By
James Breiner
If you want to study journalism, you
have more choices today, at lower cost, and of higher quality than ever.
Sometimes you will get that at a university and sometimes not. That represents
a challenge for universities.
In a lecture at a journalism conference in Puebla, Mexico, I
described a personal experience taking a course in data visualization from one
of the world leaders in the field, Alberto Cairo, author of "The
Functional Art."
The six-week course had readings and
video tutorials of the highest quality. The homework assignments required at
least 10 to 15 hours of work a week.
Engaged professor
Cairo was intimately involved with the
course participants, offering criticism of their work and suggestions for
improvement. What was remarkable about this course was that there were 2,000
students enrolled from more than 100 countries, it took place completely online
and it was free.
I took the course while working in
China. It was offered by the Knight Center for Digital Journalism
in the Americas, based at the University of Texas.
This kind of course represents a major
challenge for universities, because their monopoly on expertise and
certification is eroding. Just as occurred in the news business, competitors
are emerging who are offering attractive alternatives.
Student preferences
The customer is now in charge. Students
are demanding that courses be available to them whenever, wherever and on
whatever platform they choose, and in formats that they prefer.
Many universities make it difficult for
someone to sign up to take one specific course without enrolling in a degree
program. I ran into this a decade ago when I wanted to take courses in Spanish
literature at a Baltimore University. I had the language skill but not the
prerequisite courses and could not clear other bureaucratic obstacles.
I was a willing customer with money to
pay and was turned away.
Innovate or be left behind
Howard Finberg, who launched the
Poynter Institute's online training arm, NewsU.org, noted in a recent essay:
"…the future of journalism
education [at universities] is at a critical point for two reasons. 1. Time is
running out. Disruption, driven by economics and technology, is coming to the
university system much more quickly than most administrators realize. 2.
Journalism education will undergo fundamental shifts in how journalism is
taught and who teaches it. Those who don’t innovate in the classroom will be
left behind — just like those who chose not to innovate in the newsroom."
Journalism training is not in danger,
in his opinion, but the value of a journalism degree certainly is. Echoing him
is a renowned digital journalism entrepreneur, Ramon Alberto Garza, who
addressed the journalism conference in Puebla mentioned earlier. Garza said
universities are training students to work within an "obsolete industrial
model" while ignoring advances in digital journalism. Garza's remark
produced audible gasps in the auditorium, according to Esther Vargas.
It is not just the MOOCs of
organizations like Coursera, Udacity and EdX that are offering alternatives.
The BBC's online College of Journalism offers free access to hundreds of video
tutorials used to train its own correspondents. Its foundation also offers free
onsite training to journalists and citizens in emerging democracies where
freedom of expression is under attack.
Flexibility for professionals
Some universities have embraced the
trend toward more online courses. As Adam Glenn noted in his summary of
journalism education trends, the University of Missouri, the University of
Florida and American University, among others, are offering degree programs
completely online.
The University of Guadalajara in Mexico
offers a master's degree program in digital journalism that is completely
online. (I helped design it when I was director of the program there.)
Online programs offer flexibility for
working professionals. David DeFranza, who is studying for a master's in
Technology and Communications in an online degree program at the University of
North Carolina, described in a MediaShift post how he
benefits from the interactivity with classmates from other fields.
The nonprofit International
Center for Journalists, with which I have worked, is one of many
media development organization offering free training online. ICFJ's IJNet platform has
training and tutorials online in seven languages. President Joyce Barnathan in
a recent speech encouraged journalism schools to embrace the new trends
affecting journalism and lead the revolution rather than being consumed by it:
"Schools that can adapt and
embrace change -- and at the same time serve as standard bearers for best
practices -- are the ones likely to be thought leaders, attracting the best
students -- and educating the best future journalists."
Grades are not important
As for me, the student rather than
professor in the data visualization course of Alberto Cairo, I received no
grade. During the course, I used his excellent video tutorials to learn Adobe
Illustrator.
I spent probably 30 hours on my final
project, an article with graphics describing the low level of user loyalty on
major news sites and its implications for business models. (The graphics,
without the accompanying explanation, are packed clumsily into one graphic here.)
I put a lot into the course and got a
lot out of it. Of the 2,000 people in the course, many were beginners and
non-journalists. A few were highly accomplished in the field already. We
learned a lot from each other.
Who cares about grades? You would be
hard put to find a journalism program that offered a course of this caliber.
This post originally appeared on the
blog News Entrepreneurs. It is
published on IJNet with the author's permission.
James Breiner is a consultant in online
journalism and leadership. He is a former co-director of the Global Business Journalism Program at
Tsinghua University and a former Knight International Journalism Fellow
who launched and directed the Center for Digital Journalism at the University of
Guadalajara. He is bilingual in Spanish and English. You can follow
him on Twitter here.
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