last year. Penny Muse Abernathy, hired to
fill the Knight Chair in Journalism and
Digital Media Economics, came out of the
business side of The Wall Street Journal and
The New York Times. The school brought
in Ryan Thornburg ’ 97, formerly managing editor of USNews.com, to teach
online writing and thinking. Craig Carroll,
formerly of the University of Southern
California, brings his experience in international research in corporate reputation.
The school has sent some of its longtime faculty to training sessions at the
Poynter Institute and is pairing some veteran faculty with younger ones to
exchange expertise.
“Some of the older faculty aren’t as
familiar with the tools, but they’re very
curious about them,” Folkerts said.
The curriculum that debuts this fall
focuses more on function and less on
medium, recognizing that walls between
fields are crumbling. After they take three
required courses — in media law, media
ethics and news writing — students will
choose between the broader fields of journalism and advertising/PR. The new curriculum requires all students to take two
“immersion module” courses, covering
topics such as diversity, online communication, and the business side of the media,
including entrepreneurship.
“The conceptual courses enable students to explore the impact of media on
international communication, the strategies
of political communication, issues of
addressing diversity and using appropriate
language, and the role of media and business,” Folkerts said. “They can step back
and think about the role of media in society and its impact on democracy.”
Students will be required to complete
core courses in one of the two areas —
advertising/PR or journalism — and then
choose specializations.
The goal is to create flexibility to equip
graduates with the technological fluency
and entrepreneurial mindset to survive in
an industry that is redefining itself, in some
instances in panic mode.
Earlier in her career, as a reporter and
editor, Abernathy says, she “came to appre-
ciate that good journalism alone was not
going to be sufficient to save the nation’s
newspapers.”
Economists call this turbulence “creative
destruction,” and the key is to focus on the
“creative” part, Abernathy says. She is
teaching two courses: “Digital Media Economics and Behavior” is designed to
ground students in the business basics of
journalism;“Leadership in a Time of
Change” gives hands-on opportunities to
tackle real-life business problems.
“I’m not coming out with a new business model,” Abernathy said. “I’m training
students to go out into the world to be
entrepreneurs.”
The school has brought in faculty with
industry experience, launched a Center for
State-of-the-art then, now and future: The manual typewriter in Howell Hall in the early
1960s. At top, students learn to write stories
and design pages for newsprint in 2007 as the
world begins to use the same machinery to
read the newspaper.
The curriculum that debuts this fall focuses more on function and less on medium, recognizing that walls
between fields are crumbling.After they take three required courses — in media law, media ethics and news writing —
students will choose between the broader fields of journalism and advertising/PR.
