JOURNALISM EDUCATION

Read more about journalism education in a Q&A with Christopher Callahan, dean of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication.

Journalism education has been under a microscope in recent years. What should we teach budding journalists? How should we prepare them for the changing world of media? How much craft do we need to stress?

Well, let's ask someone who has seen journalism education at work in the newsroom and in the classroom.

Jerry Ceppos, recently retired as vice president/news for Knight Ridder, has been involved in journalism education as a member of the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications since 1990.

He served as the council's president for six years, and in 2002 he won the Gerald M. Sass Award for Distinguished Service to Journalism and Mass Communications, the highest honor of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication. He leaves the council in May.

Jerry Ceppos

Ceppos had a highly successful newspaper career after graduating from the University of Maryland in 1969, including nine years at The Miami Herald in top editing positions and then as managing editor and executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News.

He recently answered some e-mail questions from Poynter about journalism education, in its present form and its future.

Poynter: From your viewpoint, what is the state of journalism education in this country today?

Ceppos: I feel good about some remarkable improvements in journalism education, such as the huge increase in the number of students of color (which I believe largely is because the Accrediting Council pushed that subject). I'd like to improve ethics education, a problem that the council is working on now.

As far as worries go, I worry about the huge number of openings for journalism deans and chairs that will come up over the next few years and wonder just how many people want to fill those jobs. Our schools are sunk if they don't have strong leaders.

And I worry about the downside of "convergence." If that word means teaching the basics to all students -- because students filing for every medium need to know them -- that's just fine. If it means emphasizing the importance of filing some stories instantly, that's also appropriate. If it means teaching the finest points of the Internet, forget it. We can teach those fine points after students come to work.

If you were starting a school of journalism from scratch, what would it look like?

It would choose one area of excellence, because no school can do everything well. One of the programs I admire is Washington & Lee's, because much of its program is built around one issue, journalism ethics. (That is all the more admirable because the program is a small one.) It also will be interesting to watch how Columbia blends its emphasis on covering diverse communities into more and more classes. There are other examples, too. (Don't tell anyone, but my new school of journalism would steal Washington and Lee's emphasis on ethics. I'm not sure that two schools stressing that subject is too many!)

I'm also intrigued by the few schools that teach only news-editorial journalism, not advertising and P.R. (Montana, Maryland, from which I graduated, and San Francisco State are in this category.) I'd attempt that, but it's tough to pull off because of the sharply lower number of students.

If my program had a graduate school, I'd guarantee that its program was considerably different from the undergrad program. One of the little secrets of journalism education is that the programs are not significantly different at some schools.

Given the number of scandals that have rocked the news industry over the past few years, do you think journalists are properly prepared to deal with ethical issues when they enter the profession? And, if not, what should be done?

No, students generally are not prepared. Just ask for a definition of plagiarism and note the huge range of answers that you get. (Of course, you'd get a huge range if you asked a group of experienced editors, too, illustrating the problem.) I'd require that every journalism graduate take a significant ethics course. I know that this is tougher than it sounds because accrediting rules limit the number of journalism courses so that j-students get a broad liberal education. But think about it this way: How would you feel if you knew that your doctor never had taken a course in medical ethics? (Note to myself: Ask docs whether they studied ethics.) I might even offer a separate class on fairness and accuracy that is distinct from the ethics offering.

As I said earlier, I'd also encourage more schools to develop ethics as an overarching specialty.

In your years of service on the Accrediting Council what common practices did you discover that linked the good journalism schools together?

Susanne Shaw of the University of Kansas, the executive director of the council, told me long ago that strong schools have strong leaders. She's right. (How many times have we all said that good leadership is required for good newspapers? It's the same principle.)

I'm also struck by the number of small schools that have done so well in developing diverse student bodies and diverse faculties. Many large schools have, too. But small schools don't have big bucks to recruit at high schools or pay big faculty salaries. That brings us back to leadership: When the dean or chair insists on diversity, it happens.

I also have a suspicion that the best schools do a better job of using, really using, their advisory boards. I've never dug into this, but I suspect that some boards are window dressing. That's a waste for the university and for the board members.

If you were a dean of a school of journalism, what advice would you give to young people entering your program, especially as the news-delivery landscape continues to change so rapidly?

At the risk of sounding like an old-timer, I'd tell students to concentrate on the basics because every delivery method requires excellence in the same basics (one of which is ethical behavior). I'd also add one course that's not considered basic: a realistic study of the challenges -- economic, cultural, technical -- facing our profession. I'm tired of explaining those challenges. What I want is young people who help me find solutions.

You recently retired as vice president/news for Knight Ridder after a distinguished career in newspapers. If you were coming out of the University of Maryland today instead of 1969 when you did, what, if anything, would you do differently?

Oh, my goodness. The list is long. I'd learn, really learn, another language. I'd pay attention in economics class. I'd learn how to write business stories. I'd figure out some way to learn analytical skills. I'd take some sort of class in demographics so that I wouldn't constantly have been surprised by the changes of the last 35 years. Of course, I'd still want to spend hours and hours at the student newspaper.

As an editor, you hired hundreds of journalists to fill all of the different positions in a newsroom. What qualities did you look for, and how important was a journalism degree?

I looked for analytical skills (which are tough to identify), a history of enterprise reporting, a desire to perform ethically and expertise in another language. I frequently muttered a prayer of thankfulness that I wasn't competing in today's job market. We certainly hired some brilliant non-journalism grads, but the vast majority of hires were graduates of journalism schools. That wasn't a requirement, but they had the interest in the profession and were likely to have far greater skills as young employees.