Journalism curriculum reform - equipping the next generation
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
2 likes•548 views
Remarks by François Nel, Visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, presented at the Westminster Media Forum - The future of news: partnerships, engagement and diversity, The Caledonian Club, London, 9 July 2015 Correspondence: Francoisonline@gmail.com / @francoisnel
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
More from Francois Nel
More from Francois Nel (7)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Journalism curriculum reform - equipping the next generation
- 1. JOURNALISM CURRICULUM REFORM – EQUIPPING THE NEXT GENERATION Westminster Media Forum The future of news: partnerships, engagement and diversity The Caledonian Club, London 9 July 2015 FRANÇOIS NEL @francoisnel
- 2. The Labour Force Survey 2012 put the total number of journalism jobs at 70,000. The devil is, of course, in the detail. •Full-time employed: 37,000 •Part-time employed: 5,000 •Full-time self-employed: 17,000 •Part-time self-employed: 10,000 NCTJ report estimates that 1 in four of those who declare themselves as journalists work creating marketing-related content. That would make it about 27,750 full-time and 3,750 part-time employed journalists in 2012. With job cuts continuing, particular in the regional press, it would not be unreasonable to suggest that in 2015 those numbers are down another 10% to around 24,9750 fulltime and about 3,375 part-time journalists. That’s about 28, 325 journalists in total*. The were 12,660 full and part-time students in HE in the UK**. Or about 2 journalists for every journalism student enrolled. THERE ARE ABOUT 30,000 FULL AND PART-TIME EMPLOYED JOURNALISTS IN THE UK. ABOUT ½ OF ESTIMATES AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY.
- 3. 3820 4870 5995 6650 7570 8385 8955 9220 9970 11220 11840 12870 12610 12660 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000 14000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 JOURNALISM STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATIOn (2000-1 to 2013-14) Series1 2 per. Mov. Avg. (Series1) Source: Higher Education Statistical Authority (HESA) ABOUT 13,000 JOURNALISM HE STUDENTS IN THE UK. UP 230% SINCE 2000-1.
- 4. 28,325* 12,660** 2.2 THE RATIO OF WORKING JOURNALISTS : JOURNALISM STUDENTS 2:1That’s about 28, 325 journalists in total*. The were 12,660 full and part-time students in HE in the UK**. Or about 2 journalists for every journalism student enrolled.
- 6. JOURNALISM ENTREPRENEUR (Roles, Sectors, Issues & Constraints) OPERATING ENVIRONMENT (Broader ‘market’, stakeholders, information needs of communities, technologies) SERVICE & SUPPORT INFRASTRUCTURE (Organisations, networks, associations, capacity-building bodies, funding) REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT (Policy frameworks, regulatory mechanisms) Framework adapted by Francois Nel from the proposed Social Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and Policy Study led in South Africa by Dr. Eliada Griffin-EL http://www.gsb.uct.ac.za/s.asp?p=497
- 7. DOWNLOAD THIS REPORT AT: HTTP://BIT.LY/JES2015TAKINGTHEPULSE
- 8. DISCUSSING VIRTUAL REALITY AT THE ASSOCIATION OF JOURNALISM EDUCATORS CONFERENCE IN JUNE 2015.
Editor's Notes
- Text available at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cXp0gyf3ejuhfzr7CFOE4wc1ZhdHrpLYKyQtMRg4nbg/edit?usp=sharing WMF/ 09 July 2015 / 10 minutes / 600 seconds /1800 words. WMF/ 09 July 2015 / 10 minutes / 600 seconds /1800 words. Journalism curriculum reform - equipping the next generation Remarks by François Nel, Visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, presented at the Westminster Media Forum - The future of news: partnerships, engagement and diversity, The Caledonian Club, London, 9 July 2015 Correspondence: Francoisonline@gmail.com / @francoisnel Thank you. SLIDE 1: Accepting an invitation to speak to a group of educated media experts about what is wrong with journalism education and how the curriculum should be reformed in order to equip the next generation was always going to be risky. Not least because journalism education finds itself in a difficult position – it sits at the intersection of various different groups with frequently clashing interests: journalists and employers, accreditation bodies, journalism educators, journalism scholars, university administrators, policy makers – and, of course, students. As a result, the relationships are often uneasy: Journalists say journalism scholars and educators have no business airing their dirty laundry; journalism scholars say journalists and journalism educators are not critical enough; journalism educators say journalism executives have their heads in the sand and journalism scholars have their heads in the clouds. Given the audience here today it would be impolite to speculate on the location of the heads of media policy makers. But what I will say that it’s not surprising that, once they get a closer look at the scenario, journalism students are often left scratching their heads. Nevertheless, I agreed to make these remarks because I believe in journalism and teaching, and because I hope we share a common commitment to improving the lives of young people and preparing them for the future. And because I believe we all need to put our heads together in order to make it happen. In the interest of disclosure, my head is currently at University of Oxford, which does not run a journalism programme though it has produced many fine journalists. However, my head is usually at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, which is home to the UK’s oldest journalism training course. There, my position as the founding director of the Journalism Leaders Programme has enabled me to focus on applied research and to move between the classroom