U.C. Berkeley Journalism Dean Search

DRAFT:

Dean: Graduate School of Journalism: University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley, invites nominations and applications for the position of Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism. The appointment is effective July 1, 2007.

The School offers a master’s degree program that prepares students for the highest levels of journalism. The School’s purpose is to educate professionals to work in areas ranging from newspapers, magazines, and television to documentary film, radio, photography, and new media.

The dean provides academic, intellectual, professional, and executive leadership; maintains a collegial environment conducive to excellence in teaching, research and journalistic integrity; and takes a leadership role in raising funds and promoting relationships with alumni and the profession.

Applicants for this position should demonstrate an accomplished journalistic record consistent with a position in a news organization of recognized excellence. Top candidates will have a record of demonstrated leadership and administrative skills. Teaching experience is desirable but not required. The Dean may hold a professorship in the Graduate School of Journalism.

Nominations or applications will be given prompt consideration if received by December 31, 2006, but earlier submissions are strongly encouraged.

Applications should contain a letter of interest, detailed resume, and the names of at least three professional references. Nominations should include complete contact information, through either print or electronic means. Nominations or applications should be sent to:

Chair, Journalism Search Committee
University of California, Berkeley
109 California Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720-1500

Electronic submissions are encouraged and should be sent to: journalismdeansearch@berkeley.edu

This is a sensitive position and subject to a criminal background check.

As a member of this search committee, I find myself at sea. Here is one question, addressed to all journalists:

What skills would you think you needed to learn immediately if you were starting in journalism right now?

Here's a second question, addressed to everybody:

What does a good Graduate School of Journalism look like early in the 21st century?

Here's a third, Berkeley-specific question:

Berkeley has no fewer than four bureaucratic organizations that seem to be headed for the same place or at least overlapping places:

UC Berkeley School of Information.
UC Berkeley School of Journalism.
UC Berkeley Center for New Media.
UC Berkeley Mass Communications Major.

Should all four of these be merged? Should we search for a Journalism School dean who could--if things develop in such a way--be dean of such a merged enterprise?

Opinions of all kinds welcome...

Comments

[Cranky Observer]

I am about 87,000 miles away from academic J-school, but as a news consumer and newspaper addict since the age of 8 (ouch) the key questions that come into my mind are:
(1) how many more years will newspapers last in their current form?
(2) given the answer to 1, the news business appears to be spitting into a very tiny news-gathering elite at one end and a medium-sized, but shrinking, pool of news-o-tainment participants at the other. Agree/disagree? How will this affect our program and/or its graduates?
(3) It appears to this long-time traditional news consumer that the traditional media still don't see the Internet on the horzion. They simply don't. [1] It is always possible that the Internet, blogs, and interactive news sites could fade like CB radio, but at this point it seems unlikely. Why does traditional media have this blind spot? It is age-related? Learned inability to learn? Can this willful blindness be sustained (as has happened in some industries during times of turmoil), and if so for how long? Is there any possible reconciliation between the Internet and traditional news organs?

I realize you weren't asking for interview questions, but when hiring I often write the key questions as I am developing the job description. So I thought I would put these down.

Good luck BTW. I have to think that hiring a Dean for a major university academic postiion is a grueling process for everyone involved. And no one will be your friend at the end.

Cranky

[1] The story of what happened when the founders of Slashdot, one of the world's most successful web sites, offered to help their local newspaper develop an Internet strategy is instructive IMHO.

[Ben V-L]

I don't see why you should bother with a search. Michael Savage is obviously the only person qualified for this position.

[Kate G]

Why isn't your first question:

"what is "balance" in journalism and why does it seem to require massive brain trauma in its practitioners?"

Kate G.

[Knut Wicksell]

Lots of luck. If you weren't more valuable as an economist historian, it would make sense to nominate yourself, like Dick Cheney did. Your passtime journalism beats most of what we see out there, which we have to assume is a product of 'schools' of journalism. A good B.A. ought to be enough. The rest is like what they teach in Faculties of Education.

[Jon Fernquest]

Since most of the problems professor DeLong finds daily with journalism stem from an **inability to find, use and interpret sources competently**, the disciplines of history, economics, and political science seem as relevant as Information Science, New Media, or Mass Communications.

I'd say someone like **George Packer**, author of Assasin's Gate, with work in the liberal traditions of the humanities would be the one for the job.

Information science technologies like Wikipedia's software are only as good as the writing/scholarship that gets put into them, but some really good writing does get put into them. I would revise:

"What skills would you think you needed to learn immediately if you were starting in journalism right now?"

To:

"What skills do you think you would need if you graduated, got a job in traditional journalism, then **lost it** fairly quickly (and inevitably), and **had to reinvent yourself** to find another job?

[WY Huang]

I am not familiar with all the detail of Information School of UCB at it's current form. Isn't it the former library and information science program, renamed to School of Information Management & System, then renamed again?

