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Is Columbia Journalism playing catchup with the Internet?

Published on 31/08/08
by Collin

I’ll probably be skewered somehow for this, but before introducing Columbia’s new Dean of Academics, Bill Grueskin, Dean Lemann recounted that when the School of Journalism set out to revamp it’s famed School of Journalism six years, it failed to consider the role of the Internet. Yikes. Am I the only one that considers this to be a major admission of error on the School’s behalf? I’m trying to take myself back six years. Was the Internet’s impact on the publishing industry that far off?

Five years ago, as backwater 2nd tier nobodies in Qingdao, China we were experimenting at RedStar with user-generated content in our editorial production process. It was ugly and bulky but hey, at least we were out there doing it. Email newsletters were already rampant six years ago. Personal websites/blogs were well on there way and the Lawrence Journal was tooling about w/ its Django CMS. I’m not even scratching the surface on what else was out there then i.e. Yahoo and Google News/Alerts. Hell, Dean Grueskin’s team was pushing online subscription and ad sales at WSJ.com beginning in 2000.

I realize that the private sector does rather than than reflect. But I am surprised that as of six years ago, “the Internet wasn’t even brought up” in that discussion, according to Dean Lemann. How did this happen? This is not to say that the school hasn’t made enormous strides in implementing new media students. Former Columbia J-School students marvel at the new media schedule of courses now. As a new media student myself, I’m also pleased to see the school boldly proclaim out loud to the entire class that it will be its new media students employed come June 2009. But such an admission of Johnny-come-lately scared the hell out of me.

I suppose I’m just chomping at the bit to see the School maintain its leading reputation for the highest level of journalism. Resting on your laurels is never a good thing. Hungry schools, CUNY, NYU, Missouri, Northwestern and Berkeley are chomping at the bit to puncture Columbia’s elite status in journalism. We should be on guard and cultivating an offensive strategy that sees Columbia hosting Knight Digital Media Center workshops, collaborations with the Computer Science Dept and Business School among other innovative but basic partnerships. Let’s set up some experimental labs that explore entrepreneurial publishing, print-to-web-to-print editorial production and journalism beyond 2050. Don’t just recognize the impact of the Internet, embrace it wildly and pioneer Columbia’s presence further into the future. Just don’t preach to the choir or scare us like that again.

P.S. Oh, here’s Dean Bill Grueskin’s ‘Three Trends Impacting Journalism Today’:

  1. The increasing abundance and availability of news sources
  2. The ever-expanding role of the user or reader in producing news
  3. New sources of news from unconventional or entrepreneurial tracks. I especially liked the part where we were introduced to Paid Content. This concept is what I’m referring to. Plus, check out the job listings!

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