How are journalism schools adapting to the new media landscape? What are some of the major changes that are being implemented?
JG: The practice of journalism is undergoing drastic changes and that is forcing journalism educators to make equally major changes to curricula. It’s not just the means of distribution that are changing it’s the way journalists market themselves and conceive of their roles. Journalism schools and students need to look forward, inventing the next set of narrative tools, storytelling forms and business models. Medill has reached out to our colleagues in computer science to partner on research and class projects to explore where new technologies can take journalism. The projects have been very successful and one spun off into a viable company. What are some of the challenges that journalism departments are currently facing? JG: It’s difficult to know what direction Medill, or any journalism school, should be headed. We can focus on videography, programming tools, research techniques or design methods we should be teaching. We need to add additional skills and subjects to our curriculum w
DC: We, like many programs, are integrating multimedia throughout the program, including required courses in multimedia (we launched a new required multimedia course a few years ago) and throughout all classes. We have several online capstone courses that provide students hands-on experience in working in multimedia. Some traditional programs have had difficulty moving beyond just writing, but we have always emphasized the ability to tell stories clearly in different formats. For example, we have always required all our majors take a photojournalism class. It’s important that journalists are able to convey stories through writing and visually, whether it’s for a newspaper, television/radio, or online. What are some of the challenges that journalism departments are currently facing? DC: The biggest challenge is funding. Across the country universities are struggling financially and that is creating extraordinary hardship for a lot of journalism programs. We’ve had a lot of cuts and it m
