I had a profoundly visceral reaction to today's news that five prestigious journalism schools are joining forces -- and, to some extent, checkbooks -- in the interest of producing a new generation, presumably a better generation, of reporters and editors.
On the one hand, how can anyone quarrel with the noble objective of this enterprise? Of course we can do with better journalism. This has always been true, irrespective of the most-foul scandals and embarrassments at big news organizations the last several years. Yes, yes we can use stronger/faster/smarter journalists. (And also more honest lawyers and politicians and abler cab drivers and plumbers and -- no, wait, I've never once had a problem with a plumber.)
But then I'm reminded of something that I've believed ever since I was a kid hoping to one day be a journalist: This is -- or should be -- a calling. You go into journalism not the way you "go into hardware" or "go into arbitrage," but rather because you buy into in the essential good that results from an effective Fourth Estate. You don't enter the field for money (that's for sure!) or glory. You become a journalist because you have no choice, in the way that singers go into showbiz because what else, really, are they going to do. You follow your heart.
College-level journalism schools, where many of our reporters (and beautiful anchorpeople) train, are not essential to the Republic. That's a simple truth, if not an easy one to swallow in certain academic circles. At the same time, they do no real harm, and I know from experience that they can be useful, especially in producing research, although that is of interest mainly to social scientists and education reporters.
As it happens, I'm a graduate of two reputable journalism programs. Neither hurt me. Neither taught me much either, I must say. The truth of the matter is that you certainly don't need a degree in journalism in order to practice the craft with distinction. Many, maybe most, of the finest reporters I know received their degrees in the arts, law, biology, theology, and economics.
Everything you must learn about journalism -- the canons, the applicable legal issues, the ethics, best practices, and so on -- can be condensed into a couple of semesters of college-level courses. The rest is a matter of instinct and native talent.
When I was a college undergrad, chagrined at the general lack of ambition among my about-to-graduate classmates, I wrote a long letter to Editor & Publisher magazine expressing my opinion that journalism schools should hold off on recruiting. Why bother luring thousands of naive, confused high-school grads into the field? Kids who had the passion would somehow find their way in, one way or another.
That long-ago letter to E&P got me my first real job the business. A newspaper editor in New Jersey spotted it and offered me an entry-level position at his daily, which I happily accepted. Most of the young reporters I met there, and with whom I kept in touch, fell out of the game in the years that followed. Journalism was, for them, chiefly an expedient, a means to a relatively easy paycheck until something more lucrative came along.
That's the way it's always been, and that's just dandy. You don't want to turn the country's press over to a cadre of lackadaisical, half-hearted reporters, do you? The best ones are the driven ones -- sometimes they're the malcontented ones, granted -- and they stick around. And they make trouble. That's their mission.
So it was with some mild distress that I read in the New York Times this morning that five of the most prestigious journalism programs in the U.S. (at Columbia, Berkeley, Northwestern, Southern Cal, and Harvard) will combine forces to "revitalize journalism education by jointly undertaking national investigative reporting projects, integrating their journalism programs more deeply with other disciplines at their universities and providing a national platform to try to influence the discourse on media-related issues."
Whew.
Well, that's precisely the kind of thing elite schools do, or say they'll do. In setting out the purpose of this ambitious venture, the universities involved will no doubt issue a carefully crafted statement marked by appropriately lofty language.
It'll be impressive. But I predict it'll mean little if anything in the real world. What we'll have here is a sort of Ivy League-level consortium of universities, supported largely by outside funding, with nothing to show for the effort in three years' time. Why? Because, when all is said and done, not much of consequence happens in formal journalism education. (Except for the production of those aforementioned research papers, which have their usefulness, but not in actual newsrooms.)
Of all the best young reporters I ever hired, probably fewer than half owned a journalism degree. The others were journalists because they had the essentials -- the instinct and the talent. And because they were well-read, broadly educated, and smart. Smart and curious (and maybe disciplined) always trumps everything else in practice.
The students at Columbia, Northwestern, Berkeley, Southern Cal, and Harvard are bright, the kind I'd want working for me. (Although, sad to report, I've too frequently been disappointed by the students fresh out of Columbia's vaunted graduate J program. Why?) They'll do well, don't you worry. And not a one will be meaningfully grazed by the big joint venture announced today.
Mind you, I'm not unhappy that a group of prestige-brand colleges see that there is virtue in turning out better journalists. That's a very good thing, and I admire the intentions here, I really do. I'm just skeptical (as all journos are, always, by nature) that anything that happens in these classrooms over the next few years will yield the hoped-for result.
To my way of thinking, you cannot build a better journalist (or a better state of journalism) on a college campus. Brush-up courses? Seminars? Sure, absolutely, they have their place, particularly for mid-career scribes.
Let's just bear in mind, however, that, unlike those who devote themselves to dentistry or, say, the drygoods business, journalism is a true calling. The very best ones come to it, crawling if necessary, on their own, and they never leave. Not standing, anyway.
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