perez Hilton? These are the people/ bloggers/ journalists that are being read. While their writing may be awful, they are being read in the masses. They appeal to their audience, and they knew how to reach their intended audience via new media. This is something that traditional journalists cannot and have not done. There is nothing I enjoy more than reading an interesting article from a fine journalist, however with saturated media, it becomes more difficult to find these. This is where Medill's gap is being fulfilled.
I'm afraid this article gives Medill and Lavine too much credit.
First of all, the Lavine critics aren't just old-school journalists who wish the school would stay the same. Au contrere: Many of them, like me, wanted change but wish Lavine were more competent. (Maybe it's, you know, that nonexistent background as an educator that's holding him back.) The new classes are a disorganized mess. Too many good teachers and staff members have left. Etc. etc. And the students are suffering as a result.
Second, Lavine and his crew are contemptuous of serious journalism. Or at least, of teaching people to do serious journalism. In being obsessed with technology, they're not just removing writing from the curriculum; they're removing reporting, news judgment, and training on how to think like a journalist.
The best journalists will always be the ones with wise minds, not the ones who can play with toys.
I'm a student at Medill, and, quite frankly, the problem is in the execution. The majority of the faculty has no idea what they're doing and gawk at simple applications like Photoshop Elements.
I was utterly frustrated by the meager technology we were given to deal with. Instructions would be given for an hour when many of the students finished their projects in ten minutes. As a member of this age group, we area already tech-saavy. We already know how to work this technology. I felt like I was stuck in a 8th Grade computer science class half the time.
The idea of instructing us in new media is great; however, it's hard to instruct when the faculty doesn't really understand any of it. Teach us Flash, HTML, AJAX, etc. We can figure out how to tie video clips and audio clips together very easily.
If I knew that Medill was going to be in transition like this, I would seriously have reconsidered my choice of University.
I posted the comment on August 23, 4:47pm, and after hearing the past couple responses, it sounds like Lavine's idea of teaching new media is agreed upon, however he's doing a crap job of it. Fire Lavine, keep teaching new media so these gifted journalists can reach their audiences.
As a 2005 graduate of Medill in magazine writing, I am aghast and disappointed in the turn of events recently occurring at the school. Of course, Medill has always been among the top schools in the nation for delivering the skills necessary to be a good journalist: unbiased reporting, etc. However, I believe the biggest tragedy here is that the most important element of any journalist's career (or almost any professional career for that matter)is the ability to write. Writing is quickly becoming a lost skill and evidence of this in the all too apparent in the workplace. Now in my second professional job as an editor, I am continually shocked at the general inability of professionals (some high-ranking) who cannot construct a complete sentence -- let alone deliver effective communication. It is because of ill-advised moves by people such as Lavine that only further enforce general incompetence in this basic, vital, skill. Shame on him for denigrating the Medill name.
Interesting thread. I know several top publishing employers that no longer wish to hire Medill's graduates. Medill's name is already on its way to ruin...
Media Do Your Job, But Please Don't Make My Job So Hard.
R. Kelley
And if you think that R. Kelley is misspelled, just wait for Chapter 25 of Trapped in the Closet.
Rufus
Going in to Medill, I'm scared. I'm scared that I chose Medill over a $20,000 out-of-state scholarship to UMich for no reason. I'm scared all my potential has been shot. I'm no idiot; new media is incredibly important, but it sounds like basic principles of journalism education are going to be lost on the way. I don't want to leave the school with a degree that has trained me to be another slave to the system. For all those that have seen "The Way We Were," I want a Katie education, not a Hubble one.
-Also from Knoxville
I am the parent of a recent grad of Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. My daughter would choke over the idea that J-school should teach dumbing down and tricks to attract readers, (Sorry "consumer of news" sounds too New Media) and that a story must be attractive.
She graduated a better writer, intent on maintaining the integrity of her stories. She walked out of commencement excited and determined.
Having Ben Bradlee as a speaker certainly didn't hurt.
By the way, she's in Ethiopia today, writing about their Millenium celebration.
Technology is an important tool, and changing constantly, but it's not journalism.
J-school students, don't lose your idealism.
To "Also from Knoxville,"
I know firsthand how bad Medill has gotten. Almost every class I've taken in the school has been hastily planned and haphazardly taught. It's especially difficult to see how many publications have written articles about the discord within and outside Medill -- Chicago Magazine is at least the third just this summer.