and the newsroom to run manage development and innovation projects for organisations like News UK, Trinity Mirror, Johnston Press, Cumbria Newspapers and others, as well as working with news startups through the Media And Digital Enterprise (MADE) Project. So, I want to take this opportunity to direct our thoughts to a few key challenges that need to be addressed if journalism education programmes are not only going to thrive but also be effective in the future. At the risk of stating the bleedingly obvious, I want to start by reiterating that the journalistic world of the 21st century is fundamentally different from that of the 20th century[1]. That’s worth noting again because, like its counterparts elsewhere, journalism training in Britain is entrenched in a 20th century system that has a simple goal: to provide junior employees in the news industry[2]. While journalism education extends that by also studying the work of those who do journalism[3], journalism courses at UK universities are firmly rooted in the industry’s expansion in the 1960s. Founded in 1951, Britain’s National Council for the Training of Journalists first launched a part-time course for apprentices in 1962, which was offered at Harris College, an antecedent of the University of Central Lancashire in Preston. In 1969, again in association with the NCTJ, the programme expanded to offer a fulltime one-year, pre-entry journalism course to those who had at least two A-levels and passed a stringent entrance exam (ibid). The following year, Cardiff University introduced the first one-year postgraduate diploma course. At first, the range and number of courses grew slowly primarily because, in its earlier days, the NCTJ ‘‘sought to control entry to the field of journalism to engineer a near match between vacancies on local papers and numbers entering journalism training”[4]. However, the NCTJ no longer play that role as a quantitative gatekeeper and its position as the arbiter of quality journalism education has also been diffused with the emergence of specialized broadcasting and magazine routes and concomitant accrediting bodies: the Broadcast Journalism Training Council and the Periodical Training Council. Along the way any supply-demand relationship that may have existed has been broken[5]. The technological changes and challenges that have been rocking the news industry and reshaping its culture for almost two decades have, as we know, more recently combined with increasingly dire financial prognoses. Here in the UK, the industry’s health has continued to worsen into 2015 with circulation and advertising revenues down and, in many instances, taking staff sizes and entire titles down with them. While no authoritative figures are available, the prognosis is still rather bleak. Though industry analysts Clare Enders’ 2009 prediction that as many as one in every two regional papers may fold by 2014 hasn’t quite come to pass – only about 200 of the 1,300 papers have folded – for an increasing number of journalists those predictions have already come true. SLIDE 2: There are about 30,000 full and part-time journalists in the UK. About half of estimates at the turn of the century. And if you’ve been paying attention to recent statement from Trinity Mirror, Johnston Press and the BBC, you’ll know there are more cuts to come. The scenario in journalism higher education is quite different. Even with the introduction of £9,000 per year tuition fees, the popularity of undergraduate programmes in journalism in Britain has continued to rise among young people hoping for a media career, and among university administrators seeking to maximise income from students. In fact, business is pretty good and overall numbers have continued to be positive, particular for undergraduate education. SLIDE 3: The latest numbers from the Higher Education Statistics Authority show that the by 2014 there were almost 13,000 full and part-time journalism students in UK HE institutions (not including media studies, general communications and communications courses). That’s up 230 percent since 2000. And, of course, a journalism qualification is not the only route to entry into the industry. SLIDE 4: The prospects of the majority of the journalism graduates getting employment in the mainstream media is very slim indeed. Certainly not all of them all aspire to a mainstream media career[6] and, in the main, employment rates of journalism graduates are high. But that said, the lack of jobs offered by traditional employers is a critical issue facing journalism education[7]. There can be no doubt…. that whatever else we need to do to reform journalism curriculum, we need to reduce the current emphasis on preparing students to meet the stated requirements of those formerly known as the employers and enforced through the training councils - and open a wider debate on the issue in order to inform what is being taught in journalism courses, how it is taught and to what end. So what is to be done? The starting point is to recognise that USP of Higher Education (as opposed to training) is what we call research. And in journalism, there is a need for applied research. Mike Bromley, head of journalism at City University London, where I did my doctorate, prefers the word ‘discovery’. ‘We not only discover stuff but we put what we discover before students, and we encourage them to be discoverers,’ he says. This meshes with the priority on employability - which is far more than just getting a job - even a graduate job. But journalism education needs to do more. We also need to apply our minds to discover the stuff that supports the much-needed innovation industry needs. Not just in the UK, but globally. Some work is underway, of course. In 2009, for example, colleagues and I at the University of Central Lancashire started collaborating with the World Association