By Scott Pohl, WKAR
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wkar/local-wkar-930246.mp3
EAST LANSING, MI –
Students have been studying journalism at Michigan State University for 100 years.
On Saturday, the MSU School of Journalism will host a day-long event to celebrate the centennial. The gathering will be held at the East Lansing Marriott.
WKAR's Scott Pohl recently spoke with Lucinda Davenport, director of MSU's Journalism School.
AUDIO:
SCOTT POHL: "I want to ask you about today's journalism students, and maybe even specifically, the seniors of today, because so much has changed even since they arrived at Michigan State. I would imagine some of those students came to MSU, I'm going to major in journalism, go get a job, I'll work at a newspaper, Time magazine, NPR', whatever their ambition might have been, but so much has changed since they arrived on campus. Newspapers shutting down, news organizations laying people off. What's the atmosphere like amongst the student body in journalism today? What do they think about their job prospects?"
LUCINDA DAVENPORT: "It's a very interesting question, and it depends on, sometimes, the age of the person who's talking. Some folks have a mindset that journalism is newspapers, and that's it. There are others who understand that journalism is a wide variety of things. Newspapers is only a small subset of it. So, when we talk about students, actually, they're very excited, and it is an exciting time, because this is an evolving industry. When students graduate, no longer are they graduating and going into a job that is lockstep in pattern of what has gone before.
We've got wonderful new classes that talk about entrepreneurial journalism. Our class is marketing and creating journalism, where students are coming up with new ideas about content, new ideas about delivery systems, and we're teaching them business plans, and to research their audiences and their demographics. So in reality, these students are coming in with a different idea of what is journalism?' than what students did ten years ago, or their parents did. So, it's a different mindset, truly, and it's interesting as well, talking to people about journalism. I think they isolate journalism from the economy as a whole, whereas all businesses are feeling the pinch, and actually, there are more readers than ever before. It's just that they're reading and getting their information from a variety of devices that we've never had before. And, frankly, community news organizations are increasing, and they're doing quite well.
News organizations are hiring back. Now, they are hiring back at a slower pace than before, but I just finished talking to one of our faculty, Bob Gould, who teaches TV news; he received three phone calls for folks wanting to hire our students, wanting reference calls. And, it's just that news organizations may not be making as much money as they were before, but they definitely are still making money. And, I do also want to add that I read some statistics that said that 90% of fact-based information found on the internet originates from news organizations. So, we're doing quite well. It's just that it's not the stereotype of what people thought of yesteryear."
REPORTERS NEED TO HAVE DIVERSE SKILLS
SP: "I would imagine that students, at one point, used to focus on the one thing they wanted to do the most. Someone who wanted to work at a newspaper worked on print journalism focused classes; photojournalists could specialize in that; people who wanted to go into TV could specialize in that. Am I right that the journalist of tomorrow needs to be trained in more than one area, multiple areas, so that they not only can increase their employability, but address the fact that you have to be multi-talented to be a journalist in this day and age?"
LD: "Well, I think that's true, and that's what we're trying to train them to do here at Michigan State University. We want creative thinkers, we want critical thinkers, excellent writers, and someone who has superb visual communication skills, because we are a visual society. So, what we try and do, and I have to keep saying we because that's my frame of reference for the best school of journalism in the world, is we try and train our students to have their skills viable in any news environment. They will move from one job to another. It's not like several decades ago, where one person stayed in that one job, or with that one company, for years and years.
So, when our students graduate, they will have been introduced and exposed to writing and producing news for all different platforms, for all different types of audiences. Then, they certainly can have a concentration in visual communication, or sports journalism, or business reporting, or international or environmental. What we ask of our students when they have the concentration is that they have four classes that are themed, one or two in journalism and one or two outside of journalism, because we don't report on journalism. We report on the world. So, yes indeed, students need to have a variety of skills, but they can also specialize at the same time."
SP: "The one thing that hasn't changed is that it largely boils down to being able to write."
LD: "That's correct, being able to write well. But again, in reality, we are a visual society, and frankly, there are a lot of people now who, instead of reading a paragraph of statistics, can gauge it much easier and much better in an information graphic. We never would have thought about animated information graphic, maybe, even ten years ago, and that is a common class today. It's a very popular class. So, we do a lot more when it comes to design, when it comes to information graphics, when it comes to photography and video and many other ways in which to news and information visually."
HOW TO STAY AHEAD OF THE TEACHING CURVE
SP: "I have one last question for you about the future of teaching journalism, because I know the curriculum has been shifted in recent years to address changes in the journalism landscape out there. How do you and your colleagues in the MSU School of Journalism prepare for tomorrow? How do you stay ahead of that curve so you can properly teach next year's freshmen in journalism?"
LD: "That's a wonderful question, and the way in which we do it here in the School of Journalism at Michigan State University is that we have a great compliment of faculty. Our faculty are experts in the profession. They are also experts in research. Although we have folks who have PhD's, they've all had professional experience, and we have faculty who do research in the industry. They're known nationally and internationally. So, we don't aspire to just follow the industry, but we aspire to be leaders in the industry and produce leaders for the industry, because it is evolving. And so, our faculty are often times called from today's leaders for consultations, for advice, when it management and economics, when it comes to ethics, when it comes to a variety of things, new technologies.
So, we have experts who research the field to stay ahead. We also have highly expert professionals who have been former directors of multimedia at the Detroit News, they have been the information graphics directors at Newsweek, they are Pulitzer Prize winners, and I could go on and on, but that's what we do to stay ahead, is we want to be on the forefront of the industry, and that's what we're bound and determined to do."
SP: "Lucinda Davenport, thank you, and here's to another 100 years of journalism education at MSU."
LD: "Well, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks."