The face of journalism is changing, say students and faculty in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's College of Journalism and Mass Communications.
As a result, students in the college will find themselves dabbling in some new media this fall.
In the past, the college was divided into three sequences: advertising, news-editorial and broadcasting. Dean Will Norton Jr. described these sequences as "academic departments lacking a head."
This arrangement seemed to work until about two years ago, when faculty began hearing reports from students fresh from summer jobs and internships.
Katie Nieland, a 2007 news-editorial graduate of the college, had summer internships in Grand Island and Butte, Mont. Before the internships, she said, she had been more comfortable with writing news stories.
"But in both (internships), I had vastly different duties," she said. Among them were anchoring a Web broadcast, going on location to shoot live footage and designing charts and diagrams.
"It was like I was a reporter, but halfway a graphic artist, too," Nieland said.
Students who had previously shunned courses outside their specialty were now specifically asking for them.
In order to meet these changing demands, faculty voted this summer to merge two of the college's sequences - news-editorial and broadcasting - into one simply titled journalism.
The individual majors will remain, but students from these formerly separate sequences can now expect to see much more of each other.
Faculty said the change will facilitate communication between professors so that students have access to the courses they need.
"When we had two sequences, to try and talk about changing anything in a class, it was, 'Well, you want me to put some of your stuff in my class,'" said Tim Anderson, an associate news-editorial professor. "Now we're all in one sequence, and that seems to have disappeared. We're all in this together."
According to Norton, this change has been long coming, one he has pushed for since his arrival in the early 1990s.
"When I first proposed the idea, alumni didn't understand," he said. "A faculty member here wrote to alumni saying, 'The new dean is trying to ruin this college.'
"I wanted us to be ahead of everybody," Norton continued. "But because he did that I said, 'I won't bring it up again.' It's something we waited too long to do. As a result, we're not as far ahead of the curve as we should be."
This kind of change is nothing new. Anderson, who is head of the new combined sequence, remembers students being trained in wire services and in using the radio as a primary way of providing breaking news. Now, much of that has changed.
Blogging is another medium being taught now in classes that may die out in a couple years, Norton said.
In the end, both professors stress that students must still learn the basics. Technology and computer programs will change, but what won't change are the principles of how to report, advertise or broadcast.
"We believe that somebody will have to report on things," Anderson said. "Somebody will have to communicate that to the public. And that's what we're going to try to teach."
renaeblum@dailynebraskan.com
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