Is J-School Worth It?
Opportunities for hands-on learning, but payoff is not guaranteed
Many journalism educators say such experience has become even more valuable as economic pressures squeeze news organizations, leaving fewer editors available to work with young reporters. "In the older environment, you could count on the newsroom being your teacher," observes Michael Janeway, the Medill dean. Moreover, some media professionals believe that journalism professors are often more demanding than editors, though educators warn that the standards may not be so high at schools that put graduate students in many of the same courses as undergraduates, thereby offering less of an academic challenge.
Top schools expose students to a variety of media so that they can figure out what interests them the most. At Northwestern, for example, students can work on a magazine startup, producing a publication from scratch. George Harmon, an associate professor at Medill, points out that "you make your mistakes in the classroom, where there is no injury."
High tech. Increasingly, professors are helping to train students in an emerging art--using computers as a reporting tool. Students learn techniques for searching through massive databases for information that can produce stories on subjects ranging from sentencing practices in local courts to demographic trends in a city, state or region.
In addition to valuable practical experience, journalism educators argue, the best programs provide historical and sociological lessons that graduates are unlikely to learn on the job. "Without journalism school, you get no orientation to the role of journalism in a modern democracy," says Joan Konner, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, where students take courses such as "Journalism, Law and Society," along with the more practical offerings. Still, such courses, while important, may matter less to most students than Jobs 101. "I am here to get my foot in the door," says Jeff Amy of Norcross, Ga., a graduate student at Missouri. "But that doesn't mean the things I am learning won't make me a better journalist."
Networking. Some students choose a school because of the strength of its alumni network. In an industry where whom you know can be just as important as what you know, that network can be a decisive factor in getting hired. "Every job I have gotten has been through a Missouri connection," says John Callan, senior editor for world news at MSN News, Microsoft's new online service, one of the growing opportunities for journalism graduates in the expanding market of cyberspace. Callan, who completed the graduate program at Missouri in 1988, has returned the favor by hiring several graduates of Missouri for MSN.
Still, some editors argue that a graduate degree has limited value. Many say that summer internships that produce published clips or broadcast scripts are much more important to them. "I wouldn't recommend journalism school for aspiring young journalists," says Robert Merry, executive editor of Congressional Quarterly. Merry, a former political reporter for the Wall Street Journal, argues that it is more profitable to pursue academic studies that have longer-lasting value.
Many editors who agree with Merry lean toward hiring liberal arts majors with summer or campus journalism experience plus solid grounding in a discipline like economics. Kathleen Hall-Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, believes that reporters with special expertise often produce better work. She cites a recent Annenberg study of health care coverage that found the best reporting was by journalists who had covered the area for more than five years or who were health care specialists--and not products of J-school.
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