We don’t need no education…
I find Robert J. Samuelson’s reaction to Lee Bollinger’s taskforce statement on journalism education interesting. He says:
Bollinger’s vision amounts to snob journalism: journalism by an elite for an elite.
Apparently it is snobbery to believe, as Bollinger does, that journalists need
a functional knowledge of statistics, the basic concepts of economics, and an appreciation for the importance of history and for the fundamental debates in modern political theory and philosophy.
This sounds to me less like snobbery and more like a good education.
What I find interesting about Samuelson’s response is that it is so disconnected from what Bollinger is suggesting. Samuelson is worried about shrinking audiences and rightly so. In his conclusion, he blames higher education:
Beyond meeting deadlines, the central task of print and TV editors is to reverse the slide in their audiences–and to do so without resorting to too many gimmicks, shortcuts and stupidities. Here is a larger issue that should preoccupy Bollinger and other college presidents. As a society, we’re sending more and more young people to college. Presumably, one task of college is to engage students in the big ideas and events of their time. On the evidence, that’s not happening. Why–and what should colleges do about it?
So let me see if I have this straight: In order to keep audiences from shrinking, the general population needs a better education–except for journalists. Yep…I understand that.
I’m flabbergasted that anybody would criticize the suggestion that journos need stats, econ, and history. My impression is that a huge portion of all “news” stories would either disappear or be written very differently if reporters (or editors) had a nose for junk science, health-care scams, and historically failed policies.
I’m with you there. Geez, the math errors and misconceptions alone make the arguement for a broad education.
Perhaps being a journalist is like being a cop…it is best to learn it by apprenticeship. If the above notists believe a journalist a less likely to tilt left if they get more college, that strikes me as quite naive.
Journalists who felt less confident that they knew how to analyse social trends, yet more savvy about developing hard news stories, would be more likely to keep the focus of their profession on good topical news judgement
I just have a difficult time believing that a well-rounded liberal arts education is bad for any profession or craft or whatever you want to call it. That’s basically what Bollinger is arguing for.