Any journalism student in the College of Communication has come to know the mantra almost by heart: The business is changing, news moves faster than ever and thousands of jobs are disappearing faster than life boats off the Titanic. To survive the challenges ahead, professors tell students they need to adapt by using cutting-edge multimedia skills to emerge at the top of an already cutthroat job pool. Though their intentions are laudable, the decision makers at COM would do well to consult with their colleagues in the economics department on opportunity costs: Specifically, what will the department sacrifice for multimedia glitz?
It is true that students who only learn to report for newspapers or television channels are doomed to go down with old-guard media outlets. Successful journalists have crossed over to websites using blogs, video reports and narrative slideshows to augment their reporting. These media skills ensure a reporter’s work actually reaches an audience, but it has nothing to do with that other important component of journalism: content. By focusing too much on style, the department will risk distracting journalism students from more substantial topics like investigative reporting. And it will prove expensive.
In an ideal world, the journalism department would have enough funding to hire more multimedia professors on top of tested reporters. Unfortunately, COM does not even have the money to replace its decrepit computers. President Robert Brown’s 10-year strategic plan made it clear the college is not Boston University’s highest priority. If the journalism department spends too many resources on teaching media skills like web design, much less-sexy instruction on basic reporting — the kind that turns a lengthy court ruling into a breaking news report or obscure tax returns into an expose on academic corruption — could fall to the wayside. Without this bread-and-butter training, journalism students will never succeed.
In any case, journalism professors looking to teach students things like self-made video and web design will find most students a step ahead of them. The current college generation comes well-equipped to use inexpensive camera equipment, web research and even raw markup language. What these students still lack is experience digging for the truth.
