There’s lots of interesting discussion going on about the state of journalism education, much of it crossing the Atlantic. Read these posts from Andy Dickinson, Martin Stabe, Kevin Anderson, and Andrew Grant-Adamson in the UK, practioners and academics all. Then read this from Dave Lee, a student in the UK. In the U.S., of course, there’s Mindy McAdams’ post from last week that started this ball rolling. Then there’s Bob Stepno. And don’t miss Ryan Sholin’s young gun words of wisdom. Or Matt Waite. Or Danny Sanchez. I’d like to see some thoughts from U.S. journalism students who write blogs. I know they’re out there. Link in, folks. This is your future we’re talking about here. 
Lots to read there. Lots to think about. But the very fact that there are so many people talking about these issues and sharing ideas with each other increases the possibility that we’ll all benefit. It’s that “wisdom of crowds” thing again. This whole conversation illustrates something Howard Owens mentioned in his interview with me. There’s a social nature to the World Wide Web that you have to be a part of to understand. And journalists need to increase their understanding.
on Jan 17th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
A little bit of a plug, but Ball State’s Center for Media Design just partnered with Mediapost to do some blogging. Students from various majors are piping their two PayPal cents into this blog - mostly dealing with tech stuff.
Check it out ::: http://blogs.mediapost.com/digital_frontier/
on Jan 17th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
I think we do need some new heroes to aspire to, especially with the advent of the new media generation. You can’t just be a ‘hack’ anymore, I mean I’ve got my journalism heroes - but I don’t want to emulate them, I want to do something different and create something different that allows me to explore the possibilities that all the new media is allowing us to explore.
I think what Dave Lee said in his blog post was right, we’re not taught in the right way. We’re taught in a very old fashioned, old school journalism kind of way. There is not enough integration. I mean, there are seperate newspaper and online routes at my university - why? We both need to learn the same skills and we could link up their newspapers produced in a semester with our online news website that we have to produce.
To quote The Beatles, ‘come together’
on Jan 17th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
I’m actually one of Mindy McAdams’s students. I try to post every day, sometimes more than once. Sometimes about class, sometimes just interesting things I see online, usually connected back to Journalism somehow.
Blog:www.megantaylor.org/blog/index.html