Professional and Academic Levels of a Mass Media Writing Course.

An innovative media writing course at Texas A&M University proves that professional journalism training can play a central role in liberal arts education. New ideas, many suggested by Journalism and Mass Communication Educator writers, have strengthened the course. The "centrality" issue arises from assaults on journalism education by some university leaders. Dennis (1986) observed that some educators argue that journalism education lacks academic value. Critics argue that the journalism curriculum, especially courses that train practitioners, are without academic and intellectual substance. James (1995) discussed attempts to eliminate journalism programs at the universities of Washington, Michigan, and Arizona. She described the complaint at Washington: "According to the central administration, the school was suspect based on the quality of instruction and scholarly production as well as a lack of centrality to the mission of the College of Arts and Sciences" (p. 79). Washington's school survived by radically changing the thrust of its programs to "emphasize academic rather than practical training, and to integrate the school more fully with other Arts and Sciences units" (p. 80). Mencher (1994) points out that the attacks on practitioner training came at a time when other educators were rethinking university roles. He quotes Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, who sees the university as "an institution that celebrates teaching and effectively supports research, while also taking pride in its capacity to connect thought to action, theory to practice" (p. 72). Mencher argues that journalism training at its best, makes the connection and delivers the ideal liberal arts education. Similarly, in exploring the roles of history, theory and philosophy in journalism curricula, Iorio & Williamson (1995) found that "the liberal arts were embedded throughout the curriculum in both skills and survey courses" (p. 21). They defined a new goal for journalism education that enlightens professional performance and constructs a journalism program central to the core of liberal education and university mission. The idea that professional training in journalism is the best-perhaps perfect - environment for arts and sciences education, provided the blueprint for remodeling the beginning media writing course at Texas A&M. The goal was to bring an existing professional writing course up to the highest academic and intellectual standards. The course Journalism 203, Media Writing I, is an introductory, sophomore-level, threehour-credit course, regularly scheduled with three hours lecture and three hours lab each week. The course is the first of three media writing and editing courses required of all journalism majors including students interested in public relations and broadcasting. Students in many different majors and at any academic classification take the course. The only prerequisite is passing a departmental language skills test. The department offers five, 15-student sections during regular semesters and two sections in summer school. Three of the regular semester sections typically get the revised course. It has been taught five times by the same full-time, senior faculty member. There are no teaching assistants and there is no textbook. The course is taught in a 15-week semester and the 45 students meet for an hour on Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the first three weeks for a crash course that delivers a quick summary of how journalistic stories are prepared. The crash course literally covers most journalistic skills and concepts. Starting on the first day the crash course requires writing, evaluation and rewriting. It begins with punctuation, grammar, listening and critical thinking, and ends with depth discussions of attribution and story organizational schemes. The workload in the course is heaviest in the first two-thirds of the semester, allowing a slowdown as students tire and demands in other courses increase. …