Administration and Orientation of Undergraduate Journalism Education: Variables Affecting "Best Fit" Between Higher Education Institutions and Programs

This paper addresses different perspectives on the best administrative 'home' for undergraduate journalism education, from administrative and curriculum perspectives. The paper begins by reviewing the history of journalism as a college discipline--showing that even from its earliest years, the founders of the field disagreed on administrative and curriculum emphases. Some variables which affect 'best fit' between discipline, institution, and program today are cited--they include individual academic program and goals, the institutional academic culture, collegiate organizational structure and bureaucracy, and external environmental variables. Finally, the paper reviews typical organizational structures chosen by higher education institutions today, as they continue to struggle with where journalism belongs in academe. Overview From the time the first college journalism education programs were established in the United States more than a hundred years ago, there has been disagreement about journalism's status as a higher education discipline. Some believe journalism is an academic field unto itself, one which is deserving of significant theoretical attention, contemplation and study. Others believe journalism to be more appropriately viewed simply as a professional or vocational skill, and not as an area of deep theoretical import. There has also been considerable disagreement about the form a college journalism education program should take, and the place it should occupy within the higher education institution. Some believe college journalism education is an extension of the liberal arts discipline and should be housed with humanities and literature. Others believe journalism should be identified with communication, and studied in league with speech, rhetoric, and perhaps film, television and radio broadcasting and electronic media. In light of the options, journalism educators find themselves constantly "struggling to maintain, and even to initiate, curricular breadth that is relevant to developing professionals" (Stark et al, 1987, p. 3). There is no single answer to the question of how we should conceptualize the study of journalism within higher education; nor is there a definitive interpretation of the 'appropriate' place for journalism instruction within each academic hierarchy. Rather than searching for a 'one size fits all' answer which cannot be found, the aim of this essay is to reflect on the history of the journalism as a college discipline and discuss some of the organizational variables which affect 'best fit' between institutions and their journalism programs. A brief illustration will be made of the two major philosophical distinctions. It is hoped that an analysis of this type might serve to shed some light on critical issues of journalism program leadership and administration for the 21st century. History of journalism as a college discipline The development of journalism into an academic field for study within the confines of American higher education traces its roots to the late 1860s and what O'Dell terms "natural social action" (O'Dell, 1935, p. 3) resulting from a variety of historical and social events: the Penny Press, general social progressiveness, and national expansion occasioned in part by the end of the Civil War. Introduced to the U.S. from England in about 1830, the Penny Press was unlike any journalistic form previously seen in the U.S. It changed the concept of news from that of politics and events in Europe to "hometown events, particularly those involving crime and sex" (Whetmore, 1982, pp. 38-39). The format was embraced by publishers who realized greater financial gain by directing their publishing efforts toward a growing population of newspaper readers in municipal areas. Actions of the Penny Press greatly disturbed the status quo because Penny Press publishers eschewed traditional thoughtprovoking discussion of important social and philosophical issues for stories which sold more papers-and brought about greater profits. With the Penny Press came the development of a different type of journalist--one who was no longer a dispationate observer reporting facts of record. Journalists of the late 1800s and early 1900s were much more likely to act as advocates reporting in the public interest. At this same time, a greater degree of social progressiveness came about in American society. This progressiveness resulted in part from technological advancements including development of the telephone and automobile, the extension of greater civil rights for women, and new, expanded labor laws and protections. The end of the Civil War contributed to change in America by allowing the nation to experience a heretofore unprecedented expansion in its physical size and population. The U.S. borders expanded westward with the opening of new states and territories while the population increased ten-fold between 1790 and 1860 (O'Dell, 1935). "The entire social order had to be remade," O'Dell observed. "The educational institutions, servants of the communities in which they were located, naturally were called upon by the people to assist in solving the many troublesome problems involved" (1935, p. 9). Although there were dozens of newspapers and