One of the key roles of the university has to foster critical thinking, graduating students who have the ability to ask the right questions and think through solutions to problems. For the revival of the Carnival of Journalism, David Cohn has asked the journalist/scholar bloggers taking part to consider the place of the university in the information ecosystem. Journalism schools are uniquely placed within the academic environment to play a leading

In an article for PBS Mediashift, I looked at the challenges facing journalism schools in teaching technical skills without losing sight of the journalism. This is a difficult area for j-schools as journalism becomes ever more interwoven with technology: The challenges for journalism schools are two-fold. First, students need to be taught how to use a wide range of technical tools. Second, and more importantly, they have to learn how

PBS Mediashift has launched a new initiative with “embeds”. The idea is to get first-hand reports from people who are in the midst of change brought on by technology and the internet. I am one of them, reporting back from the front line of journalism education. My first missive has just been published, looking at our integrated journalism approach at the UBC j-school. This extract sums up what we are

InsideHigherEd.com reflects on a meeting of journalism school deans, editors and news executives on the role of journalism schools in an age of new media: Criticisms of journalism schools have ranged from questioning whether the institutions are necessary in the first place (since many journalists, and most senior ones, don’t have journalism degrees) to debating the merits of teaching practical skills versus theory and whether curriculums should emphasize broad knowledge