There's still some hope, though. Although a number of great professors stopped teaching here in the past few years, several outstanding ones still remain. Seek them out and get feedback on your work. Plus, there are always student publications and unpaid internships you can get. And Northwestern's still one of the best universities in the country, so I hope you'll take advantage of the other great academic programs here.
Ultimately, your college education is what you make of it, no matter where you go. Medill's far from perfect, but I'd like to think we can both graduate with a degree that still means something.
--another Medill junior
Nomaan's name is spelling wrong. Medill has taught me fact checking.
-Medill sophomore
Why is a better understanding of audience equated with dumbing down or pandering in most of these posts? Would you all want more Anna Nicole Smith if your readership was analyzed?
It seems obvious that in an industry where people have hugely more options about where and how to get their information there is inherently an increased need to figure out what people want. Done correctly that's better fulfilling a public service mission.
It's also fascinating to me that not a single posting has explored anyone or anything higher up the food chain than Lavine. This strikes me as a remarkably unsophisticated analysis. It seems worthwhile either to place blame with those who gave Lavine such license or to think more carefully about why a top-notch program at a prestigious school would give someone such a change mandate. The only rational reasons would be because they deemed the status quo so inadequate or because they figured faster change would be worth it in the long run.
There's nothing wrong with knowing one's audience in some cases ... trade mags come to mind. But what does that have to do with the function of reporting on public affairs and holding those in power to account? Knowledge of one's audience (in a marketing sense) has nothing to do with that very important (but not sole) function of journalism, but the current curriculum "blow up" makes no room for it.
Further, there's no objection to learning the bells and whistles of new media either. However it's the degree that this is being forced into the curriculum, and not the idea itself, that is objectionable. That's because the curriculum is not elastic: you put something in, you take something out (or give it very short shrift). The more new stuff you put in, the less "old" stuff there is room for. What's heartening in so many students' objections to what's going on at Medill is that they recognize that there is no substitute for learning how to report, write, edit and develop news judgment
test
I disagree with comment 2:18 above.
Even public affairs journalism needs to be mindful of audience unless The Nation and The New York Post or Fox News and Frontline are supposed to provide identical coverage because truth exists with a capital "T" and our unerring objective should simply be to remain pure and faithful to it. It's useful to know how versed in a topic they are or whether there are aspects of a complex story they're likely to want to know about. You can't hold the powerful accountable if people ignore what you produce and go to an outlet they find preferable.
Of course any new additions to a curriculum come at a cost but if every moment must be devoted to the basics, how can innovation ever occur? Also, students should still be honing their writing and editing skills even within the context of learning new formats and technologies, so it's not entirely an either/or situation.
I am a student at The University of Kansas and am enrolled in the journalism school and we are being trained in all forms of media journalism. The world around us is evolving and journalist need to keep up with the changes as well. Learning new ways to be a journalist doesn't mean you are no longer a writer. Why would one complain about being more knowledgeable and diverse in your field? You will be more marketable after college if you have the skills to display your journalistic talents in different forms.
In response to 9:21 and 3:34 above me, what the article failed to explain fully is that the basics are being seriously neglected in the new curriculum. As a current student at Medill, I feel our complaints were misrepresented here... we're not opposed to the changes in the field of journalism and the importance of training in the new forms, but no matter how the news is presented, writing is an integral component of good journalism. And Lavine's "innovations" leave little room for the training that gave Medill its reputation. Though the future of journalism lies in new and evolving media platforms, these depend on good writing just as much as traditional newspapers; sadly, good writing is something I feel we no longer learn at Medill.
I'd like to call attention to the fact that, in this article, Dean Lavine refers to his students as "young people" and implies they are completely ignorant in the ways of the world--despite his claims of revolution and reinvention, his condescension toward the new generation of journalists reveals his disregard for the REAL future of journalism--the undergraduates who are failed over and over again by his poorly implemented curriculum. These are the undergraduates who will be failed by Medill yet again when we try to take our place in the world of journalism with a devalued degree.
I'm a somewhat recent graduate of the Medill master's program, and while I find this article informative, it's not complete. What's not reported here is that the Medill Wire Service downtown has been drastically altered. Fundamental beat reporting doesn't exist anymore. Covering City Hall and state government has been done away with, and the entire legal reporting class has been cancelled altogether. Apparently, while students are being trained to identify specific audiences, the actual audiences they report for have changed from those interested in hearing about Chicago Public Schools, for example, to, well, all of Chicago.
