This is exactly right:
I can't tell you how many of my journalistic mentors have told me that the utility of reporting is that you can always find someone else who knows exactly what you need to know. This search for expertise-once-removed is fine, but considerably inadequate if you're not simultaneously developing your own, independent, expertise, with which you can evaluate the answers given by your sources. I was reminded of this by a recent post of Kevin Drum's on the lack of workable alternatives to objective reporting. "Who gets to decide whether an issue is still debatable?" He asked. "The reporter? But most reporters aren't subject matter experts."
That's true. They aren't. But there's no reason they shouldn't be. In her post, Kay worries about the future of journalism school. I hope that every journalism school in the country dies out, and that a J-School degree becomes worse than useless for this profession. It's time our newspapers began demanding expertise, rather than earnestness. If you want to be an economic reporter, you should have some training in economics. If you want to do health policy, you should have to demonstrate some fluency with the policy issues involved, and the relevant research. So far as I can tell, the problem in journalism is that there are far too many trained reporters, and far too few researchers, and experts in their subject matter. Kevin wants an alternative to objective reporting, and I'm willing to offer one: Expert reporting. Will it be perfect? No. But it will be better than what we have now, and far closer to the actual meaning of the word "objective," which is supposed to denote the dispassionate analysis of facts, not the innocence of babes.
BU, from what I've been told, has one of the best Comm Schools in the country. That's not quite the same thing as a pure "J School," I suppose, but its close enough to make a reliable comparison. And let me tell you... over the past 4 years, it has amazed me how little practical subject-matter training people over in Comm do. Every semester I end up with a few Comm school kids in my classes. (And, for the record, some of them have turned out to be the best students I've ever had the privilege to teach) During the first class of each semester I always ask them to introduce themselves and tell me a bit about why they are there. And inevitably, the kids from Comm always say something like the following: "I'm planning on becoming a political journalist, so I though I should learn a bit about politics first."
Now let me be clear, I don't blame them for this attitude. In fact I find it admirable that they've taken the initiative to learn more about the field they hope on day to cover. What bothers me is that unlike so many of their liberal arts peers, none of them have ever told me that they were there because it was required for their degree. Not one. And after reading what is actually required of them, I can understand why.
Here is how the Comm School describes the non-jounrlism requirements of the journalism degree:
At the end of the sophomore year, in consultation with an advisor, journalism majors select a liberal arts concentration in one of three areas: social sciences, humanities, or sciences. Students take five courses in the selected area, three of which must be in the same department. For example, a student with an interest in reporting urban affairs might choose a specialization in social science, and during the junior and senior years might take courses in political science, history, and economics.
5 classes. Somehow in 5 classes they are supposed to become budding experts in a complex field like "urban affiars." Call me crazy, but if they have already by their sophomore year declared that they want to pursue a career in a specific type of journalism, shouldn't they be required to take more than 5 courses on the subject? Out of 24 potential future courses, only 5 are to be in their future field of choice? How can that possibly make any sense?
Ezra is bang on with this. Journalists should be experts in their subject matter first, masters of writing second, and practitioners of journalism third. The current training process has it backwards. And that, I suspect, more than any other single factor helps explain the sorry state of journalism in America today.
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