February 14, 2008

Students Accuse Medill School of Journalism's Dean of Lame Reporting

The dean of Northwestern University’s journalism school is being taken to task by some of the school’s students for using anonymous sources in a column he wrote in the Medill alumni magazine, the Chicago Tribune reported today.

In the column, an unnamed student is quoted apparently praising a class that teaches students how to develop “a fully integrated marketing program.” Medill’s dean, John Lavine, led a controversial overhaul of the school’s curriculum to blend marketing and “audience understanding” with traditional reporting skills (The Chronicle, August 10, 2007).

“I sure felt good about this class. It is one of the best I’ve taken,” says part of the quote, which, the dean writes, “a Medill junior told me.”

The dean also quotes “one sophomore” raving about a new reporting program. “This is the most exciting my education has been,” the unnamed student is quoted as saying.

Students at Medill are taught to use unnamed sources sparingly and to give professors the names and contact information for those sources as a way to discourage fabrication.

David Spett, a Medill senior, contacted all of the 29 students in the marketing classes he figured the dean must have been talking about, and none of them owned up to the quote, according to a column Mr. Spett wrote in The Daily Northwestern.

When contacted by the Tribune, Mr. Lavine said the quotes “came from real people,” but he didn’t remember whether they were from e-mail messages or face-to-face conversations.

He also said that using anonymous quotes in a “letter” to alumni is different from using them in a newspaper report.

Some students were unconvinced.

“It is an opinion piece, but it is not just like anyone writing an opinion piece. He is the dean of a journalism school,” said Allison Bond, a Medill senior. “It is sort of ironic. He is the masthead of Medill, and so he should be held to the most stringent standards.” —Katherine Mangan

Comments

1. In order to place more of their graduates into high-paying journalism jobs, schools should teach lame reporting. I mean, where are we going to get the new generation of Wolf Blitzers and Katie Courics?

   — marci    Feb 14, 12:35 PM    #

2. The school has caved..under the pretense of progressive, more practical curriculum…which is needed…but not at the expense of the fundamentals of reporting and editing. Seems like the school wants to maximize profit…new campus in Middle East. Med schools have been doing this for a while. It’s sad.

   — Dan    Feb 14, 12:51 PM    #

3. It was my understanding that Medill made the deliberate decision to merge journalism with marketing. Only pap can result from that blend. And blending marketing and journalism is by no stretch of defninition “progressive, more practical curriculum.” It is merely the sacrifice of journalism—which will not, in the long run—maximize anything except the decline of Medill’s reputation.

   — BertW    Feb 14, 04:52 PM    #

4. ‘Creative sourcing’ is an efficient way to get one’s point across. If a journalist thinks it’s true, it is true, and the ignorant public has a right to know. Journalists eagerly stake their reputations on this idea, so they must believe it fervently.

   — wm    Feb 14, 05:50 PM    #

5. wm repeats the mistake so obviously made by Medill and its dean. “Creative sourcing” is a method of public relations, not of journalism. wm’s evident contempt for journalists demonstrates Medill’s folly in blurring the line between journalism and marketing.

   — BertW    Feb 15, 08:08 AM    #

6. If the students’ perceptions are true, it appears that the dean has breached the wall that differentiates journalism from public relations. Karla K. Gower addresses these concerns in her recent book that advocates for a strong press, Public Relations and the Press: The Troubled Embrace. (Northwestern University Press, 2007).

   — Jant Rice McCoy    Feb 15, 08:11 AM    #

7. My friends at Columbia must be having a great time with this!

   — JBR    Feb 15, 08:26 AM    #

8. The students are correct. The dean as well as all of his faculty should be setting the standards. At this point he should admit the mistake which would regain some level of professionalism.

   — Mike    Feb 15, 09:52 AM    #

9. The most important point is whether or not the Dean is lying – if so, that is the behavior that cannot be tolerated, the really bad example. I don’t understand how someone can remember or write down and exact quotation, but not remember whether it came in writing or orally.

   — Dr T. Larsen    Feb 15, 12:49 PM    #

10. Hey, Dr. William Allan Kritsonis, like you said, man — respect!

    — Jethro Bodine    Feb 15, 05:37 PM    #

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