As for the professors, long story short, Pulitzer-prize-winning professors are being forced out, not because they don't agree 100% with Lavine's ideas, but because they take issue with a sudden rather than gradual shift to incorporate new media.
It pains me to say that I've deterred students from going to a program I used to be so proud to be a part of.
Knowing your audience is great, but consider this: every Medill sophomore takes a nine-week course that serves as one of the most important hands-on training courses in four years. This class was once called "Newswriting and Reporting." Now, it's "Enterprise Reporting in Diverse Communities," where students are sent to Chicago neighborhoods to report.
A class that once gave students nine weeks in reporting and writing training, with specialized media training coming later in school, now incorporates broadcast and Web training as well. A student's final project must include all of these elements.
Does it really seem sensible, then, to spend three of the nine weeks studying Census data, listening to Readership Institute officials and putting together an "audience research profile" that has nothing to do with the final project? Isn't that new class watered down enough as it is?
(see comment below...)
Reporting with an eye for your audience is important. And "engaging your audience" (a favorite phrase of Dean Lavine's administration) starts with good reporting, in my admittedly humble opinion. Medill's focus has strayed from teaching the fundamental principles of reporting. Now, we're learning to study our audience. But we're not learning the basics -- how to think critically as a reporter, ask sources the right questions, and convey that message in a way that is clear to the reader, viewer or user.
For all of the fuss over the place of marketing in journalism, Dean Lavine and the Medill administration seem to have forgotten something any good marketer should know. You can sell any product well. If the product is subpar in the first place, however, your buyer will find that out and head elsewhere. I wonder if prospective applicants to Medill aren't beginning to figure that out for themselves.
Nomaan Merchant
Medill junior
This thread makes painfully clear that it's one thing to sit on the sidelines and say there's nothing wrong with journalists knowing their audience and learning new media -- and quite another to have to sit through the clumsy and deficient implementation of these changes in Medill classrooms.
Medill students (and their tuition paying parents) should act on the fact that they are the audience here -- the audience is not the target markets of corporate media -- and demand that Lavine make the necessary changes to give them the education they came to Northwestern for and are paying for. Or else be ready to vote with their feet.
That is, IF Lavine will 1) take their displeasure seriously 2) back off "blowing up" the curriculum and 3) be able to deliver competent teaching of a significantly less grandiose "vision" that strikes the right balance between basics and innovation.
I got my MSJ from the Magazine Program in 1998. Even then, the magazine publishing project taught you about the three-sided pyramid of editorial, ads, and circulation -- without any of the three, a publication can't stay on its feet. We had to worry about writing, editing, business plans, market research, page layout, ad sales, circ, and the like. At the time I thought "I want to be an editor/writer, what do I care about the rest of this stuff?" Well, I can tell you how valuable it is to understand how things work even if you're not responsible for them.
When I started at Macworld Magazine in 1999, we had little to no online presence. These days we have a huge Web site, weekly podcasts, regular videos, e-mail newsletters, eBooks -- the list goes on. These skills are ones that we've picked up, but I think teaching them is crucial.
The said, it sounds like Lavine needs better marketing skills of his own to sell the new program.
Jonathan Seff
Senior News Editor
Macworld Magazine
After reading the Chicago magazine piece and doing a bit of simple investigative work of my own, I find myself questioning some of Dirk Johnson's characterizations and some of the assertions in previous postings about Lavine's background. I a contrarian by nature and found myself suspicious of assertions that he lacked journalist or educator credentials.
The article asserts that Lavine came from the business not the writing side of newspapers. I looked at his bio and while he did publish newspapers and own other media companies he also wrote a nationally syndicated column and won reporting prizes. I also noticed that he'd taught at NWU for many years and Minnesota before that. I discovered that he authored a media management textbook, headed the governing body that accredits journalism schools around the country and helped produce the largest research study on readership.
That's not to defend his execution now,or that of Medill/NWU, but I couldn't imagine he was inexperienced.
testing
I work for an online media organization and have this to say: those of you who want to write and don't care to learn any of the other stuff, well good luck with that. We have reporters -- Pulitzer prizewinning reporters -- using video cameras and audio kits, writing blogs, and doing radio and TV spots, and all of that is on top of their reporting and writing. If these folks with long and very successful careers can learn some new tricks and adjust to the changing environment, what makes you, the unseasoned and untried, think you don't need to?