Had they changed that program so much that it now overlap Journalism school?! Other librarians I know have very different views on that program since they decided to give up their ALA accreditation. It's great they wanted to explore new field of information science beyond the traditional librarianship. But it sounds like they are still strugging to find a new niche.

[dsquared]

1. Given that almost every American journalist working on a major newspaper has been to a Graduate School of Journalism and passed with flying colours, and look at them, what is fundamentally broken about journalism education?

2. Related to the previous question, do American newspapers absolutely *have* to be so bloody, bloody boring?

[christofay]

U C B is the school that gave a seat to that torture is Kool John Yoo, right? So what sort of standards does the school have besides hiring a "name"?

Otherwise forget the credentials and go straight for Billmon, he's one person setting high standards. And maybe hire the person that posts as Tainte Aime as she certainly can write and exposes what the Chinese communists used to call the contradictions in contemporary society.

Thirdly getting fired from a "name" news outlet like the AP or TNR seems to indicate that the person does the job too well.

[John Emerson]

The School of Information looks like Library Science, so don't merge it. However, there definitely should be a required course on how to use library and internet research tools.

[sero]

Will 21st century elite journalism schools do more than produce teachers of journalism for lesser institutions?

[Jon Fernquest]

There are people doing work in the school of information sciences that is very applicable to reading and understanding the news. The sort of value added linguistic features that will probably be added to news aggregators in the near future. The one scholar who shares almost all her/his? extrememly relevant research:

http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/~hearst/

[David Lloyd-Jones]

As with the multiculturalsm post you advertised a few days ago, this job should obviously go to somebody ready to abolish the job.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

Naturally one is reminded of the university president who wrote to his neighbouring school, "For our coming anniversary celebration please send a representative of your institution. Nothing lower than a dean, and please send a wit."

The reply: "There is nothing lower than a dean, and I am sending two."

[paul lukasiak]

The third question is pretty stupid, insofar as its not within the Dean of the School of Journalism to make that decision --- and every applicant will feel the same way, i.e. "Its a great idea, as long as I'm in charge. Its a lousy idea if Journalism becomes subordinate to a larger 'information' bureaucracy."

The Berkeley Lord High Mucky-Mucks need to decide first if integrating the four areas is a good idea, and if they do then determine how they want it done, and hire a Journalism Dean who can fulfill his role under the new plan.

[Cranky Observer]

To boil down my windy rant: What, if any, is the future the endeavour that became known as "journalism" after Watergate/W&B? Please don't gloss over the 'if any' option.

Cranky

[Barry]

I'd say that the School of Information should stay separate, for the obvious reas that that's the only one of the four where truth is likely to be respected. As for the rest, merge them into a 'School of Entertainment, Media and Journalism', since they deserve each other.

As has been pointed out above, and by many, many others, much of the best reporting on this administration has been done by non-journalists. Of those who are journalists, it'd be columnists (Herbert, Ivins, etc) who have shown up the alleged non-fiction writers.

[Andre Mayer]

A j-school ought to be, at its core, a professional program, focusing on the professional responsibilities of journalists toward their readers, their sources, the public interest, their employers, etc. These are, of course, hard issues even for practitioners who know how to get a story and write it (e.g., Judith Miller). Additionally, a journalist should be able to find things out (including, today, online research) and to write/deliver the story; and should have some degree of subject-area knowledge.

The professional aspect requires, I think, an independent program, which would presumably also address the technical skills in ways slightly different from those of other programs; content, to the extent that it is part of the program, might come by involving resources from beyond the j-school.

The j-school and school of information have differing, even divergent orientations on the professional side. The other two seem to me to be interdisciplinary programs where that approach is appropriate. Journalism should be part of them, but a merger would be self-defeating -- unless, perhaps, there was to be a center for journalism and new media.

[Common Sense]

I'm with Kate. Brad should pull a Cheney and nominate himself. Nobody's got a better track record for on-target criticism of journalism today. I'm serious. You'd be a great Dean, and you don't even have to move.

[JT]

Mine is an old-fashioned suggestion: forget who wins or loses the medium battles and take the long view in collecting thinkers schooled in the science and ethics of discovering truth in conversation (e.g., Aristotelian rhetoric and Sprachethik). The search should begin with the question: Who are journalism's Dierdre McCloskeys and Richard Lanhams to point the way to more effective means and manners of convincing and who would be best dean to collect them? Bumptiousness has always been an American virtue, but has it ever been so unproductive? Journalistic self-awareness is a major contributor to the problem. Take for eggregious example, the "balancing" of whomever can be found against 900 peer-reviewed studies demonstrating the fact of human-induced global warming. Bunkum! Clearly, a curriculum in uncovering small-t truth in self-aware rhetoric is desperately needed.

