A Curriculum Insurgency: Transforming J School

How might we optimize the J School curriculum committee to produce the kind of ongoing innovation the digital age demands of journalism and J Schools?

That’s the question we posed at the beginning of Transforming J School, a workshop Jumpline hosted earlier this month alongside AEJMC’s convention in Toronto.

We brought together some of the smartest journalism educators for a 90-minute design workshop because we think the J School curriculum design process is broken. The worst J School curriculum committees are faculty-only echo chambers, where faculty interests dominate, drowning out fresh ideas or the day-to-day realities of digital journalism. An ongoing and major overhaul is often needed, but these committees typically meet infrequently and make minor curricular adjustments.

We wanted participants to consider the common things that thwart change and innovation on their J School curriculum committees. Participants initially came up with typical higher education roadblocks like scarce resources, time and bureaucracy, but the group quickly zeroed-in on one major problem area: the committee make-up.

Participants identified “stubborn”, “grumpy”, unwilling and even fearful committee members who erect barriers to innovation. This can lead to turf battles and competing agendas that can turn the process into what one participant called the curriculum “Hunger Games” — hardly the right setup for innovation.

We pushed participants to consider another important question: Whose voices are missing from faculty-run curriculum committees? Where are fresh and relevant ideas from journalists, newsroom hiring managers, technologists, community members, recent alumni and even current students? How would J School curricula be different if those voices were represented at the design table?

After all, who does the J School curriculum exist to serve? The answer differs from school to school, of course, but the Toronto group identified these key stakeholders: ambitious journalism students, students uncertain about journalism as a future career, existing newsrooms and transformed newsrooms of the future.

With this in mind, the group engaged in a brainstorming sprint around the following prompt: How might we open the curriculum design process to new voices and perspectives? These key ideas emerged.

• J School-Newsroom Dialogue: Many participants agreed that news organizations and J Schools must find ways to collaborate more effectively. Working with newsroom leaders will help J Schools design curricula that reflect the day-to-day realities. But we shouldn’t forget that news organizations face existential threats and need J Schools “now more than ever,” as one participant pointed out. J Schools are uniquely equipped to help newsrooms tackle some of their greatest challenges. Instead of thinking of this as a one-way flow of ideas, we need a mutually beneficial dialogue. We’re in this together.
• Proactive not Reactive: J School curricula must stop coping with change by cautiously reacting to shifts in the media landscape. Instead, it’s time to use the curriculum to play a leadership role, as one participant put it. If J Schools begin to take some calculated curricular risks, we position ourselves to help drive the next waves of change.
• Transparency in Curricular Design: Perhaps it’s time for J Schools to tone down the bravado and acknowledge we don’t have all the answers. No one does. Building a journalism curriculum for an unknown digital future is a messy process. Sometimes J Schools will make the right choices, and sometimes we won’t. Being transparent about this process will help keep stakeholders engaged no matter what.

This is just the beginning of the curriculum insurgency. At Jumpline, we plan to keep working with J Schools and other partners to build on these initial ideas. The goal is to develop a design approach and a set of tools that will support curricular innovation and ultimately drive the transformation of journalism education.

If this is something that you and your organization want to be part of please reach out: andrew@jumplinejournalism.com and amy@jumplinejournalism.com

We need your input to help shape this. Please join us!

Special thanks to Reuters, which hosted the Transforming J School workshop at the Canadian headquarters of Thomson Reuters in Toronto.