July 2010
Education of Journalists needs reviewing for two reasons. One is that in recent years journalism has been subject to critical scrutiny due to controversies about broadcast programs and news reports as well as to scandals in the media. The other is so called digitalization which is causing tectonic shifts in the former alignments in the media industry and its profit structure.
In our February and March issues we introduced an effort at Fudan University in China. In this issue, Professor Mafumi Fujita (Faculty of Social Sciences, Hosei University), our co-researcher, reports on retraining programs for journalists at ABC News, Columbia University and New York University in the United States.
In the US, unlike in Japan, media organizations have been largely dependent for journalists training on universities and other educational institutions. It is a given in the US that applicants for journalistic jobs are already trained in the basic skills of journalism. Therefore what had been offered at ABC News for the newly employed in the way of journalist training was a simple course intended to educate them on the company’s latest guidelines. In recent years, however, they are working keenly on technical training to enable their new employees to best cope with the digital age, which is also drawing attention form experienced professional journalists.
Education of journalists at universities run the gamut in the US, ranging widely from preparatory training to find a job as a journalist to further training for experienced pros to help enhance skills or knowledge and to education on critical thinking on journalism. Columbia University started Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program in 2008 for media company executives, where participants themselves set highly practical and relevant-to-business tasks and try to accomplish them through discussions with the lecturer and other fellow participants. Another emerging trend in the US broadcasting industry is the “outsourcing” of journalist training which was supposed to be done by the broadcasters themselves, and a large part of the job has been taken up by journalism schools of universities. Furthermore, US universities are trying to found NPOs in an attempt to complement investigative reporting of large media companies. Prof. Fujita also reports on journalist education at US universities which are looking for ways to coexist with the media.