Phil Meyer tells the vanishing News and Observer that he’s given up on newspapers and only hopes that journalism can be saved in Ted Vaden’s column today. “At this point, the social goal should not be to save newspapers, but to save journalism.”
Ryan Thornburg just back from the Carnegie-Knight Task Force on the Future of Journalism Education at Harvard asks who will pick up the slack from the Observer and News and Observer slimdowns.
. He answers somewhat in his next post — his comments from the conference “Citizen Journalism and Authentic Leadership.”
Our J-School Dean, Jean Folkerts, also back from the Carnegie-Knight Task Force on the Future of Journalism Education asks for ideas for J-Schools as she concludes “An elite model of journalism education may serve elite journalists, but it doesn’t serve the democracy.”
Jay Rosen takes on the old school whilst attending the same conference in “Twilight of the Curmurgeon Class”
Newspapers == Advertising Inserts
PS, RIP George Carlin
Newspapers used to == advert inserts But that is sinking fast see Papers Facing Worst Year for Ad Revenue.
Not to poopoo Folkerts, because that’s a great sentiment, but I see some dissonance between that idea and the J-school’s practice. At a not-too-long-ago lecture, I asked a prominent J-school professor about the “democratization” potential of new interactive storytelling technologies, and I was told in no uncertain terms that that is and should remain the realm of highly trained journalists – not “citizen” journalists and certainly not plain old community members. When does a journalist become elite? How do you run a professional journalism school and prevent your graduates from being elite journalists? There seems to be an inherent contradiction there, but maybe that’s what the Task Force is addressing…