Swimming to Columbia

Jonathan Last has a great piece in today's Wall Street Journal (available to all) on the dubious merits of J-schools:

Those of us saddened by the declining fortunes of the newspaper industry had hoped that shrinking newspaper staffs would have at least one salutary effect: fewer journalism-school graduates. This has not proved to be the case. In 2005, newspapers cut 2,000 jobs; this spring more people graduated from journalism schools than ever before.

On the education of young journalists, there has been much recent debate. There is one argument over whether or not journalists should aspire to objectivity and another about the liberal bias that permeates journalism programs. But the problem isn't that journalists are being taught improperly; it's that the foundations of journalistic education are faulty.

The notion of a special program for journalists first surfaced at the turn of the century, when Joseph Pulitzer dreamed of founding a school of journalism at Columbia. In 1902, he offered the university $2 million to establish one. The administration wavered; Pulitzer's peers thought the idea ludicrous. As Michael Lewis once reported in The New Republic, a New York newspaper editor "suggested that one might as well set up a graduate school in swimming."

Last goes to suggest that instead of teaching students how to be journalists, schools should focus on providing them with real knowledge:

Instead of educating future journalists on the nuts and bolts of journalism--because let's be honest, it isn't rocket science or even carpentry--it would make more sense simply to teach them things. Facts, it turns out, are useful.

Most people can write a nut graph after 30 minutes of practice, but comparatively few people can explain, say, econometrics, or fluid dynamics, or the history of the French Revolution. Aspiring journalists don't need trade-craft--they need a liberal-arts education that gives them a base of mastery in actual academic subjects.

Such knowledge might help journalists avoid such embarassing mistakes as not being aware of the political views of John Kenneth Galbraith or knowing that the American military decoration for being wounded or killed in action is the Purple Heart, not the Purple Star (to cite two recent examples from the corrections page of the "paper of record").