This is the crux of the problem, 10:22, in your comment and at the "new" Medill -- way too much focus on flash at the expense of substance. Put aside the toys of the trade -- vid cams, audio kits, etc. -- and try to work your most basic software, which is your brain. Read the comments posted by Medill students above and try to understand that not many, if any, are objecting to learning new things. But they want to better their writing and thinking skills first -- without these you can't do good journalism no matter how many "tricks" (ugh, now there's a professional term) you know. And they want an organized and well-executed presentation of courses, which has largely failed to materialize.
As an incoming freshmen this fall, I'm just scared as the last freshman who posted. I gave up a $40,000/yr scholarship to Swarthmore College just because of Northwestern's journalism program.
When I first visited campus and went to Medill's information session, we heard Dean Lavine speak. To be very honest, he has an air of confidence that sweeps you off your feet. Immediately, I was ready to learn about broadcast and online journalism - venues I originally had not thought to explore. Having done a journalism workshop this summer and learned how to put together a broadcast piece, I was even more excited for Medill.
However, after multiple other events and especially after reading this article and thread, I am very concern. At the information meeting, Lavine nor Medill tells students that they will be studying their readers. We were not told that students were to study their Chicago suburbs for three weeks and then write about them. We were told that students (see next comment)
were going to cover Chicago suburbs because of the enriching experience we'll get covering a big city suburb. The business/market focus was never mentioned. In fact, it was simply sold as a new curriculum to develop students who could use a computer, the internet, a video camera, a voice recorder, and a pen.
As an incoming freshmen, I want to give Medill a chance. To be safe, I'll probably still apply to Columbia for a transfer possibility. But what I'm most disappointed in, is how Medill decided to explain their new curriculum to prospective students. They kept the whole truth to themselves. If this isn't something journalistically degrading, I don't know what else is.
to the incoming freshmAn: don't worry too much about medill. at its worst, it's still a better school than columbia, mizzou, and others. as a medill alum (bsj, msj) who has had a great career so far, the best advice i can give you is 1. relax, 2. soak up all the good stuff from the good profs (there are tons there), and 3. DON'T transfer part-way. northwestern is a great school, and chicago is an amazing city. relax.
I have to disagree with the alum who posted at 11:17 a.m. How exactly do you know Medill is better than those other j-schools?
Not that it matters. Even if Medill is the best, students can be trusted when they generally agree they're not getting a good education.
I've encouraged disaffected freshmen to leave Medill. Everyone knows you don't need a j-school degree to be a journalist, and campus media can provide adequate training. (Some would say it's better than Medill.)
My advice to the incoming freshman: Give Medill a shot for at least six months, but if you're disgruntled, don't stick it out. The College of Arts and Sciences is generally excellent. If you feel you must leave the university, trust your own judgment. You mentioned transferring to Columbia - if that's because of their j-school, you'll have to wait until you have your bachelor's. If you ever want to vent, drop me a line.
David Spett
Medill senior
Journalism schools - Columbia, Medill, Mazoo - have stopped being relevant a long, long time ago. The real scam that was being perpetrated was the continued insistence of these institutions to teach a dying form to an unwitting and naive set of young consumers whose rich parents didn't know any better. Many of the graduates never did find work in journalism. Some hacked around a few years in a newsroom and then got jobs in PR. Meanwhile, the human cholestral called journalism faculty (industry rejects) continued to push practices and methods that have been abandoned decades ago in real newsrooms. Now comes John Lavine who actually wants to give the students a real value for their $50,000 a year. Kids, get smart! The world Medill was training you for no longer exists. You are embarking of the most exciting time in media in two centuries. Stop whining and appreciate what Northwestern is trying to do for you. Either that or get out and let a more deserving applicant take your seat.
To the previous poster: I question whether you know what you're talking about -- or whether you work (or have ever worked) in a "real newsroom" at all. The continuing relevancy of j-schools is evident by the fact that without a journalism degree, most bona fide news outlets (newspapers, tv stations, news and trade mags) won't hire you. That's because they want the initial on-the-job training (in the basic and still-crucial skills -- reporting, writing and editing -- and understanding of newsroom culture -- even the facsimile of it gained in classrooms) to have been done at the student's expense, not theirs. Granted, those entering the journalism job market need at least some of the newer tech skills that Medill is trying to teach. By why should Medill students stop "whining" and "appreciate" subpar instruction that is infused with as much or more marketing/profit ideology as bona fide journalism skills, old or new? Where is the "value" in that?
