Center Dialogues and Reflections
Journalism Education
Future Journalism – Future Journalism Education
- January 21, 2021
- , 8:28 pm
GjC TEAM
Background issues
We might agree that future challenges in journalism stack up i the present, reflecting challenges in global development, generally: Fake news, climate change, accelerating migration, new technologies impacting on public discourse in unpredictable ways, globalization transforming society, pandemics and many other dynamics are converging to raise new questions.
So what about journalism education?
Teaching journalism is in part an aspect of professionalization and teaching to improve the practice of journalism. In part it is also a call to revitalize a critical discourse concerning what journalism education for the 21st century is, in the first place.
Programs in journalism education are about 100 years old, starting with the first courses noted at such institutions as Columbia University, as of 1912. Journalism education then spread across the United states. In the UK, journalism degrees started to emerge in the 1960´s, a development accelerating in Europe in the 197´s and 1980´s, and followed by a rapid expansion of journalism education worldwide since the 1980´s. Departments of media studies started to emerge in Europe and elsewhere outside the US in the 1980´s.
We are, in short, a quite recent phenomenon.
So what has changed in the world since the 1980´s and why this concern with the future of journalism education? The answer is simple: Global issues, controversies, challenges and looming crises bring new strength to calls for a rethinking of the purposes, mandates, and contents of journalism education.
About GjC:
There are many networks available to join, for anyone who is looking. Center for Global Journalism and Communication is simply one among many. What we offer, for those who seek to join, is simply a forum for discussing and developing journalism education along those themes and concerns that our center emphasizes: 1) The question of “troubled pasts”, 2) the challenges of “digital transformation”, 3) the ways in which journalism reflects and impacts on “political transition” and 4) the resulting challenges for journalism education. Other issues might lead you to different networks.