When I decided to be a journalism major, I never would have thought that I would hear the names of Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair more than Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.
But that is how journalism is taught at Cal State Long Beach, and sadly, probably how it is taught at many other journalism schools, too. It seems the strategy to motivate aspiring young journalists is to emphasize what is wrong with the media: corporate ownership, plagiarism, bad reporting, lack of newspaper readership, too much cable news viewership and job cuts.
Journalism students take one class after another, where they listen to a former journalist-turned-professor tell one horror story after another about the field of work students are about to embark on. The only way to stay a journalism major, with an emphasis in print or broadcast, is to ignore what the professor is telling you, or be too lazy to change your major.
It shouldn’t be like this.
The goal of a journalism department should simply be to produce great journalists. Part of that is to have students realize the challenges of the industry now and into the future, but a much larger part of producing great journalists is to make students understand why it is worth making personal sacrifices for the betterment of society and to also show what journalism is doing right.
There are few practical reasons to become a journalist. The pay is bad, the hours are bad, getting a job is difficult and job security is terrible. Not only that, but thanks to Jon Stewart, becoming a journalist is now “not cool.”
The one driving force for people to become journalists is to do something that is more important than themselves and to provide a service that people might not always want but that they have to have. The saying, “A society is only as good as its press,” is a simplification, but nonetheless it is true.
Only once, in a media history class, have I ever heard a professor give an inspirational speech about the importance of becoming a journalist. Believe it or not, it is more important for students to understand why they should be journalists than knowing the “AP Stylebook” from cover to cover.
What really puzzles me is how eagerly these former journalists-turned-professors like to talk about how the industry is falling apart and not highlight the great achievements in journalism this millennium.
I’ve heard multiple professors talk about the failure of The New York Times in its coverage of WMDs before the Iraq War. But I have never heard a professor talk about The New York Times’ coverage of Sept. 11 and its immediate aftermath, which was probably the best reporting on a single event ever.
I’ve heard multiple professors talk about Janet Cooke, who in the ’80s fabricated a story for the Washington Post about a drug-addicted child. But I haven’t heard any professor talk about Dana Priest, who won a Pulitzer last year after she uncovered that the CIA had secret prisons across the world for “interrogation” purposes.
I’ve heard almost all of my professors talk about the garbage that is on cable news, but I have never heard any professors mention the PBS series “Frontline,” which may very well be the best journalism in any medium.
The point is, there isn’t a problem with teaching students what is wrong with journalism, but there is a problem when professors don’t balance that by showing aspiring journalists what good journalism looks like. When students only hear about what is bad about the profession they have chosen, they lose motivation and don’t become great journalists.
And in the end, that is the goal – to produce great journalists. The question that the CSULB journalism department must ask itself is this: “Are we doing that?”
Patrick Creaven is a graduating senior journalism major and the sports editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