other similar publications produced and distributed on college campuses by the mid-1800s, most were associated with literature groups, English clubs and societies. Often, as at Princeton in 1835, these publications contained mostly "college productions in prose and verse" with a smattering of news of current events (McClure, 1883, p. 63). None was associated with a journalism program, because no such program existed. The first call for establishment of formal journalism training within the academic environment came in 1869, when General Robert E. Lee, the newly-installed president of Washington College, wrote to his board of trustees asking for establishment of 50 scholarships for "young men intending to make practical printing and journalism their business in life" (O'Dell, 1935, p. 15). Lee saw a rehabilitory role for journalism education, in that it could help provide professional skills trailing for men of the impoverished South. Unfortunately, General Lee died shortly after making his proposal. The scholarships were never awarded, and the college abandoned plans for journalism curriculum in 1878. A similar, vocationally-oriented proposal calling for professional certification in journalism was proposed at Cornell University in about 1875. It, too, was abandoned a few years later, after the death of a financial backer. (Interestingly enough, the qualifications for earning the Cornell certificate would have included "knowledge of telegraphy"--something which perhaps indicated Cornell administrators' concerns about including journalism within an early mass communication framework.) Instruction in journalism at the college level finally took root at the University of Missouri in 1878, where independent courses were offered in association with literature, history and studies of politics. In 1908, Missouri's program became the first stand-alone Journalism School at the college level (Jeffrey, 1994), adopting the philosophy first espoused by Dr. Charles Eliot at Harvard, who saw journalism as first and foremost a business--and felt prospective journalists needed both editorial and management training. Close behind Missouri was Columbia University, where publisher Joseph Pulitzer awarded a $2 million endowment in 1903, with the aim of establishing a journalism school "making it possible for journalism to rise to the level of other professions, through the medium of formal education" (O'Dell, 1935, p. 65). After several lengthy delays, the Columbia School of Journalism opened in 1912. Other institutions, including Denver University, the University of Illinois, University of Michigan and others were soon to follow. Professional associations were formed--the American Association of Teachers of Journalism in 1912 and the American Association of Schools and Departments of Journalism in 1917. By 1934, 455 collegiate institutions in the U.S. offered journalism instruction (O'Dell, 1935). Although traditional print journalism education developed markedly in subsequent years, by the late 1950s a new force--that of education in communication studies--was impacting on journalism programs. As new technology expanded the size of the audience for various types of communication related to journalism, and as academic researchers began to delve more into studies of communication in social action, many academics within the discipline began looking to lead the field of journalism into new relationships. "The uniting of communication studies and journalism grew, in substantial part, out of a mix of bureaucratic expediency and a lack of understanding of journalism," Medsger writes (1996, p. 55), claiming that the absorption of traditional journalism education into the larger discipline of communication studies was politically and economically motivated. "The union did not result from an altruistic desire for new philosophical understandings and/or a new commitment to academic or professional excellence" (1996, p. 55). In 1995, college journalism education was well into its second century with at least 427 colleges and universities known to be offering some form of journalism degree--from small programs with just a few students in a journalism subject area, to the University of Iowa's massive Journalism School with an enrollment of almost 2,900 undergraduates (Kosicki & Becker, 1996). College journalism enrollments did grow strongly in the 1970s and '80s (JMC Education. . ., 1995; Cowdin, 1985) and continue to show growth in the '90s (Jeffrey, 1994). The field "remains largely devoted to undergraduate education" with an estimated 141,167 college students, 91 percent of whom are studying at the undergraduate level (Kosicki & Becker, 1996, p. 6). But, as in the early years when there were distinctly different perspectives on journalism education-Robert E. Lee's framing of journalism as a vocation; Joseph Pulitzer's framing of journalism as a profession with close academic ties; and Charles Eliot's framing of journalism as a business with editorial and management implications--there remain today great differences within academe as to what journalism education is, where it belongs, and how it should best prepare students for career realities. Variables which affect 'best fit' today The typical institution of higher education is a large and complicated organization with many layers of structure. Even the smallest community college can have