James Breiner: Entrepreneurial Journalism

Versión en español

BRISTOL, England — A few years ago, I was on a team designing a master’s degree in digital journalism. The university required that we propose three areas of research for the professors in this program to pursue.

One subject area we proposed was new business models for news. Another was the use of social networks in distribution of news. I forget the third. All three were rejected by the university’s academic authority because they were not on the list of approved areas of research, and it appeared that we could not launch the program.

However, we appealed to the vice chancellor, who persuaded the academic authorities that an innovative university program could (and should) include areas of research not on the approved list.

Outside the curriculum

Jonathan Dovey, U. of West of England

You have to be a little sneaky to innovate in a 1,000-year-old institution like a university. The system rewards academic authority built on systems of peer reviewed publication. You might not be able to get the curriculum changed quickly enough to take into account all of the digital disruption going on.

The theme of the inflexibility of university curricula came up repeatedly in Bristol during a meeting of professors and students participating in an entrepreneurial journalism program in England, Spain, Portugal, and Finland. The CreBiz program, sponsored by the European Commission, aims to help students in creative fields find models for establishing their own businesses.

All the examples of entrepreneurial journalism courses we heard about took place outside the standard course structure. One colleague mentioned the necessity to sneak the theme into existing courses rather than trying to get an entire course approved by university authorities.

Jonathan Dovey, professor at the University of the West of England, told the group of his experience pairing universities with businesses in the creative industries to help them solve a problem. It is difficult to align the timelines of academia (years) with those of businesses (months), Dovey said, but in three years there have been successes.

Situation in the U.S.

As it happens, the topic of innovating in journalism schools is a hot one in the U.S. PBS Education Shift, an excellent source for digital innovation, this week it carried a post by Michelle Ferrier, associate dean for innovation at Ohio University, on How to Use a Hackathon to improve entrepreneurial teaching methods.

See also: 8 leading university programs in entrepreneurial jouralism

Education Shift also linked to a post by Sarah Bartlett, dean of the graduate school of journalism at the City University of New York,  who pointed out how difficult it is to keep the curriculum fresh while satisfying the authorities that accredit programs.

Her thoughts were part of a Knight Foundation report that made three recommendations:

• Establish a digital-first academic startup, the educational equivalent of the ProPublicas, FiveThirtyEights and Vox Medias of the news-and-information marketplace.

• Leverage the disciplinary expertise of the full-time faculty while creating new delivery structures for skills-based learning.

• Create a mission-specific accreditation process for programs that define as their core mission the preparation of 21st-century journalists.