At Fudan forum, journalism educators mull training for tomorrow’s media professionals
Print Edition
FACULTY representatives from university journalism departments at home and abroad aired their views on how to conduct journalism education in view of the deepening influence of the Internet at a forum held at Fudan University on Tuesday.
As Yin Minghua, Dean of the Fudan University School of Journalism, said while addressing the forum, significant changes in communication are exerting serious influence on how journalism is being taught, and sharing views in this area will go a long way toward shaping future journalist education.
Yin said that the school of journalism used to turn out media talent, but the rise of the Internet and social media have significantly eroded the media’s monopoly on communication, raising serious questions about what kind of talents are needed in this field.
In his keynote speech, Ernest Y. Zhang, Director of China Programs, School of Journalism, Missouri University, explained how one of the oldest journalism schools in the world embraces new technology to turn up professionals who can adapt to the Internet era.
Lu Shaoyang, Dean of the School of Journalism and Communication, Peking University, observed that the paradigm shift we have seen in communication presents the need to theorize anew about what kind of talent to cultivate, about agenda-setting, and about how to conduct social studies today.
Chinese scholars can contribute in this sphere, though at the moment it is unclear how.
Retaining journalism students
In the past, relevant journalism theories all originated from the West. But we are now facing the necessity of turning out talent that can be pressed into our service, in reference to communication theory with Chinese characteristics. There is the need, Lu pointed out, of nailing down the meaning of Marxist views of journalism before we can go very far in routine teaching work.
There is also the question of how to develop the discipline of journalism. It has been observed that China’s top universities all have departments of journalism, while this is not the case in the West. “While this reflects our country’s stress on journalism, we also hear from time to time critical views such as that journalism and communication are essentially disciplines whose practical nature precludes the need for a full-blown undergraduate course. Double majors will suffice,” Lu observed.
Lu said that a new system in Peking University that allows students to switch to other departments is posing serious challenge when it comes to retaining journalism students, with faculty members doing their utmost to proffer all manner of incentives to students.
These have included assigning the best teachers to freshmen courses, increasing the chances of International exposure, and adopting a one-to-one tutorial system. “Obviously, we are no longer talking about whether students are fired up by the ideals of journalism. We are facing the challenge of our students opting out to join business or management majors,” Lu warned.
Lu also pointed to the need of training journalism students focused in specific fields, while also providing comprehensive training. “We now have a health communication orientation, set up in response to complaints that improper media reports add to the tension between doctors and patients,” Lu said.
Many of these reports have been skewed by a lack of knowledge about medicine and the advent of China’s aging society.
While most speakers enunciated the need to adapt to, Liu Chang, Dean of the School of Journalism, Communication University of China, also stressed the need for a sobering reevaluation of the status quo, rather than parroting what others say. Liu said that many fashionable beliefs about digitalization are wrong. For instance, data journalism is really about analysis of big data to reveal new clues and trends, rather than about graphic, visual presentation of data.
Many also talk excitedly about fashionable concepts as VR (virtual reality), AR (augmented reality), and MR (mixed reality), but few think about the utility of these new technologies in reporting. As a matter of fact, they are largely useless.
Obsession with technology
Similarly, there has been so much hype around robots and algorithms being used to author reports, although scrutiny will show that most of these reports are essentially print-outs of statistics or simple financial briefs.
From another perspective, the fragmentation of information is depriving us of room for critical thinking. People are obsessed with immediacy, and media outlets are indulgently feeding this need, following the dicta of costs-efficiency and market principals in their output.
“Some say that in the media scene today whatever circulates most on social media is the lead story, while what is not displayed on social media is not news at all. This is an insult to us in the journalist profession,” Liu observed.
What we see now is that in journalism quality is giving way to presentation, form, and speed, as clicks become the sole measure of impact. In the minds of many media managers, profits have become the only metric for predicting the survivability of the media. “As mainstream media, what’s the point of making so much money?” Liu asked.
As Liu pointed out, the media, in aggressively dramatizing their readiness to embrace technology and change, is actually covering up their inner confusion, haste, and hesitation.
Thus there is a compelling need to realize that our central mission is not just employment training, but leading the media. It is definitely not about abandoning the proper sphere of journalism for something entirely new and different.
The media is relevant to the development of all human kind, so there is the need to raise the tone of media available to global citizens. This is a central component of the mission of journalism.
By no means should journalism education be allowed to degenerate into job training in reference to market principles, Liu concluded.
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