If the media is to be reinvented, aren’t journalism schools the place that should start?

Can you find the Fresh, Ferocious Wave among the students currently laboring through Copy Editing 101?

Or are college and university programs more interested in hanging on to a model that has already disappeared?

At a time when journalism jobs continue to disappear, is there a career left for J-school graduates?

Four recent journalism graduates talked to their professors.

Lori Blachford, a professor for six years and now Fisher-Stelter chair of magazine journalism at Drake University, was interviewed by Tara Richards, class of 2009.

Jim Detjen, a professor since the mid-1990s and now director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University, was interviewed by Anusuya Das, class of 2010.

Laurence B. Lain, who will retire next year after 35 as a professor of communications at the University of Dayton, was interviewed by Ashley Kasicki, class of 2006.

Jonathan Marshall, teaching for 10 years and now a lecturer at the Medill School of Journalism, was interviewed by Emily Wray, class of 2011.

Q: What are the biggest changes with respect to curriculum over the past five to 10 years?

Lain: I’ve seen so many changes in my career. Hot type—I operated a linotype machine at my first newspaper—cold type, phototypesetting, paste-up, computer design and pagination. All sorts of new media. I’ve tried to develop the curriculum to keep pace with the industry, but the essentials must remain. Good writing and editing are essential [regardless of] the technology that puts them before the public.

Marshall: In the last five years, we’ve put renewed emphasis on trying to understand how to engage different kinds of audiences, in recognizing that not all readers and viewers are the same, and that when we report and represent a story, we need to think about the best way to engage each audience, and to understand it.

We’ve also implemented a lot of opportunities for digital and interactive storytelling, and now we’re looking at how social networking can improve both our reporting and our ability to distribute stories.

Detjen: We are trying to adapt our classes to make sure people have multimedia skills. That’s going to be an ongoing process.

Another part that I have been increasing in all my classes is assignments dealing with entrepreneurial journalism. How do you do

freelance writing? Can you help design or develop a new product? Can you figure out business models to support that? Those are critical skills for future journalism. We are kind of reinventing the world of journalism, and schools of journalism could be incubators for new ideas. We are trying to push ahead and encourage students to think that way as well as encourage faculty to think that way and experiment.

Blachford: The biggest changes are definitely in response to all of our new delivery systems, specifically online. Particularly in the magazine courses, we’ve been blogging for the last five years and now it’s progressing to all forms of social media. Some of the things like Foursquare are coming up, just in terms of reaching audience.

The biggest thing that has happened is how we take the basic skills we teach students about good journalism and then put them into action in these new delivery outlets.

Q: What sort of courses or other activities have you and the school developed to accommodate this change?

Blachford: For the most part, the courses have stayed the same. By that I mean in terms of the title of courses. The fundamentals we’re
teaching are still the same as a decade ago. What changes is the type of writing we expose the students to. So if we’re doing a “how-to” article, which we have always taught in terms of basic

service journalism, now the students may do it with a video instead. They still have to come up with a script, with the situations they want to film and all of that. But it exposes them to multimedia production, because we know they’re going to need to have those skills going forward.

What’s changed are the types of challenges we put in front of students that are far beyond just sitting down and writing a solid article. Again, it’s that focus on delivery.

And then getting the word out through social media outlets. We’re mostly just incorporating new ways of doing our class work into these courses, not totally revamping the courses because we still feel really strongly that the foundation skills of good, ethical reporting are what students need to learn first. After five years the delivery methods have changed, and in another five years they’ll change again. We can adjust to those delivery methods—what we’ve got to teach are those good foundation skills.

Detjen: In our school of journalism, some of the research-oriented classes require quantitative analysis. There’s been a lot of debate over whether that should be a required class or an optional class. To what degree are those skills vital for journalists? Quantitative analysis is great if you want to go into an academic career but computer-assisted reporting is more important if you are going to be journalist.

Marshall: There have been a lot of concrete changes: storefront newsrooms—undergrads based in Chicago neighborhoods—we added video reporting, audio stories, photojournalism and Flash storytelling to our basic freshman and sophomore classes, as well as to the graduate school basic curriculum. We added specific classes in audience understanding. We’ve added a lot more classes in digital and interactive storytelling.

Undergraduates can spend a quarter in Washington. We’ve expanded the opportunities for our junior year residencies—South Africa, Quatar, Latin America. We’ve added the opportunity for undergraduates to get a certificate in Integrated Marketing Communications; and we now have JR residencies in marketing companies. Most of these changes were implemented within the last three years.

Q: Do you feel that the same types of students are gravitating towards journalism or is it changing? How?

Lain: This is a good question. No, I don’t think so, on the whole. At the beginning of my career, a large percentage of students had a passion for newspaper work – this was during the Watergate era. Nowadays, only a few students are committed to newspapers, while the rest are casting about for a place to be. Newspapers are on the table, but little of the passion is there. Public relations is more

popular, corporate communication, nonprofit agencies and so on are equally in play for most students.

Marshall: I think today’s student is certainly more online-savvy, and obviously has more understanding of the importance of social networks. I think today’s student is also more ready to be entrepreneurial and if a kind of media organization doesn’t exist to allow them to do the kind of journalism they want to do, they’re much more ready to find a way to create that opportunity themselves.

