Medill: The Last J-School Standing

This word cloud was created by running Medill's 2008 online course descriptions through Wordle.
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If you're at all familiar with this blog or the melodramatic happenings at my alma mater, Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism et al, then you've likely formed some opinion of whether a marketing program belongs under the same roof as a journalism program. (Hint: It doesn't.) This week, The Nation's Michael Tracey wrote a 2,000-word piece of despair that places Medill in the center of the downfall of the journalism school (referred to by the affected as "j-school"). He covers a lot of ground, but he makes a few key points: 1) marketing and journalism are "profoundly antithetical enterprises," and their blending in education is not good for the reputation or credibility of journalism; 2) as a leading j-school, Medill's seismic shift spells trouble for the future of all j-schools; and 3) j-schools aren't necessary and we should just do away with them altogether.

(I highly suggest that you read the original article in order to fully appreciate my rage. Look, I'll even give you the link again! Click here!)

Okay, so from the outset, I'll reiterate Tracey's first point, the discomfort with combining marketing and journalism education. Medill has been shoving the two together under the direction of Dean John Lavine, who hit the ground running in 2006 with proposal after proposal that seemed destined to turn Medill into an arm of the Kellogg School of Management. In a symbolic birthing ritual, this spring faculty voted 38-5 to approve a name change from "Medill School of Journalism" to "Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications." (Ugh, it hurts to type.) It's simply a bad idea; just because both journalism and PR/marketing deal with language doesn't mean that they should be lumped together. Tracey quotes director of the Yale Journalism Initiative, Mark Oppenheimer: “We should all be a little concerned that the same schools that teach people to see through bogus claims are also the same schools teaching students how to perpetuate bogus claims.” Right on, totally agreed, no argument here.

The thing that makes me so queasy is that journalism is supposed to be about truth. It's free, it's honorable, it's necessary to functioning society. It is a check on power, a protector of our right to free speech. I loved calling myself a journalist because it made me feel like part of something exciting and cutting-edge and noble. But marketing is about sales. It's about tricking people. It's about convincing consumers they need the newest iPhone, or that a company is socially conscious, or even that this charity is more worthy of your money than another charity. It's about manipulation and persuasion -- a version of the truth, maybe, but not truth. Given, not all journalism is going to clear that bar (hi Bill), but it's at least supposed to try. So that's why everyone (who isn't John Lavine or the 37 other faculty members who voted for the name change) thinks this unholy marriage is a terrible move.

Tracey actually goes off a bit on Dean Lavine, and I felt myself turning into a member of the choir. "Amen," I thought when he recounted the bit of drama a few years ago when an undergrad caught Dean Lavine using unattributed (and very likely false) quotations from students in praise of a Lavine-esque course titled "Advertising: Building Brand Image." It was embarrassing for all involved, and it made Medill look stupid, and I still haven't really forgiven Dean Lavine for that. It was inexcusable.

But I get what he's trying to do. I appreciate that Dean Lavine wants to make sure our $200,000 education is worth it, so he's trying to teach the business aspects of journalism too. How to market your story and yourself to a particular audience. How to manipulate people into reading. It's misguided, but I can see why he thinks that marketing and journalism go hand in hand. But that sort of thing just feels so slimy to a crowd that's being taught to be fiercely objective. We should be talking about paragraph structure and contextual analysis, not branding and pull-quotes.

After fleshing out all the reasons why j-school shouldn't house a marketing program and inflicting some violence on Dean Lavine's reputation, Tracey goes on the offensive against the entire concept of j-school. It's true: you don't need a license to be a journalist. A lot of people who work in the field didn't study journalism, and a lot of people who did study journalism found jobs in other industries. So what's the point? Tracey asks. Anyone can be a journalist, so take that time you're spending "learning" journalism and use it to study other things -- arts, science, whatever you're passionate about. Your proficiency in those passions -- not your knowledge of the inverted pyramid and search-engine optimization -- will make you a good journalist.

I agree that journalists should not be hollow shells resembling people, but active and contributing members of society. Of course we should study other things and become experts in other areas; that's why most people go to j-school, to learn how to tell the stories that interested them in the first place. Some grew up in squalor and dedicate their career to social change journalism; others love numbers and have read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover every day since the age of 11. To each their own. And yes, anyone can be a journalist in the sense that anyone can write words and publish them, usually on the Internet. (Hi mom!)

But Tracey takes an ill-advised leap in suggesting we get rid of j-school altogether. His argument: "Think about the social function of the journalism major. Overtly or not, it creates an implicit regulatory structure, endowing journalism students with the right to manage the university’s newspaper by virtue of their participation in important seminars on media ethics and interview techniques. Conversely, non-journalism students are left with the impression that reporting is best reserved for those who've been formally trained to do it."

To me this is so clear-cut: People who are trained to do something are generally better at it than people who aren't trained to do that thing. You become a better musician by learning about music, you become a better racecar driver by learning about racing, and you become a better journalist by learning about journalism. You don't need a license to practice, but throwing out the entire discipline would be absurd. It suggests that the entire corpus of knowledge -- the history, the ethics of reporting, the art of interviewing and dealing with sensitive subjects, the methods of research, the resources available -- is useless and can be replicated easily without formal training. This would be devolution, a step backward for a discipline that is already so desperately fractured and bleeding. Not to mention it's a slap in the face to me and everyone who majored in journalism, at Medill or elsewhere. I understand that journalism need not be regulated with a gateway fee of a specialized degree, but let's not forget that the specialized degree still has value.

Okay, look. I went to journalism school to learn how to write like a journalist. As luck would have it, the Medill wind shifted as soon as I arrived. Dean Lavine took over at the end of my freshman year from Loren Ghiglione (whose name I had JUST learned how to pronounce, goddammit), and we launched into three years of identity confusion as Dean Lavine tried to basically merge Medill with the Kellogg School of Management. Or at least that's what it felt like. My History and Issues of Journalism course -- a cornerstone of the program -- was reimagined and tag-teamed by three professors in a huge auditorium. We had assigned seats and they actually took attendance -- in a classroom of 150+ students, the entire Medill freshman class. It was a ridiculous exercise and I remember nothing except watching a movie about Edward Murrow.

But Medill does do some things right. The liberal arts education I received at Northwestern was top-notch; most of my peers had a second major (mine was in political science) and we all took courses in art, philosophy, math, science, economics, literature, and so forth. My journalism classes that actually focused on journalism -- literary journalism, magazine writing, law and ethics, and so forth -- blew my mind and forced me to think about the world in a whole new way. I completed two journalism internships, one at an extra-small investigate reporting operation and another at a large consumer technology publication. I got both the breadth and the depth of education that Tracey pines for, and I got it at Medill. You can teach journalism. I know because I was taught journalism. What's much harder to teach is writing, but that's a whole 'nother blog post.

I'm hoping against hope that Medill is going through some sort of teenage phase, but I can't help but feel glum about the future of my alma mater. Like many of my peers, I am not on the journalism track -- but it did directly funnel me in the direction I'm going now as I pursue creative writing. I have friends who work for newspapers and TV stations and magazines, and we still carry on ridiculously nerdy conversations about headlines and AP Style and industry gossip. A piece of me is a journalist, will always be a journalist, and that piece will inform every encounter I have with culture and society and language. For that I thank Medill, and I can do nothing but lament Dean Lavine's agenda and hope it doesn't turn my school into a disgrace.