The Need for Journalism in the Classroom

The Need for Journalism in the Classroom
You most likely never saw an email from the Department of Communication that announced there would be no Journalism Capstone next spring. Only the five students that signed up for the class did.

Less than half of the amount of students required to keep a class requested the Capstone as their first choice, according to Chad Raphael, the communication department chair, despite the fact that every communication major had to take at least one journalism course. Meanwhile, the Public Relations Capstone filled up, as usual.

The lack of interest suggests that communication students might be a little wary of the return on investment for journalism. Newspaper revenue was only $38.6 billion last year, according to the Newspaper Association of America's annual revenue profile. That's down almost $21 billion since 2003.

But these numbers only paint in broad strokes. Newspapers are seeing growth in circulation and areas that barely existed a year ago, such as e-commerce, according to the report.

You might think that journalism is an "industry in turmoil," as the guest speakers at the California College Media Association's career workshop called it. You might think of journalism as another branch of "the media" out to promote corporate interests if you've taken an introductory sociology course. You'd be wrong. Journalism isn't dying. It's transforming.

The rapidly evolving technology that once threatened the industry is now providing us with new methods to reach more readers and interact with them in new ways. A report from the International Data Corporation projects that the tablet market will grow by 175 percent by 2017. Advertising revenue and the new "other" revenue from these technologies can put journalism back in the black.

It's easy to see, though, how students can be deterred from an industry changing more dramatically than a robot in a Michael Bay movie and instead run into the steady arms of a currently successful one. The public relations industry, for instance, has grown rapidly and is showing signs of a long life. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the public relations field will expand by 21 percent from 2010 to 2020.

But is that where we want to be as young Santa Clara graduates?

Sarah Bradley ('10) used her Journalism Capstone to investigate the health effects of California's biggest waste dump on the nearby inhabitants. She now works in business development for Samasource, a nonprofit that connects poor youth around the world with work in microtasks sent out by employers.

"Studying journalism is great preparation for a whole bunch of stuff," said Raphael. "We need to think about ways to make that case more clearly to our students next year before they sign up for Capstone."

The loss of next year's Journalism Capstone isn't just a loss for the profession. It's a loss for the development of young, critical minds.

The Editorial Board of Matthew Rupel, Mandy Ferreira, Summer Meza, and Claire Ingebetsen.