By Dick Thien
Professional Lecturer in Journalism
Once in a while, students in the College of Journalism and mass communications hear from one professor or another, “You are in on of the top 10 journalism programs in the country.”
On occasion, new faculty hear from veteran colleagues, “We have on of the top 10 programs in the nation.”
Some students wonder about those nine other programs that supposedly are better than theirs.
This third year rookie teacher has stopped wondering.
Nobody know what journalism program is No. 10 – or No. 1.
There is no list, though there are lots of real or imagined – mostly imagined – ranking floating around. They are not breakfast, lunch or dinner table discussions among professionals. Newspeople don’t bother with such silliness.
Those make-believe rankings seem to be f great interest to some academics, sort of their mythical baseball league.
A few go to great lengths to claim their program is among the top three. One unnamed school in Columbia, MO., which just happens to be my alma mater, has never been ashamed to claim it is No. 1 – offering no proof whatsoever other than the conviction that if it says that long enough, loud enough and often enough, it is so.
Well, it isn’t so.
There are many solid journalism programs around. Inside forces threaten some, particularly university administrations obsessed with research rather than the professional results of their journalism graduates. Outside forces threaten others, particularly a newspaper industry that gladly hires those graduates but fails to offer support where it is needed most – the pocketbook.
I spent 20 years recruiting outstanding journalism graduate into newsrooms, going to campuses at Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and Northwestern. I have hired wonderful students from other places, too, like Augustana College, Ball State, Iowa State and South Dakota State.
Watching those young journalists grow showed me that the quality of a program depends on the quality of its students. It helps to have great faculty, but that is not a necessity. Some of the best newspeople never set foot inside a journalism school. Some of the worst have come from those places that like to say they are No. 1, No. 2, No. 3.
Who’s No. 1 is not the issue. The issue ridding this college of its self-proclaimed No. 10 ranking.
For years, this college has produced some of the best newspeople any recruiter could find anywhere. The quality of Nebraska’s youngsters comes from their parents. These youngsters are hard-working, and they have Midwest values.
Lincoln may be the largest city they have been in other than on a family vacation – if their folks could afford one. Students can’t help that.
UNL is often their first exposure to people of color. Students can’t help that, either.
All say “thank you” if someone does them a favor; they seldom make excuses; they want to do well and they worry about how well they are doing.
They work their butts off to write and edit a good story or to shoot a good photo. They help each other. They are tough grunts, almost the G.I. Joe caricature in the journalism education trenches.
They sometimes have a collective inferiority complex to do with that No. 10 image. Alumni, faculty and parents can help change that.
There is not need to tell them they are graduates from the Harvard of journalism education, which some arrogant faculty somewhere south of Nebraska tells its students. People from the prairie and the plains don’t think that way, anyway.
We all could surely tell our youngsters they are better than No. 10 if for no other reason than they are.
If someone asks you what kind of journalism program your college has, you might consider moving it up a notch or two or eight.
If someone asks me – and they do I simply say:
“I don’t know who No.1 is, but I do know this: The Nebraska program is better than whoever says theirs is first.
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