of Newspaper and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) to run the annual World Newsmedia Innovation Study, which surveys media executives in 11 languages. And more recently colleagues at the Reuters Institute at Oxford launched the Digital News Survey which is due to expand exponentially from next year thanks to the funding from Google. But even more is needed. We also need to apply our minds to discover stuff that can be put to use by entrepreneurs and would-be entrepreneurs – and the need is great, as we discovered when we convened the UK’s first Journalism Entrepreneurship Summit in February. SLIDE 5 In collaboration with the Talk About Local and the International Press Institute and with further support from Google (SLIDE 6) we brought together journalism entrepreneurs, funders, policy-makers, educators and researchers to take the pulse of the UK’s journalism entrepreneurship ecosystem. |It was a busy, lively day. SLIDE 7: (BTW, I’ve Tweeted a link to the 38-report for those who are interested[8].) But in the end, participants rated the overall health of the UK journalism entrepreneurial ecosystem at 5.6 out of 10 which a physician might interpret as stable but with some significant risk factors - most notably in the areas of policy and support for entrepreneurs. A lot more work – included applied research - is needed if we are to answer the many other related questions, such as: In a world awash with information, in an era in Britain and many other places besides when it is not the lack of information but the overabundance of information that is vexing people, why should we bother with supporting entrepreneurs? By encouraging journalism entrepreneurship are we not simply adding to this noise? Should those who worry about the Fourth Estate not be even more worried by such initiatives? By encouraging nimble, creative journalism start-ups aren’t we further undermining the efforts of the established Press? Creative destruction might be all good for theorists like Joseph Schumpeter, but is the weakening and demise of our media institutions a price worth paying? Are we so enthused by the prospects of a New Media Spring that we can’t see the risks? Has the so-called Twitter Revolutions of late not taught us that destroying the old is hard, but that building the new is much, much harder still? There are a lots of answers that need to be discovered. So, who is to do it? Well, in the main, it’ll be have to be the people who are already trying to do it. For one, given the current jobs market, journalism educators and researchers are hanging onto their jobs. Most are creative and engaged and eager, but the need for them to update their own skills and competencies to meet these challenges is acute. Without it curriculum reform be difficult to achieve and almost impossible to deliver. And that’s no simple matter. At the most recent Association of Journalism Educators conference a colleague described herself as having one toe in research, the other toe in industry and sitting astride a big pile of teaching and weighed down by administration. SLIDE 8: Despite the challenges, educators are puzzling over how we can equip students not only to be more specialised in the tools needed for new and emerging platforms, but also to be more critical and more strategic and a great, great deal more savvy about the business we’re in. There is certainly a lot of work to do if we are turn the journalism academy into the vibrant engine for practical knowledge and teaching that is required to ensure that the sector not only grows in numbers but in effectiveness – and that it provides the value to the industry in the widest possible conception and, in particular, to the students who invest their money and hopes with us. They deserve it. And our society needs it. And that’s really why I believe we all need to put our heads together in order to make it happen – fast. SLIDE 9: Thank you. I look forward to your questions. References Baines, David and Kennedy, Ciara (2010) “An education for independence.” Journalism Practice, 4 (1) pp. 97-113 Deuze, MARK (2008) “Global journalism education.” Journalism Studies, 7 (1), pp. 19-34 DEUZE, MARK (2009) “The people formerly known as the employers”, Journalism 10(3), pp. 315-18. DELANO, ATHONY (2000) “No sign of a better job: 100 years of British journalism” Journalism Studies, 1 (2): 261-272. Hanna, Mark and Sanders, Karen (2007) “Journalism education in Britain.” Journalism Practice, 1(3), pp. 404-420 HUNTER, ANNA and NEL, FRANÇOIS P. (2010) “Equipping the Entrepreneurial Journalist: An exercise in creative enterprise.” 2nd annual World Journalism Education Congress: Journalism Education in an Age of Radical Change, 5-7 July 2010, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa PICARD, ROBERT. (2014). “Deficient Tutelage” Toward 2020: New Directions in Journalism Education Conference, Ryerson University, Toronto, May 31, 2014 Available at: http://www.robertpicard.net/files/Picard_deficient_tutelage.pdf [1] A point also made by Picard (2014). [2] Delano 2000 [3] Deuze, 2009. [4]Cole, 1998, p. 69; Hanna and Sanders, 2007, p. 405. [5]Hanna and Sanders, 2008; Nel, 2010 [6]Hanna & Spencer, 2007 [7]Baines and Kennedy, 2010. [8]Download the Journalism Entrepreneurship Summit report at: http://bit.ly/jes2015takingthepulse
- 12,660 -3,820 =8840
- What do I mean by ecosystem? Well, we know that while entrepreneurs are heroes in this story, their successes – or not – do not emerge in a vacuum. They are but the tip of the iceberg, if you will, and are shaped and underpinned - or undermined - by their context. And it’s for that reason that we aim to also today aim to explore the activities and issues amongst the funding and support agencies, including those who research and teach entrepreneurship, and those who actively work to shape policy in this regard.