The School of Journalism and Communication is offering a new sequence of journalism courses the university hopes will alleviate past problems with closed-out classes and will offer more hands-on experience.
JCOM 221, which will eventually replace JCOM 201, 202 and 304, is being taught for the first time this quarter.
Carroll Glynn, director of the School of Journalism and Communication, said administrators saw there were problems with the old journalism and communication majors curricula and needed to do something different.
“Communications wasn’t working with the enrollment and waitlists, and there was a lack of sequence in the journalism curriculum,” she said.
“The broadcasting major was taken out last summer and the public relations will stop this fall,” said Rose Hume, faculty adviser to the Lantern.
The new curriculum will have one journalism major that will focus on the convergence of the media in today’s world, said Joseph McKerns, associate professor and lecturer of the JCOM 221 course this quarter.
“The original suggestion two years ago was that we combine the 201 and 202 classes because it was a waste of time teaching two classes with the same level of reporting,” McKerns said. “We also felt that you do not need 10 weeks to teach editing on the basic level.
“JCOM 221 will give us the chance to take the level of skill that we are trying to achieve in those classes and fit it into one curriculum,” McKerns said.
Students enrolled in 221 classes this quarter will spend half of the time focusing on reporting and half focusing on editing.
Because there is not one textbook that includes basic reporting and editing, students had to pay approximately $190 for books for the new class.
McKerns said students need to remember this class is replacing the texts and tuition for three classes they would have taken in the old curriculum.
“The initial outlay is big, but it does even out in the end,” McKerns said.
This structure will allow students to move into a new sequence of 421 – the Lantern laboratory classes. The existing Lantern curriculum has three sections, reporting, editing and photography and requires journalism majors to take two out of the three sections to graduate.
The new sequence will combine reporting, editing and photography into one section, giving students more hands-on experience in the areas in which they are interested.
“Within the new courses, we will be able to see what students are moving toward and better help them concentrate in one particular area,” Glynn said.
Hume said the first section, 421.01, will cover a lot of basic skills, but much of their work will not be for publication. Section 421.02 will focus on more in-depth news coverage, and students will produce for the Lantern on a regular basis.
Before students finish the sequence by taking 421.03, they will be required to take Topics in Public Affairs Journalism, according to McKerns.
“This course will allow us to teach students the skills they need and give them somewhat of an expertise,” McKerns said.
“This section will allow students to do some investigative reporting, work with public records and cover government issues,” Hume said.
An article in The Link, the alumni newsletter of the School of Journalism and Communication, written by Dan Steinberg and Thomas Schwartz, associate professors, said, “We will teach more in actual application so students can learn more on their feet.”
“Instead of learning journalism skills first, then practicing them separately for the Lantern, students will learn and practice simultaneously,” Schwartz said.
The School of Journalism has undergone other changes when it decided not to seek re-accreditation.
“The way accreditation is structured seems to counter the way we thought the curriculum needed to be,” McKerns said. “It would limit what we could do, especially with the numbers of faculty we have.”
McKerns said now, without the accreditation and with the new curriculum, the faculty can branch out and teach different areas that will help allow the convergence of media.