dozens of administrators, managers, support staff and instructional personnel spread out in many different departments in one or more campus communities. A large researchoriented university can have tens of thousands of people in its employ, carrying out innumerable tasks either directly related to or indirectly supporting the educational mission. When attempting to assess how and why things work the way they do in such an organization--as Bohlman and Deal point out--"[a]lmost anything can affect anything else, and it is often difficult to know what happened, much less why (Bohlman & Deal, 1984, p. 11). For that reason, administrators and others who look for explanations of institutional behavior in higher education attempt to identify theoretical frameworks through which to establish cause-effect links. These frameworks help make sense of situational complexities (Bohlman & Deal, 1984), allow for explanation of shared patterns of behavior witnessed within the organization (Peterson & Spencer, 1991), and can guide research with the anticipation that the researchers' subjective predispositions are as far removed as possible from the conclusions reached (Stark, Lowther, Hagerty, & Orczyk, 1986). Frameworks have been created to identify educational organizations as administrative systems (Dill, 1991), as professional bureaucracies (Mintzberg, 1991), as distinct cultures (Masland, 1985) as rational, bottom-line oriented institutions (Chaffee, 1991), and as political systems (Deluga, 1988). Colleges and universities have been looked at as "cybernetic institutions" which provide direction through selfregulation of inherent processes (Birnbaum, 1988), and as collegial systems where "[w]ith deep emotional commitment, believers define themselves by their organizational affiliation, and in their bond to other believers they share an intense sense of the unique" (Clark, 1991, p. 51). The decision-makers who lead and manage higher education organizations have been characterized as rational individuals who "match marginal resources with preferred priorities" (Chafee, 1991, p. 264) or-particularly in the case of university presidents--as leaders who should act as symbolic visionaries and constructive mediators (Kerr, 1995). They have also been portrayed as somewhat hapless bystanders in an organizational process which operates at least in part through the "garbage-can decision making" strategy which allows "problems and solutions [to] become attached to choice opportunities" to facilitate change (Birnbaum, 1988, p. 162). Of course, different administrators approach issues differently, and the overall picture of a higher education institution can be as much a product of the administration, environment, policies and politics as it can be of the men and women who make decisions within the institution itself. That said, we return to the question at hand: What variables determine 'best fit' between a higher education institution and the orientation and administration of its journalism education program? The author's professional experience, coupled with an examination of the literature, allows for identification of at least four: Academic program and goals Much of what a colleges or university honors as its program and goals comes as a result of what it is--a public or private institution; a community college, regional four-year institution, research university, 'liberal arts' college, 'Ivy League' school, etc. The definition of what role the institution plays is frequently elaborated in the oft-cited but seldom understood rhetoric of the institutional mission statement. The mission statement serves in effect as a test of what organizational and educational inputs are anticipated and what outcomes will be expected. Of course, in many instances, collegiate mission statements are subject to a great deal of interpretation based on the organizational culture and norms. "The exact meaning of [mission statements] was always in the eye of the beholder," Medoff writes, noting that mission statements are, a best, "general enough to allow much interpolation and interpretation" (1994, p. 3). At worst, he writes, they are so nebulous as to be virtually worthless. A university may claim, for example, that it supports 'strong written and oral communication skills', but the mission statement claim is likely to make no reference to what academic programs will be responsible for imparting those skills, what exact skills will be transferred to students, how skills will be compared to one another, or how students' proficiency will be measured. The existence of a college press, and resulting potential for legal problems, may also directly or indirectly impact an educational institution's program and goals--and, thus, dictate whether a journalism program is housed within the institution, and what form that program might take. Cook's article on journalism administrative strategies (1989) points out that the college press is "intimidating or threatening" to many higher education administrators. Despite Cook's contentions that a free college press can "enhance the information process and exchange of ideas at the institution" (1989, p. 11), the fact remains that many colleges and universities have done away with journalism programs simply because administrators were unwilling to take the legal risks of running them and dealing with their student publications.