From Pulitzer to Lemann

At a key point in the evolution of Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism, James Boylan has written a book that will settle at least two debates: why the school is what it is today, and what Joseph Pulitzer originally intended for the curriculum.

Like everything in the status quo, the journalism school's journey to its present state--as one of the most prestigious in the country--was a tortured route that didn't always follow principle and was full of compromises, revealing cracks in the façade of a respected institution. Boylan, J'52 and the founder of the school's Columbia Journalism Review, makes the conflicts between faculty, deans, and Columbia brass the central narrative strand of his history. He skillfully narrates the debates that led the journalism school away from Pulitzer's vision to what exists today in a way that both celebrates its storied past and suggests reforms for the future.

Boylan was commissioned to write the history for the 100th anniversary of the school's conception--which started with Pulitzer's memo recording his thoughts about the future of journalism as a profession. Pulitzer was a rags-to-riches magnate of publishing in the late 19th century, and is widely considered to be the father of the modern newspaper. Part of his vision was to turn journalism, much like himself, from the blue-collar to the respectable and academic.

"Here is the germ of an idea which requires careful formulation," Pulitzer wrote while at his mansion in Bar Harbor, Maine in 1902. "My point of view is that a great newspaper must be a public institution for the public good, although incidentally and inevitably it cannot also help being a business."

In his letter, he summed up the two conflicting ideas at the core of today's journalism school debate. On the one hand, practicing journalists often criticize the journalism school for being too focused on teaching the skills needed to sell stories and generate ratings. On the other, teachers and scholars of journalism believe that schools are needed to instruct journalists in important disciplines like law, economics, environmental science, and sociology so that they can intelligently judge the truth.

While the school was indeed Pulitzer's idea, his indecision about curriculum decisions and his extreme hypochondria delayed any final decisions until after his death. This left the makeup of the school to be decided by Columbia administrators and their appointed deans. You can imagine what happened: it didn't turn out quite right.

Boylan traces the history of the school through the lens of its successive deans from its beginning as an undergraduate college, to its much-regretted rebirth as a one-year graduate program, to the Bollinger-Lemann administration. As a result, the book often lacks context. One doesn't learn much about why the school became so prestigious and well respected--only the internal machinations that lead from one decision to the next. At times, the narrative borders on the tedious in its administrative details, with Boylan as historian staying on the sidelines during controversial moments. But what the book lacks in flourish or emphasis, it more than regains through insightful anecdotes and a strong conclusion.

One notable passage is about the school's first day in operation. Professional journalists covered the school's opening with a hint of mockery, and reported that the student reporters' "magnum opus" first assignment included the headlines "Boy Went Fishing: Is Drowned," "$193,000,00 To Melt North Pole Ice," and "Aged Organ Grinder Dies in Street." Another strong section is the discussion of the school's ill-fated Chungking, China extension in the mid-1940s. The book is divided into small chapters that make it easy to navigate from event to event.

The central dilemma in Boylan's book is the conflict between the needs of vocational training and teaching "broad knowledge of ... the complex issues facing America today," as University President William McGill put it (a statement that could have been written by Lee Bollinger 25 years later). Sometimes the debate takes the form of wrangling over endowment or building costs, at others decisions about allowing commercial enterprises to sponsor research.

This book is a valuable contribution to the debate about journalism education. Boylan has done an admirable job of summing up the technical problems of the school's administration. But his history was ultimately written in the hopes that the school's leaders can transcend the details and lead the institution to realize Pulitzer's dreams.