A Manifesto
Professional schools that reside in research universities have evolved over the last century into vital and highly influential institutions that perform a function much more complex than simply training students for jobs (although they do that as well). Professional schools function, first of all, as the intellectual wing of their professions. Their faculties and students are freed, by virtue of their university setting (and, in the case of senior faculty, by academic tenure), from some of the immediate commercial and competitive pressures of professional life and conversely they often have more time and ready access to a much wider array of expertise, thought, and research material than do most of their professional colleagues. Therefore, they can place themselves at the frontiers of their professions, exploring and expanding the limits of what the profession can and should do. Most significant advances in medical research and treatment emerge from schools of medicine, not doctors' offices. There is no reason why significant advances in the means and methods of delivering news to the public ought not to emerge from professional schools of journalism, as much as from news organizations themselves.
It is hard to think of a profession of greater public importance than journalism. What journalists publish and broadcast constitutes the chief means whereby citizens inform themselves about public life in their societies, enabling them to play the role of active participants in democratic life. Journalism is particularly important as a provider of independent information about government, and therefore as one of the main checks on the power of the state. It also has the capability to monitor the activities of large, powerful institutions--both profit and nonprofit--that affect the lives of Americans. Indeed, in this complicated world, it is almost impossible for people to keep informed about and engaged in public life without the presence of a well-trained and capable press. A well-functioning democracy depends on good journalism. Markets cannot function well without reliable, timely information provided by good journalism. Nor can educational institutions educate in the fullest sense without a vibrant, credible, and thoughtful press to provide material for their discourse. Because of the press' First Amendment protections and its role as a monitor of government performance on behalf of the public, journalism also has a special role in the United States and a special relationship to government.
In today's changing world of news consumption, journalism schools should be exploring the technological, intellectual, artistic, and literary possibilities of journalism to the fullest extent, and should be leading a constant expansion and improvement in the ability of the press to inform the public as fully, deeply, and interestingly as it can about matters of the highest importance and complexity. Journalists, and their audiences, have to adapt to constant changes in the structure and mores of the profession; employers, almost by definition, cannot alone prepare them for these changes, so journalism schools ought to help them do so by identifying and conferring professional skills and habits of mind that do not depend on a particular, perishable set of circumstances to be useful. They should also be arenas of experimentation on new and interesting ways to get serious reporting before as large a public as possible.
Professional schools should also strive to act as the consciences of their professions. They can and should train their students to operate at a higher ethical and intellectual standard than often prevails in the arena of professional practice, and they do this knowingly. It is their job to be both "realistic," and, as well, to establish and uphold an ideal in training professionals who, after graduation, will be prepared to push their employers to hew to this ideal more closely. Anyone who is in professional education knows that the profession itself is usually grateful to its professional educators for helping to uphold the profession's core values.
The United States can be a beacon of good journalistic practice to the world, especially the many places where journalism and its associated legal, regulatory, and economic structures are only just beginning to take hold. This is a role we should embrace more fully, even as we American journalists must be ever mindful of our own shortcomings and ever attentive to the work of correcting them.
Journalism schools too often have been thought of as trade schools rather than modern professional schools. As the importance of journalism grows and its task of explaining the world to the public becomes more complex and demanding, journalism schools ought to move firmly into the professional-school realm. This would include having faculties whose members are active leaders in the profession through their journalistic work, their teaching, and their participation in public discourse and who confer on their students not just entry-level job skills, but also a sense of the history of the profession and its importance to the public and the nation. It would also mean that journalism schools would draw on the resources available at their universities to give students the most powerful set of tools possible for making sense of the world and then conveying their understanding to the public.
Journalism schools are committed to the idea that societies function best when their citizens have access to information that has been gathered and presented by well-trained, well-educated, honest, trustworthy, curious, intelligent people who have devoted their lives to their profession.
There is no reason why significant advances in the means and methods of delivering news to the public ought not to emerge from professional schools of journalism, as much as from news organizations themselves