If anyone believes the New York Times would add a new feature or a new section without due consideration for audience and advertising potential do not know how the industry works. At the citadel of journalism, nothing is done without deep marketing research - by both the business side and editorial side - to determine whether a section (T Magazine, Escapes, business traveler column, personal tech column, commercial real estate column)is viable in the marketplace. When sections fail to deliver the dollars, they die (Circuits). Students at Medill who believe journalists can function in this world without a proper understanding of audience and marketability of products should stay in school forever ... because only in the hermetically sealed environs of journalism school can they continue to practice the fanciful notions of a world that never really existed in the marketplace. And only in bad academia are faculty allowed to continue to parlay their false promises.
This whole conversation will be irrelevant in three to five years when the hacks in the faculty will be gone and replaced by some serious media thinkers and practioners and the student body will consist of the country's best and brightest pursuing serious scholarship on the most dynamic media issues of the day. Lavine will be retired but he will have left behind an important legacy for Northwestern, having turned around its moribund journalism school which by now will be the country's leading institution for the training of the journalists of the new millenium. Columbia will continue to drag out war horses like Ben Bradlee at its commencements while Medill will have Sergey Brin as its graduation speaker. My guess is that most Medill students today probably wouldn't even be able to identify Sergey Brin.
City Hall and Statehouse reporting? Is that what Medill students still want? (See previous posts)
That's why newspapers missed megatrends and began their long decline in readership. They missed women coming into the workplace. They missed massive shifts in the economy from a manufacturing industry to a service industry. That's because they were given a singular prism - City Hall, cops beat and StateHouse ala 1930s style newspapering.
The new tools - census analysis, market research, etc - are woefully lacking in our trade.
Medill students, you can always learn to write. But only once in your life will you have the chance to learn to think broadly about your audience (changing by the second).
That's why our industry is in such trouble. We don't have enough people trained to think about our problems and to come up with solutions. We only have people who know how to construct and write in a pyramid style (invented during the Civil War).
I am the parent of a Medill student, and I would sign my name to this comment if it didn't seem that the last three posts were written by someone who is close to the dean and that there weren't such an atmosphere of acrimony and discord at the school. In discussing these posts with my daughter, she remarked that she hadn't decided to major in journalism because she thinks of it as a "product." She wants to be a journalist who reports on topics that aren't tied to sales of consumer goods (unlike those New York Times sections mentioned above). She also said she wonders who, exactly, the Medill-envisioned audience is for reporting stories such as the war in Iraq, BP's bid to dump more waste into Lake Michigan, the upcoming presidential campaign -- and how she will be taught to skew her reporting on such topics this year at Medill. (see next comment)
As for Sergey Brin, she knows who he is and commented, "Google is great, but what does it have to do with journalism?" That's a good question about a lot of what is happening at Medill these days, and according to my daughter, many students are asking it. As for Dean Lavine, sadly he seems to us to be more salesman than visionary, journalist or scholar.
I can see by the number of postings that I'm late to the party! I'm troubled by message immediately preceding mine--not for the content but for the paranoia!
A parent who won't sign their name because they conclude that earlier postings in support of the Medill direction must be from underlings of the dean who would undoubtedly seek reprisal on your daughter?! Wow, acrimony is one thing but this is getting really colorful. If it's any consolation, I'm not connected to the dean but the direction described in the article sounds fairly reasonable and even forward-thinking from my vantage point though it sounds like the transition is bumpy and execution could be improved.
--Charles Wilkins
Charles,
A Medill professor commenting on the changes at the school declines to be identified by name in the article, "citing concerns for job security." A student's post above notes that some Medill profs "are being forced out ... because they take issue with a sudden rather than gradual shift to incorporate new media" into the curriculum. So why is it paranoid for the parent of a Medill student to want to protect his/her daughter's ID when offering a critical view of what's happening at the school? That isn't paranoia -- it's just another indication of the negative impact that these changes are having.
Print journalism and journalism have not been synonymous for a very long time. This reality has yet to be acknowledged by some longstanding Medill faculty, and, based upon my reading of several of the above posts, by some current and former students and their parents.
Print has reigned supreme as a quality product at the school throughout its existence but often at the expense of the broadcast division. New media wasn't even on the radar screen until John Lavine placed it there.
