“Walter Williams … found journalism a trade and helped to make it a profession.”
From a personal column by Arthur Hays Sulzberger in the New York Times on Aug. 3, 1935.
By WILL NORTON JR., Dean
A debate has been raging in journalism education during recent years.
Some advocates of journalism education reform believe that journalism programs should include only news courses, both print and broadcast.
Others assert that journalism education has always emphasized both commercial and news communication because journalism education was advocated and then established by the Missouri Press Association, most of whose members were from smaller newspapers. They wanted to prepare advertising personnel as well as news personnel for newspapers, and they wanted to achieve the status of a profession for both groups.
Ronald T. Farrar’s recent biography of Walter Williams, the first dean of the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, is a narrative on the beginnings of journalism education.
Farrar tells us that when Columbia University received Joseph Pulitzer’s offer of $2 million to establish a graduate program for reporters and editors, it was essentially a proposal for a program to produce journalists for metropolitan newspapers.
The Columbia board of trustees was not sure the gift should be accepted. To give journalism a place at a graduate level similar to law and medicine was problematic. Eventually, the board accepted the Pulitzer funds, and a graduate school of journalism was established in 1912, but not until after one had been established at the University of Missouri.
“By 1908,” Farrar writes, “scoffing at the school of journalism idea still could be heard, but it came largely from lesser figures in the profession.” In “A Creed for My Profession,” Farrar explained that the Pulitzer proposal had received endorsements from the presidents of Harvard, Michigan and Northwestern. So the idea of journalism as a professional school was gaining acceptance.
Thus, on Dec. 13, 1906, the Board of Curators of the University of Missouri voted a School of Journalism into existence. However, this was not a graduate school designed to produce reporters and editors for metropolitan newspapers.
Missouri’s school was the result of years of lobbying by the Missouri Press Association. It was designed to offer a course of study of “at least four years in length” to provide undergraduate education for people who wanted to prepare for work in all departments of newspapers.
Dean Walter Williams’ proposed the following courses:
History and Principles of Journalism. The course was “designed to present the main facts of the history of newspaper making, of journalism in various periods and conditions.”
Newspaper Making. “This is a laboratory course setting forth, in practice, upon the daily newspaper, journalistic work in all departments.”
Newspaper Publishing. “The business side of journalism, including discussion of advertising and circulation.”
Other courses were newspaper administration, magazine and class journalism, comparative journalism, newspaper jurisprudence, news-gathering, correspondence and office equipment.
Journalism education at most universities is based on the Missouri model. I can recall only two major programs that have followed the Columbia model. The University of California-Berkeley School of Journalism also has been a graduate program for news gathering and processing. This year the University of Maryland will follow a modified version of the Columbia model. The advertising and public relations programs at Maryland have been moved from the College of Journalism, and news-editorial and broadcast journalism will be taught at the undergraduate and the graduate level.
Clearly, from its beginnings journalism education with a capital J was saturated with instruction in the business of journalism as well as instruction in news-editorial. NU Journalism Dean Emeritus Neale Copple explains it by asking questions: “Do you want your publishers to have had instruction in the ethics of journalism and in media law? Do you want publishers to know the rich traditions of journalism, or do you want them to come into newspapering with no knowledge of the heritage of the news business?”
The University of Missouri model clearly provides for the spirit and mission of land grant universities. Such universities were established by Congress to provide citizens with practical knowledge.
It is vital to know that the School of Journalism at the University of Nebraska was established in 1923 in the grand tradition of land grant institutions. For decades, journalism education at the University of Nebraska has included advertising and broadcasting courses as well as news-editorial. This tradition affirms the University of Missouri model established by Walter Williams.
The faculty in this college repeatedly have endorsed journalism education to prepare newspaper professionals, broadcasters and advertising executives. To abandon advertising education or broadcast education is to abandon preparation of students for the professions in Nebraska.
Thus, to accept a faculty position in this college is a calling to be loyal to those who went before us and worked hard to implement the University of Missouri model in this state.
Our focus is not just on big media. Our primary emphasis must be to prepare students for employment with the media of Nebraska, most of which are smaller newspapers, broadcast affiliates and agencies.
As the national debate intensifies, the rich and broad tradition of journalism education at Nebraska continues.