What are we teaching future journalists?

Yesterday we talked about enriching our customers’ experience.
Today we’ll talk about educating future newspaper people.
Seton Hall University invited me to teach for one reason only.
I was a working newspaper editor, not an academic.
I’m not opposed to academics but their job is difficult.
They are not out in the real world grappling with problems daily.
It's harder to see reality when you're far removed from it.
At our Atlanta summit, Kevin Slimp told a revealing story.
Kevin directs the Newspaper Technology Institute in Knoxville.
That probably qualifies him as an academic himself.
But Kevin is out in the real world working with newspaper people.
"Colleges bring me in to speak to their faculty," he said.
"I find they have little idea of the real world."
They think newspapers and TV should hire differently.
They say we should hire reporters, photographers and editors.
Not graduates who can report, photograph and edit.
They don’t want to train students with multiple skills.
They think we should hire four graduates instead of one.
One young professor saw the fallacy in this. He said:
"There’s only one problem. We don’t own the newspapers."
What can we do about this? Several things come to mind.
Why not offer internships to give students real world experience?
Why not offer faculty internships as a reality refresher course?
Why not volunteer to teach a course or be a guest speaker?
Lets not write off the academics. Lets help them do a better job.
Next week we’ll talk about what you would do as king of the world.
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