Monthly Archive:: June 2014

So I read a blog post today that railed against the horror of offering students extra credit: Few things agitate me more than a student who asks for extra credit either in lieu of the learning activities provided at a time or to just boost a grade. School is about learning NOT points or even

The New York Times is shuttering its The Lede blog, and an editor told Poynter that in time, about half of the site’s current blogs will vanish. The Times cites several reasons, including: Little traffic to the main pages of individual blogs; most came from social sharing or the site’s home page. Little traffic at

The most common way journalism schools have adapted to a changing industry (at least based on my small survey of about 20 top programs) is the insertion into the curriculum of a course called, most often, “multimedia storytelling.” This course description, from Northwestern, is typical: Introduction to using multimedia skills to create effective web-based journalism.

One of the required courses in the journalism bachelor’s program at Washington and Lee University is called “Beyond Google and Wikipedia.” It comes before reporting. The course description from the syllabus: An introduction to information sources that academic researchers, journalists, public relations and advertising professionals rely on increasingly in the digital age to conduct scholarly

Many journalism schools are reconsidering their curricula, trying to adapt to industry changes. Much of the discussion has focused on technology and entrepreneurial skills. Over the next several posts, I will propose and defend an alternative approach. To start, here’s how I would set up the core of an undergraduate journalism program designed to be