In Which I Agree With Someone Else, and Elaborate as to Why

Kevin D. Williamson at The Dispatch:

Graciela Mochkofsky, dean of CUNY’s graduate school of journalism, has a proposal for the education of new journalists. Headline: 'One Way to Help a Journalism Industry in Crisis: Make J-School Free.' ... Undergraduate journalism education is an entirely worthless endeavor, and journalism majors would be far better off studying almost anything else, from economics to French novels; graduate journalism education is a mostly worthless endeavor, and the real value of prestigious programs such as Columbia’s is in signaling and networking.

While I'm not sure I'd go so far as "entirely worthless" -- to the extent that J-School may teach very specific technical skills for certain varieties of journalism (I'm thinking of video editing and such), it may be useful -- the main elements of every kind of journalism are combined functions of three things:

1. Spelling, grammar, and sentence construction that are taught (or at least used to be taught) at the elementary and junior high school levels;
2. The five point lede formula, which I learned in a single one-hour session of my junior high school newspaper's class; and
3. For specialized variants -- everything from sports to weather to opinion journalism -- experience or education in the specialization rather than the journalism proper.

A story I've told before, maybe even on this blog:

When I was in elementary school, I started an independent weekly student newspaper. Nothing especially racy, and nothing especially good (the only feature I recall is "Guitar Chord of the Week."

Around that time (age 12), my oldest brother, who knew I wanted to be a writer (I wanted to be JRR Tolkien or Robert Heinlein, but I don't think he really noticed that distinction), made me an offer: If I would attend meetings of the Laclede County, Missouri Beekeepers' Association and take notes, I could write those notes up and the local newspaper, the Lebanon Daily Record, would publish them. That's when I became a "journalist." Not a good one, I'm sure.  The main thing I learned from that experience was how to cram X agenda items into Y words to fit the paper's maximum allowed count.

I got the five point lede education in my first day or three on my junior high newspaper, and was off to the races. After the junior high paper, I applied and was accepted by the high school's "cultural journalism" magazine (Bittersweet); that happened to be the magazine's last year of publication. I spent my junior and senior years on the high school newspaper. I also participated in a couple of fanzine projects.

At some point in my junior year, I saw that the aforementioned Lebanon Daily Record was advertising for a part-time reporter. I was called for an interview.

As it happened, I'd made a mistake on my application. It's a mistake I've made many times: Under "date of birth," I accidentally used the current year (1983 or 1984) instead of my birth year. So the first question at the interview was "how old are you?" and when I replied that I was 16 or 17 (I forget which), I was told that I couldn't be hired because they needed an 18-year-old.

I was also told that mine had been the single best resume the editor had received. that felt good.

I went on to write for my college newspaper, do some occasional local stringing in another town, and become first a frequently published letter-to-the-editor writer, then an occasionally assigned op-ed writer, and a "public representative" member of the editorial board, for a 60k+ circulation daily, with occasional publication in larger newspapers and national magazines (hanks to that newfangled Internet thing).

After which I moved back to my home town, saw another part-time reporter ad in that hometown daily, and applied, with an updated resume. Again, I was called for an interview. Again, although I wasn't told so, I'm reasonably sure that mine was the best resume on the (new, younger) editor's pile.

But this time the first question was: Where did you go to journalism school?

The answer, of course, was that I hadn't.

And he wasn't going to hire anyone for his (usually four-page daily, eight-page Sunday) 5,000 or less circulation daily, which I mainly read each day to count the typos and grammatical errors, who hadn't gone to journalism school.

At least that's what he said. Maybe it was because I had burst out laughing when he asked.

I am far from the most accomplished journalist in my county, let alone the world. But I'm also a far more accomplished journalist than many who went to J-School.

In my opinion, if you don't already have a decent grasp of journalism by the time you apply for J-School, you have no business going to J-School.

And, also in my opinion, if you do already have a decent grasp of journalism by the time you apply for J-School, you don't really need J-School as such. You should major in something around or adjacent to the kind of journalism you want to do (sports management, meteorology, music, political science, etc.), and see if there are a few specifically J-School type electives that might be useful to you.

And finally, again, in my opinion, if you're looking to hire a journalist, you should look for someone who's learned, or is equipped to quickly learn, the practice of the kind of journalism you're after, not someone who's graduated from a school supposedly teaching the general skill.