April 26, 2003
Career Day

With a colorful stack of brochures, they hand you a line like ‘the future is yours’...

When I was in high school, a local newspaper writer came to our school for “Career Day.” Today, the only thing I remember about his presentation is a discussion of an apocryphal-sounding story about a man who spontaneously combusted, leaving only a pile of freeze-dried coffee behind. Over the years this memory has gotten blurry, to the point where I can almost tell myself that a local newspaper writer came to our school and spontaneously combusted. The point, however, is that that’s all I remember from Career Day.

Against this backdrop I find myself thinking about “professionalism” and the big picture. It started with the ongoing debate about blogging being the same thing as journalism, and continued with a more general debate with Chris. And it’s in the media news as well as pundits weigh in on the proposed revamping of Columbia University’s journalism program.

When I first started reading up on this, I was honestly surprised at how widespread distrust of professionalism is. The distrust stems from the assumption that when groups of people consider themselves professionals, the result is likely to be conformity, exclusion, and passivity. The most obvious targets for the argument are fields like medicine and law, but the debate also extends into computer game design, teaching, librarianship, and nursing.

It’s an argument in which the opposing sides don’t hear each other very well. In a paper about librarianship, one author described the clash of rhetorics as “a civil war between privileged professionals arguing from positions of moral absolutism and beleaguered managers arguing from positions of organizational efficiency.”

Who gave you the right to plow the surface of my clear day? Oh, I see, this must be Career Day

As I turned my attention to the eternal debate as to the necessity of journalism degrees, a sinking feeling set in. You mean this hoary old war horse is still out there?

Yes, and apparently it’s still alive and kicking. Consider this salvo from the Washington Post this week. The writer skewers Columbia’s dean for referring to journalism as a “profession” and maintains that all the necessary skills can be learned on the job:

Journalism is best learned by doing it. Mostly, an aspiring reporter needs a job, preferably for an exacting editor. You try to be accurate, clear, quick, perceptive and engaging. These are not abstract skills learned in a classroom. At best, journalism schools are necessary evils.

Some j-school detractors argue that would-be journalists major in something else, then figure out how to be a reporter later. Want to report on politics? Go study political science. Interested in health reporting? Go major in biology. And so on.

I don’t wholly disagree with this idea. My school required journalism majors to have a second major to balance out the educational experience. This requirement (and a master’s degree, in my case) helped me to become a more educated person.

Some j-school detractors have gone so far as to apparently advocate that education makes no difference. The A-Clue Newsletter maintains:

But newspapers and the "journalism profession" (an oxymoron to put next to "military intelligence") are no longer in a position to be judge and jury on who is, and isn't, practicing journalism. …It's readers who decide who journalists are, and what journalism is.

The implied discrediting of education—apparently, any education beyond the ability to read—is staggering. It’s hard to imagine someone applying the same principle to medicine, or business, or even technology. Would you say “It’s patients who decide who dentists are, and what dentistry is”? I don’t think so.

Serious anti-professionalists might accuse me of "enforcing the status quo." But for whom? Contrast this with the implicit current of nostalgia running through anti-j-school arguments--seemingly hearking back to the day when reporters learned from the school of hard knocks and didn’t need no stinkin’ education. Was the quality of reporting really any better? That's up for debate. And if they would have us return to those days, would we also be returning to the days when women weren’t commonly well represented in newsrooms, except for the society page? Status quo, indeed.

Just because it's not inviting doesn't mean the wolves aren't biting
My, my, my, what a big pointy ear! All the better to interview you with, my dear

In the end, inevitably, my experience colors my view. I invested a lot of time in my education and I don’t regret it. I support professionalism (including but not limited to education) for women in publishing (and other professions), because I believe professionalism is necessary for women and their accomplishments to be taken more seriously. And finally, I don’t require everyone who works for me to have a journalism degree, but I do require them to demonstrate an understanding of journalistic principles.

The demonstrated understanding is the deal-breaker. When I’m contacted by would-be freelance writers who don’t seem to be able to demonstrate that understanding (failure to attribute, for instance, or opinion masquerading as fact) I suggest they go take a journalism class or two. I don’t have the time or inclination to teach mini-seminars in “Why plagiarism is bad” or “Why you should not offer unsubstantiated assertions without supporting them.” Hiring people who don't understand technique and ethics is unappealing not just because I don’t need the aggravation of fixing their errors, but because the reputation and integrity of my publication are at stake.

This is the flaw in the “an aspiring reporter just needs a job” argument for me. For who’s going to teach the aspiring reporter? Without journalism schools, we all become teachers of Journalism 101, and that’s simply not what I came here to do. Does that make me a “privileged professional” or a “beleaguered manager”? I think the answer is: both.

(Lyrics to "Career Day" by Franklin Bruno.)

Posted at April 26, 2003 03:50 PM
Comments

(Except for zines and self-published cool stuff) I agee with Anne.

Posted by: ed on April 27, 2003 02:12 AM

Bravo! My thoughts exactly.

Posted by: Andrew on April 28, 2003 04:16 PM

Anne:

I should, really I should, look more closely at this and engage with you, I think. Obviously there's issuesw here for both you and Chris, and I think I can see both sides.

On the other hand, there's this:

http://www.bigbadtoystore.com/toy.asp?Queryid=joe070

which may acuatlly say everything I could with greater eloquence, and the same level of resolved conclusiveness.


Posted by: mike on April 28, 2003 10:15 PM

For what it's worth....

I stumbled into the technology field without a degree. I had exactly one computer science class, where we did some cheesy programming (I think we built a calculator), learned HTML, and had to do some basic commands in Unix. It was the Intro of Intro classes.

To me, my entire life since then has been a struggle to prove that I *do* know what I'm talking about. No one takes me less seriously because I don't have a CS degree, and I am still able to find work, but there's a nagging sense in me that I don't understand the fundamentals and don't know the big picture. And I figure myself to be (perhaps) one of the more enlightened of my ilk, since I spent a lot of time on my own reading about CS history, non-business applications of programming, etc.

The truth is though, I really wish I had the degree. Someone had to spend a lot of time working with me to teach how to be productive. I had to spend even more time on my own doing the same thing. And I imagine it must be the same for journalists, especially since their product is available for the world to see.

Posted by: brian on May 1, 2003 08:32 AM
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