There were three reasons I applied to attend the University of Colorado so many (SO MANY) moons ago:
- Close to the family
- Safety school
- Dedicated Journalism school, and a fairly well-respected one at that
The last of those is going away, according to news reports; CU is closing its journalism school, looking to integrate its “core classes” into the college’s Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society Institute.
I get it. I mean, who wants to study picky little things like “ethics” and “responsibility to the public” when we can all learn how to use a WordPress interface instead?
But here’s the bad news, kids: Nearly everything found on blogs, where we all supposedly get all of our information, comes from honest-to-Vishnu journalists who are getting paid to dig up information.
Journalism – good journalism, the type that is nothing less than a necessary component of democracy – isn’t a unit. It’s not a chapter. It’s a trade, a craft, and it has to be learned somewhere. It’s not the pursuit of a bigger hit count, or SEO optimization.
That’s not to degrade hit counts, SEO or blogging. Considering that a decent portion of my income comes from these things, I’d prefer not to bite the hand that buys me whiskey. But I recognize that what I do is not possible without the work of journalists with sources, experts of their beats who can get the information first and right.
Journalism needs new business models. No, we might not need to show kids how a newspaper is made. But we, as citizens, still need journalism.
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