" Journalism is more than holding up a mirror to your own face"
Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi says Boston University Chancellor John Silber is right to suggest reforming how journalism education is done. As I commented on here on Tuesday (Rethinking J-School, May 27, 2003) Silber recently fired the dean of the College of Communication, and a department head was pushed out after he called Silber and two allies on the journalism faculty a "cabal of misfits." The college's associate dean also resigned in protest.

I wrote yesterday that Silber was right. Vennochi agrees:

Competence in journalism requires much more than knowing how to lay out a front page. … Journalism is more than holding up a mirror to your own face. It should reflect the world around and beyond you. Context comes from knowledge about history or economics, politics or literature. In that regard, Silber is right. Another news writing course doesn't provide that; getting beyond economics 101 is at least a beginning. As for a commitment to accuracy and truth, to the story, rather than to stardom at any price - if you don't come to journalism with that, it is difficult to learn it in college or anywhere else."