Empowering professors with today’s skills
*We asked [everyone] to tell us in a creative way what they thought the future of journalism and mass communication might look like. We received 17 innovative submissions ranging from 140-character tweets to unpublished book chapters to graphic designs and even poetry.
The following entry was selected as one of the top three finalists, and after a nation-wide vote, placed third overall:
Empowering professors with today’s skills
by Amy Zerba
Ph.D. candidate
Want to know how online editors determine story play?
How art directors or journalists think about multiplatform audiences?
Or how journalists or media relations specialists collaborate with citizen journalists, globally?
If your first thought was, “ooohh, research questions” and you teach journalism and/or mass communication courses, that’s a problem. For journalism and communication programs to stay current and keep up with the changing industry, it’s not always about research — often our first thought. It’s about truly understanding how your field – be it journalism, public relations or advertising — has changed today, and seeing it firsthand, without your research goggles.
My campaign for professors is called “just ask” because that’s all it takes to return to or visit a newsroom, agency or company for a day, a week, a month, or even a semester, to witness decision-making questions firsthand. With a simple phone call or email, professors can “just ask” if they can shadow for a certain amount of time. It’s not a class field trip. Just you. The response on the other end will undoubtedly be a “yes.” Skeptical? Just try it.
Forget research for the time being. Forget the pride you have from your days working in the field. It’s about staying relevant. Is what you teach truly relevant when it comes to practicing your craft today? If you’re not sure, go and observe. And if you are certain it is, go and verify that it is. Second, your time shadowing or even working in a newsroom, agency or company will benefit students. You will be re-inspired, and it will reflect in how and what you teach, and down the road, what you and your colleagues may research.
It’s not about getting funded to do this or getting paid time off to go (that’s not to say departments should not offer funding). It’s about you carving out time to be in your field again, and not for research purposes. You are making the effort to improve yourself, your skills and the way we teach journalism and mass communication today.
I don’t want to imply that working professionals have all the answers right now on the direction of journalism, public relations or advertising. They don’t. They are figuring it out just as researchers are. But if we want to help the industry figure itself out, let’s start by preparing professors for where universities need to be right now, thinking- and skills-wise. This effort will benefit and empower students, who ultimately will be the ones leading the reshaping of our fields. Then, we can put our research hats back on. So just ask.
(Caption: attached is a bookmark campaign to remind and encourage professors to “just ask”)
Amy Zerba is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, where she studies the news habits and non-news habits of young adults. She received her bachelor’s and master’s in journalism from the University of Florida. She is currently an associate producer for interactives at CNN.com in Atlanta. She believes if news storytelling was more interactive and engaging more young adults would tune into news on a regular basis. She has more than eight years experience as a page designer / copy editor at large daily newspapers, including the Sun-Sentinel, Houston Chronicle and the Austin American-Statesman.
- WINNING ENTRY: Bird’s-eye View
- SECOND PLACE ENTRY: 2020 Vision: What’s Next for News
“Asking” and “doing research” are not mutually exclusive categories. Nor is research divorced from practical concerns. Observational methods are at the heart of research. And becoming a Ph.D. means falling in love with research (philo-sophy: love of knowledge). If your goal is simply to teach and seldom do research, get an Ed.D. to focus on pedagogy, although you’ll find they, too, love research, not just the dissemination of the work of others and definitely not the kind of unsystematic observation and casual inquiry that you suggest.
I completely agree with Amy that classrooms need to emulate the real world if new graduates are to work in a rapidly changing industry. I also agree that working professionals don’t have all the answers since they are, as Amy states, “figuring it out just as researchers are.” Isn’t “figuring it out” a form of research? Development and implementation of various content, followed by measuring audience responses is “figuring it out” regardless if that research is conducted in a lab with grant support or in a newsroom with corporate support. As a long-time professional with a recent Ph.D. to teach and research new media journalism, I say everyone – teachers, professionals and researchers – need to pursue new questions for an industry that desperately needs answers. The New York Times and USA Today are already engaged in such research and they don’t depend on grants. I’m working with smaller companies who don’t have the resources but the need to “figure it out” fast.
If Amy really shares my belief that more interactive storytelling would engage more young adults (as stated in her bio), I don’t understand why a Ph.D. candidate from a respected journalism program dismisses the value of grant-supported applied research such as mine, which explores new forms of storytelling for the Web and mobile technology. I’m testing new structures for multimedia news (including text) with more personalization, interactivity and coherence for the reader. The challenge is how to simultaneously COMBINE all three in every news story online. Most working pros I’ve talked with acknowledge their use of one or more of these techniques but virtually all are interested in how the concepts can be combined by journalists to engage the Web-savvy reader with more than just text and a photo.
In sum, yes, we must be teaching the current techniques practiced in today’s newsrooms. However, we must also be researching the FUTURE possibilities for tomorrow’s audience. In both cases, we all need to “just ask.” Why limit the possibilities?
Ron Yaros
University of Maryland