To the Editor:

I found the articles in the November 20 special issue of The Chronicle Review encouraging, stimulating, and even inspiring ("Journalism in Crisis"). For those of us whose lives still include regular perusal of print news media, including The Chronicle, recent declines in the quality and coverage of our newspapers have been depressing and a source of nagging concern. Most of us realize that this is an inevitable consequence of the flowering of the electronic media and have shifted our attention partly to those media. Nevertheless, we worry about the accompanying erosion of serious high-quality journalism. It is good to learn that the academic journalism community is thinking innovatively about how to counter this trend. It is also good to learn that students are still flocking to our journalism schools.

I was particularly intrigued by the notion that we ought to adopt journalism as a responsibility of practitioners in other professions and disciplines, e.g., health care and science and engineering, and think about how we might incorporate in their educations preparation in the necessary skills. Here I would suggest attention to the opportunities provided by online/asynchronous education technology. In recent years the online enrollments of both for-profit (e.g., the University of Phoenix) and nonprofit (e.g., University of Maryland University College) institutions have grown at double-digit rates annually. University of Maryland University College now offers more than 100 master's, baccalaureate, and certificate programs entirely online. Students in these programs are often mid-career, working adults in various professions. Might there be a market for online journalism programs designed to qualify them to embark on parallel careers in serious journalism?

One other thought: The very name of the journalism profession is obsolescent. "Journal" evokes an image of writers hovering over clacking typewriters preparing material for reporting, but that is hardly how tomorrow's journalists will work. I understand how nearly impossible it is to change such labels. The "Ph." in my Ph.D. stands for philosophy, not my field (physics), as it has for centuries. But a change of name might be worth thinking about.

Don Langenberg
Chancellor Emeritus
University System of Maryland
Adelphi, Md.

Comments From Chronicle.com:

Those who lament the end of journalism are dinosaurs who don't see beyond dead-tree news. On the Internet, across electronic venues, there is more news and information (and, admittedly, babble) than ever. Those of us who practice and teach journalism know that the traditional need for people to gather reliable information and make sense of it for readers/viewers/listeners/bloggers is far from dead. Without this journalistic function—informed people keeping track of the planet and their communities and reporting it to others—the babble may consume us. An engaged and informed citizenry is at greater risk than the newspapers we seem already to have written off.

tedpease

Until the Internet, we never had a genuine "marketplace of ideas," though the concept of achieving one is as ancient as Aristotle. We have had brokered news, filtered exchanges, and have faced daunting barriers to participation in the public discussion. For anyone that relishes the First Amendment, the Internet is a blessing.

drgarysgoodman

I don't think journalists translating for the public what academics know and think is a skill that is all that valuable. Embedding journalists within academe is no solution to either revitalize journalism or to give additional opportunities for professional journalists.

A more direct link between academe and newspapers would be a better solution. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the dominant papers are horrible, written for academically challenged eighth graders. What the Bay Area newspapers need is an infusion of talent. They can get that most efficiently by recruiting academics (including advanced graduate students) at the places like the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford who have the interest and the inclination to write for a broader audience.

The main barrier is not that academics cannot write for a broader audience—it's just that there are no incentive to do so. This problem can be fixed with the right incentives. Providing even a nominal sum ($1,000 for a medium-length article) would have a big impact on academics who are already publishing to think about translating their pieces for a newspaper audience. I personally have published three op-ed pieces in the Los Angeles Times, and each time, I felt I got a lot out of it. The ability to connect with a readership of a million (rather than 50) under my name and with my own writing without the obfuscation of a journalist who always gets something wrong in the translation was worth it.

22286593

The University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communication provides content for newspapers, television stations, and cable channels in the state and elsewhere. Instructors and students shape content based on classroom work and particular goals of individual classes and then provide that material in an open-access environment. As examples, our student newscast and many other projects are carried by Time Warner Cable, photo stories have been carried by WRAL's Web site and The Charlotte Observer, and other newspapers across the state have carried stories with particular interest in their locales.

This approach has enabled professors to determine the approach and guide the students rather than having media outlets determine what the students produce. We believe this contributes to an open environment and allows professors and students to experiment and to contribute to the intellectual life of the university through research and development. This fall we will open a new digital newsroom that will experiment with student work and niche audiences, incorporating research into the project.

Jean Folkerts
Dean
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

I couldn't agree more with the sentiments expressed in Carlin Romano's article "We Need 'Philosophy of Journalism.'" I have been teaching an "Epistemology of Journalism" course at the University of Lund's Helsingborg campus (Sweden), as part of an international summer school that is designed to attract students from countries traditionally without a free press. Here is a course outline: http://www.icomm.lu.se/summer school/course1.html

sysdt

I'd like to see philosophers participate in journalism-ethics discussions. For many years, students benefited from John Merrill's course in "Philosophy of Journalism" at the University of Missouri. Merrill applied classic philosophy to journalistic problems. In large measure, the professional schools in our society (journalism, engineering, medicine, architecture) are deficient in ethical training.

mikems