We’re all fully aware of how much our industry is changing.
The colleges that supply our talent are aware of it, too, and they’re trying to change to meet those needs.
“I think ‘panic’ might be too strong a word, but there is definitely an urgency to adjust to what you need," said Malcolm Moran, the Knight Chair in Sports Journalism and Society, and director of the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State.
Moran, who previously worked at Newsday, USA Today, The New York Times and Chicago Tribune, was part of a panel at the APSE’s Northeast Region meeting last month to discuss how journalism programs are changing to meet the new needs of newspapers. Also on the panel were Richard F. Hanley, Graduate Director of Journalism and Interactive Communications at Quinnipiac University (Hamden, Conn.), a graduate student at Emerson University and a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina.
Hanley said Quinnipiac is making new media part of its course of study, so that students are learning everything as they go through the program.
“You can’t do one track," he said. “You have to learn it all."
The key for colleges is to train students to use interactive media – “figuring out how to use all the new toys," as Moran put it – while still teaching the traditional values of journalism. Hanley said it’s a matter of teaching students how to use different ways of telling a story. He and Moran said they both stress the fact that the student’s name is still on the work, and they need to take ownership and responsibility for the content.
Being able to function in the new media environment – doing such things as shooting video, blogging and tweeting – is important to today’s students.
“You have to know more," said Megan Gregg, a first-year grad student at Emerson College in Boston. “You have to be able to do it all."
Moran and Hanley said students still want to become journalists, despite all the questions about the future of newspapers.
Hanley noted journalism is still the largest group in Quinnipiac’s communications department.
“Amazingly enough, enrollment numbers have not changed," he said. “The only difference is, the questions from parents are more pointed."
