Why Journalism Education Has Much More Progress to Make
“I would say that journalism education is slowly recognizing … that the jobs and opportunities that they traditionally trained students for are changing and expanding,” Ferrier said. “And so we see new job opportunities in social media management or engagement editor or engagement reporter. These are new job titles that didn’t even exist in 2010.”
Ferrier said there are now more classes focused on social media campaigns, social media marketing and analytics, as well as the development of different content forms. At Scripps, Webb’s report explained, Ferrier devised a two-week module on mobile technology. The time for the module was integrated into course syllabi, and Ferrier brought in an expert to teach the “class-within-a-class.” This educated both students and teachers about a specific topic without disrupting the curriculum, and Ferrier said faculty began teaching the module on their own.
The bad news, according to Newton, is that not enough schools are changing and adapting. Newton cites a report from Columbia Journalism School and Stanford University that looked into data journalism education in the U.S. The report found almost 50 percent of journalism programs offer no classes in data journalism, defined as “using data for the journalistic purpose of finding and telling stories in the public interest,” and the classes that are offered are, in large part, introductory.