I embrace the idea that the teaching and mastery of quality writing must come first in any journalism curriculum. But I would argue with equal fervor that the time is long past due for Medill to better service the needs of the MAJORITY of those graduating students who, for several years now, have ultimately pursued career interests that are not traditionally print based (i.e. broadcast and online reporting, law, and even - heaven forgive them - PR/marketing/advertising).
continued....
John Lavine is attempting to service ALL these students’ needs by broadening the mission of Medill and I certainly believe it an achievable goal. I also fully agree with Jon Seff that better applied marketing and PR skills might have more successfully recruited faculty support and eased this curricular sea-change. Missteps to date ultimately lie with the Dean but there is no denying that old-guard intransigence has been a major contributor.
For those of you who haven’t seen first-hand the new curricular proposals, this summary may prove enlightening:
http://www.medill.northwestern.edu/medill/about/BSJ.pdf
continued.....
To date, execution has certainly not kept pace with vision. But by my reading, this vision is certainly not Mephistophelian. Northwestern undergraduates leave after four years having completed at least 45 courses, far more than those at peer institutions. The flexibility this offers, coupled with the new curriculum’s allowance that up to 14 of these courses be Medill based (the previous limit was 11-12) suggests that there just may be adequate space for old and new guard ideas of journalism to peacefully co-exist. Required will certainly be new faculty blood and possibly some divine (? presidential) intervention. A little valium all around might also help soften the painful landing egos will face as these inevitable transitions take hold.
first the curriculum, now the name. lavine really is nuts.
Just took a look at the newly-designed Medill web site. It's the most obnoxious thing ever. As a Medill alum, I am ashamed.
This whole thing is ridiculous. It's just a school, people. Also, journalism as it used to be is no longer. Move on.
This was in my inbox, via the alum listserv:
To Medill Alums:
While we don't make it a policy to post to the listserv (it's by and for alums, not the administration or faculty) we wanted to interject to make one important clarification. The school has never discussed dropping the name Medill. It's who we are, and there are decades of history and pride behind it. Further, the school would never consider "selling" its name to a company. When there is more information to be shared on the progress of the name exploration you will be the first to know!
Thanks,
The Medill Communications Team
Obviously those who want to believe there is any "shining pillar of journalistic integrity" have not been laid off from a news organization. News is a business. Those who wish to provide information as a public service must first know what public they are serving. Those who are so upset at this "business model" may be surprised to find that a lot of news consumers are passionate about socially and politically important information. But, they must learn to be more creative, more conscientious, and more adaptable to technology. The days of spinach journalism are fading with the population who consumed it. Those "studying" to be journalists need full comprehension that there will be no jobs for them upon graduation unless they can sell what they know to a news organization, who only wants to hear how you can sell to their audience. Medill is setting you up for that. Be grateful.
-Kb
Journalism Graduate Student
University of Illinois- Champaign
WHAT STRIKES ME AS IRONIC IS THAT STUDENTS ARE LAVINE'S AUDIENCE AND HE ARROGANTLY DISMISSES ALL OF OUR CONCERNS, WHILE "TEACHING" US THE VALUE OF OUR OWN AUDIENCES...
I am a graduate student at Medill and my number one concern is not the curriculum change, but the half-baked manner in which these changes have been carried out.
The school is unorganized!
No one knows when classes are scheduled or who will be teaching them, if you can even manage to figure out where they are being held. Syllabi do not exist and the careers website is an antique. The Dean needs to roll up his sleeves and really get down to the less than glamorous business of actually running the school before I and many other students just leave in favor of schools that still have... old timey things like organized leaders and classes.
SAM
Medill Journalism Graduate Student
The extreme importance placed on delivering the news as if it is by nature something pure and unaltered is unique to American media; in England the major national newspapers report based on their customer base - largely on political predilection. The quality of the news media is therefore still critical, as well as allowing for comparisons of news reporting and informed decisions for what you choose to read; unlike America which only has The New York Times as a national paper and which is a great publication but cannot possibly expect to address the issues and interests of the entire nation in politics, sport and whatever else. Therefore the move towards understanding the audience seems like a valuable, thought badly carried out one. The review of census data is also an inherent characteristic of sociology, a discipline which is not by a long shot over-marketed or 'corporatized'.
Yana Kunichoff
Starting the journalism grad program at Medill Sep 08