For instance, our graduate students created WindyCitizen.com about three years ago, which is now a leading Chicago news site. A former undergrad working in Korea saw a need for investigative reporting so he started his own site with some other students to do just that.

Detjen: In terms of the makeup of the student body, there has been an increased internationalization. Just this year, we are getting more Chinese students, mainly at the undergraduate level.

Students are increasingly concerned about jobs. We have a required internship, and you are going to see more and more of that. In the university, I think you are going to see some of the walls broken down between departments. It’s going to be easier for our students to work with different departments.

Blachford: We’re very high on internships. The students want internships. They take them for long term or short term. They’re courageous about the places they approach; they create their own opportunities.

You used to want to be a journalist because you wanted to be a truth-teller. The erosion we’ve had in terms of media confidence from consumers and the closing of some major news outlets and magazine titles has made students a little cynical about whether the industry is going to hold up, whether print is going to survive. They have a lot of questions about that. But there’s a lot of opportunity in terms of them being able to enter these different fields.

You usually get students who are pretty confident in being able to handle whatever comes their way, and that’s critical—that will serve them well no matter what field they get into or what job. That kind of confidence is still a standard we’re seeing among students. They’re not really questioning whether they’ll get a job—they’re just not exactly sure what that job is going to be.

Q: How have the expectations of students’ performance changed with the shift in media away from print?

Lain: For me, at least, expectations haven’t changed at all. Publishability is still the standard in my writing classes; perfection in my editing classes.

Marshall: I think the expectation is still for excellence, and that there will be depth to every story, and that every story will be told effectively. I think what’s changed is an understanding that stories can be told in a lot of different way, but that for whatever way that story’s told, it needs to be told well.

Blachford: [We have to] help build a journalist who is going to be ready for the next big thing because we know there are more changes coming down the road. The students are responding; they’re accepting it. They’re not clinging to old ways—in fact, they’re probably pushing us harder than we’re pushing them in some cases. It makes for a very vibrant study environment where students are learning and so are the instructors as we go along.

Q: What do you think are the new requirements for success in media now? What did that look like 5-10 years ago?

Lain: Flexibility. That’s always been true, of course, but never more than now. The fundamentals haven’t changed – ruthless investigation, good writing, precise editing. But what skills will be needed in five years or 10? Photography? Video editing? Web design? Podcasting? Social media expertise? No one knows. And tomorrow it will change. We have to teach not just a basic skill set, but how to adapt to a new one.

Detjen: You have to have multimedia and entrepreneurial skills. The fundamental skills have not changed dramatically. While the technologies are changing and some of the ethical dilemmas are changing, the core requirements of what you need to be a journalist haven’t changed.

Blachford: I think what’s changed is that it’s essential for them to have a real entrepreneurial spirit because the marketplace is in such a state of change that they have to be able to recognize and react really quickly to those changes.

We need them to be very aware. We need them to be big picture thinkers. We need them to be critical thinkers and problem solvers. We know that that’s the marketplace that they are going to enter.

Q: Have you seen the interest level in media as a profession increase or decline in the past 5-10 years?

Lain: Decline, probably, because of the uncertainty of what “media as a profession” actually means.

Marshall: If anything, I’ve seen the interest level increase. We live in a media-saturated world, and I think people are fascinated by all of the different ways that they get information, through images and words and sound, and through interaction with media. Students, as

well as other people, understand the importance of accurate, good information to help them make decisions in their own lives and as informed citizens.

Blachford: [Students who are not journalism majors are] coming over to the journalism school to get some key courses like the introductory reporting course, and also our web design course. Students see that some of [that is] going to have broad implications when they get out into the workplace.

And I think skills in social media—we have incorporated that into courses, and I think at some point, as a University, we may be looking at some of those classes that would work for the business students or the pharmacy students. [Social media] is going to come into play in every industry, not just journalism.

We have a lot of students who are looking at crossing over their skills to different areas. We have students working for insurance companies, doing their social media. They don’t have to work for a media company per se anymore. We have magazine students going into marketing jobs, or they’re doing PR internships. We have clung to these majors but the students themselves are crossing over. So it is convergent journalism. Students are less focused on just one thing. I think that’s the biggest change. They’re trying a little bit of a lot of things and not specializing, which is great.

Q: Where do you think media is going?

Lain: If I knew that, I’d reinvest my retirement portfolio and buy the Florida Keys with the proceeds.

Detjen: I think media is [going to adapt] to many new technologies, and these are going to be ongoing and changing. Increasingly people are going to be getting their news and information from [mobile] devices. Some of these technologies will have different styles of journalism. So J-Schools are going to be experimenting with each of these technologies.

I think you are going to see more journalism schools working with schools of business as well as the computer science departments. You are going to see journalists trying to invent the future and I think journalism schools can be great places to try these experiments. And of course, the entrepreneurial part, I think, is going to grow in importance as there are fewer full-time staff jobs and more independent operators.

Marshall: Are you asking me to look into a crystal ball here? Any prediction like that can be quite risky, but as [access to information increases], people are going to more and more value ways they can sift through all of that to find the kind of information and stories that truly matter to them. There’s going to be a renewed emphasis on good, quality journalism and a renewed emphasis on the kinds of sites and publications and outlets that help them find that quality.