Among the Media Journalism Education in a Commercial Culture

Abstract

Journalism education as an academic pursuit has run its course during this century: from representing the interests of newspaper proprietors through a period of increasing academic standards and a new intellectual respectability to current alliances between media interests and educational endeavors. During this time journalism education has remained committed to meeting organizational demands without much consideration of the concrete historical conditions of working journalists. By focusing on the predicament of contemporary newswork I intend to place journalism education at the service of journalists and the struggle of intellectual labor-and against the commercialization of journalism in the United States. The larger context for this approach--of course--is the relationship between journalism and power. By identifying with various economic and political interests, American journalism has effectively abandoned its self-proclaimed cause of serving the people to accommodate its own fascination with social and political power. The resulting consequences for notions of news, democracy, and citizenship are considerable and must be of major interest to media studies and journalism education.