Journalism Students To Test Run Second Year

As the Columbia School of Journalism prepares the curriculum for its new Master of Arts program, current first-year students are deciding whether to hit the streets in June or to apply for a second year.

Dean Nicholas Lemann announced last fall that the second-year M.A. program would supplement the current one-year Master of Sciences program with nine months of specialization in a particular coverage area. Students who have spent their first year learning the general tools of the journalistic trade can apply to take a second year studying a topic of specialization like politics and national affairs, business, science, the arts, or religion.
Most students polled said they are seriously considering applying to stay for a second year and joining the first class of participants in the new program.

In large part, students' arguments reiterate Lemann's emphasis on the need for journalistic specialization in an increasingly complicated world. Many students say the days of anti-intellectual journalism--a trade whose practitioners believe they can pick up everything they need to know on the street--are over.

"A huge problem in journalism are dilettante writers who know little about their subject matter," said John Kearney, MS candidate. "They're spun by their subjects because they have no context or way to interpret how they're hearing. An example is the reporting on the new economy in the '90s, which was fawning, inane reporting."

Ayesha Akram, Journalism School MS candidate, said she will apply for a second year because she wants to remain a student for as long as possible before returning to the working world.
"When you're just working, you get caught up in the daily issues and the daily deadlines," said Akram, a candidate for president of the school's chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, the chief student governing body. "You don't get to think about the big questions: Why are we journalists? Why are we doing this? What is the role of journalists in the world?"

Before the two-year program began, Kearney was already putting himself through an informal specialization year of his own, studying part-time at Columbia for several semesters to learn more about the subjects he will cover as a journalist. He says he routinely audits classes in history and political science--and that such behavior is rare among journalism students.

"How many journalism students have gone into a building other than the journalism school?" Kearney asked. "Where were our financial reporters when Enron was pulling its hijinks? How many American reporters know Arabic?"

"I think that the same questions apply to the reporting of the Islamic world," Akram said. "I come from that part of the world, and I was a part of the 9/11 coverage, and those 9/11 reporters just didn't know anything about Islam."

To be sure, much of the enthusiasm is contingent on the dean's promise that students who participate in the second-year pilot program will receive "full financial support" for their second year. As they look at a first-year tuition of $40,000 and into a future of $25,000 journalistic salaries, they emphasize that a second year will only work if it is tuition-free, and doesn't leave them, as one put it, "being owned by Sally Mae."

And some students are skeptical that another year in school, even a tuition-free one, will be more useful to a journalistic career than getting out into the job market--especially in a profession where some people believe trade school isn't necessary in the first place.

"I think you're losing a year of income, and a year to be on the job" MS candidate Robert Tuttle said. "You do get to take more classes, and maybe it would be a good educational experience, but I just don't know how useful it would be for people than to just get into the job market."

Jim Higdon, MS candidate and a New Media concentrator, hopes that professors will "keep emphasizing that you've got to spend time in the newsroom." Kearney agrees: "You still have to burn the shoeleather."

But as Walter Alarkon, Akram's campaign manager and an MS candidate, puts it, those things can wait. "The big knock on journalism school is that it teaches you what you can learn in the newsroom," Alarkon said. "But this program might be teaching you things you can't learn in the newsroom."