How do J-schools measure success?

David Cohn, 2010-2011 Fellow

As my last post insinuated – I find the private conversations in the hallways or over lunch to be the best part of SXSW. The panels are fantastic, but I greatly value the chance to meet folks from other industries, mindsets here at SXSW.

I ran into Clay Shirky as he was going to get something to eat and asked if I wanted to join. How could I pass up an opportunity like that? Before you accuse me of being a Shirky fanboy, let me proclaim it myself and move on.

In truth, I think the journalism world is lucky to have somebody like Shirky, who comes from a different “tribe” of the internet paying close attention and scrutiny to our economics, history, culture and future incarnations. That’s a nice score. Shirky has a rare ability to take complex scenarios and situations and distill them down into simple stories concrete theories and assessment.

In our discussion we circled back to a question he asked of Jay Rosen at his panel on the twisted psychology of bloggers vs. journalists.

Clay asked about the relationship between Universities and the industry. I agreed with Jay’s initial response. My version of which is: Universities take their academic cues from what the industry needs. The idea of J-school is to produce workers who can go into a newsroom and start working from day one. Jay pointed out that even the phone sex industry trains new employees for 3 weeks before they start working. In newsrooms that cost is deferred to Universities.

As I talked with Clay I realized a potential tension that J-schools are probably feeling in response to the call for entrepreneurial journalism. It used to be a University could measure its success by where their alumni ended up. They’d point to former students working at newsrooms x, y, and z and could then turn to potential new students and say, ‘see how good we are doing.’

That narrative is slowly changing.

Unviersities now, from Northwestern, Missouri, USC, Arizona, CUNY and even Columbia’s Journalism school all have some form of entrepreneurial program. I wonder, however, what kind of tough spot that puts them in in terms of measuring success.

Becoming an entrepreneur is no easy task. The odds are stacked against you. Even if you do everything right there is only a 10% chance of success. And that assumes that entrepreneurialism can even be taught (some argue it can’t). How can a University turn to potential new students and say “On a good year, 1/10 of you will end up with a small business.”

In a chat with Dan Gillmor about this topic he brought an important counterpoint. At the undergraduate level a journalism degree is about as good a liberal arts education as any other. I was a philosophy major and have not done anything in the “philosophy” world ever since. Would my teachers consider me a “failed student.” Certainly not. If a journalism student moves on to become a doctor, lawyer, etc – that certainly is a positive for society and getting a background in journalism teaches somebody how to think critically, assess information and a slew of other positive skills.

Fair enough. I think Dan is absolutely correct that at the undergraduate level our measure of “success” isn’t how many students end up with jobs in newspapers, but rather students that end up as positive members of society.

But at the graduate level there is a different proposition. And I think there is a tension between Universities wanting to teach entrepreneurialism and Universities wanting their students to be outright success stories.

Those who do start their own journalism endeavors when they come back are treated like conquering warlords. I’m sure Missouri roles out the red carpet for Adrian Holovaty or Brian Storm (or Brad Pitt). But the sheer numbers suggest that these success stories will be rare compared to the number of students who start projects that don’t succeed. Universities need to be ready to either commit to those “losses” (for lack of a better term) or get off the entrepreneurial bandwagon. If they do commit – then a new measure for success will have to be figured out.