Journalism education reform: How far should it go?

Newton, senior adviser to the President at Knight Foundation, gave the keynote address at a national conference of journalism educators, “Journalism Education in the Digital Age,” at Middle Tennessee State University. Here’s an excerpt:

Radical change requires radical reform. The digital age is turning journalism and communication upside down and inside out. It should be doing the same to journalism and communication education. You tell me: Is it? Has your program turned upside down and inside out? In my opinion it should, if you want to ride the four transformational trends demonstrated by Carnegie-Knight schools, and all top tier schools.

To be relevant in the future, here’s what universities should do:

1. Expand their role as community content providers. University hospitals save lives. University law clinics take cases to the Supreme Court. University news labs can reveal truths that help us right wrongs. Based on the teaching hospital model, they can provide the news people need to run their communities and their lives.
2. Innovate. No longer must you be the caboose on the train of American media. You can be an engine of change. You can create both new uses of software and new software itself. Anyone can create the future of news and information. Anyone includes us.
3. Teach open, collaborative methods. No longer must students be lone wolf reporters or cogs in a company wheel. In small, integrated teams of designers, entrepreneurs, programmers and journalists, students learned to rapidly prototype news projects and ideas.
4. Connect to the whole university. This can mean team-teaching a science journalism class with actual scientists. Or creating centers with engineers or entrepreneurs. Or diving so deeply into topic expertise our colleagues at Harvard call it, as they did for Carnegie-Knight, “knowledge journalism.”