[Cranky Observer]

> Mine is an old-fashioned suggestion: forget
> who wins or loses the medium battles and
> take the long view in collecting thinkers
> schooled in the science and ethics of
> discovering truth in conversation (e.g.,
> Aristotelian rhetoric and Sprachethik). The
> search should begin with the question: Who
> are journalism's Dierdre McCloskeys and
> Richard Lanhams to point the way to more
> effective means and manners of convincing
> and who would be best dean to collect them?

Hmmm. Interesting point/question, similar to the one faced by many Engineering schools. But most professional schools within universities are funded by donations from successful alumni. If question of whether or not there will be any future successful alumni is not on the table, the Dean is going to need a _big_ grant to set up a permanant trust fund large enough to keep the school going for 30-50 years on its own.

Cranky

[WY Huang]

After thinking this issue overnight, here is how I see the difference between graduates of Library school/School of Information and Journalism school:

Both professions are focus on fulfilling the information needs of their user bases. However, as a law librarian, I handle people's information needs mostly in a reactive-basis. I anticipate my patrons information needs base on histoical usages, trends, etc. I then do my collection development, catalog them, produce finding aides, etc. But if people don't ask questions, our reference service will not answer them.

Now, there are exceptions. Many law firms librarians are in charge of providing current awareness service to their attorneys. They also updates their attorneys on new information resources and new search functions. Many of them are also in charge of helping attorneys meet their MCLE requirements. But again, mostly reactive and focus on a narrow user population. I.e., I knew of law firm librarians started programs to train their summer associates on efficient Wexis search query because free access through school encouraged them to be wasteful searchers.

My friend at Congressional Research Service (used to be called Legislative Reference Service) of Library of Congress told me that they are not allowed to start new research projects without request from members of congress.

By contrast, I expect journalists to be more proactive in meeting their readers/listeners/viewers information need. Some of the best journalism works are those that answer questions before people ask them.

With new distribution technologies, I can see the line blur some what. I used to blog on my library website, reviewing new legal titles on California laws, remind people of major changes in court rules, etc. The logs told me that many readers were national or even international. As my library is funded at county level, that realization was pretty supprising. But while I engaged in what we librarians called "meta-publishing," I don't consider that journalism by a long shot.

Looking at UC B School of Information's placement survey, many of their graduates are in Human-Computer interface, Document engineering, Information Architecture, etc. To me, those are just newer, sexier way to describe traditional librarianship in private sector with an IT focus.

http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/files/iSchoolCareerPlacementSurvey2005.pdf

If they have to merge that program with someone else, I think School of Business or even School of Engineering are better choices.

[sm]

If Brad does better than many journalists, it's because he doesn't have to care what the owners or advertisers think.

He might have a lot less independence as dean.

[joe]

Obviously, we at the School of Information (formerly SIMS) have branding or outreach difficulties if we're seen to be naturally part of that list.

We have students that use game theory to study network innovation. I study policy mechanisms for enhancing transparency in digital government (specifically, e-voting). We have ethnographers, information retrieval experts, social network analysis experts, computer sciencey types, pseudo-lawyers, development researchers and policy researchers... that's not including people who do work that isn't easily described as a discipline or field (as we all tend to have a multidisciplinary perspective).

I don't think Journalism is that broad (I'd love to get more insight, though). The Center for New Media is not a brick-and-mortar unit, I believe, but a named and resourced center where faculty sit in other departments.

[Urinated State of America]

For Dean of the School: How about giving the job to Mark Danner?

"UC Berkeley School of Information."

Isn't the School of Information the ex-Library Science school, which by changing the name of the major managed to approximately double the starting salaries of its grads?

[Just a yob journalist]

Ah, finally, something on this blog that I can talk of as an expert!

As a practicing journalist and as a j-school grad, let me reveal the great secret of journalism education.

It's crap. Pure utter crap.

One reason for that crappiness is that j-schools want to think of themselves as law schools or business schools. They're not.

Unlike professors at those other schools, j-school instructors have little in the way of facts, theories and formulae to pass on. But they hate to admit it.

To keep up the pretence of being a professional faculty, most j-schools persist in pouring media theory, ethics and law down the throats of their students before the poor dears are equpped to digest it. The schools try to turn what has always been an amateur's profession into a science. The result is nearly always mediocre grads with a baggy collection of half-understood ideas about the media and society, but little ability to write or think.

The ideal j school would see itself as what it is---a craft school, like the Iowa Writer's Workshop or Julliard. It would wed practice and instruction so that students have a chance to get out and do journalism, while simultaneously receiving feedback.

All of this is dead simple to do since most of the "technical" skills a journalist needs can be learned, if not mastered, by any intelligent person in a few weeks.

Print journalists, for instance, have to learn how to write a lede (note the tricky spelling of lede: that's what a j-school education does for you!), how to structure a piece and how to conduct an interview. But believe me: it's simple stuff and can be better learned on the job than in the classroom.

Similarly, radio and TV journalists have to learn how to write for broadcast (short sentences, active verbs) and Internet journalists have to master some tricks of web organization. But again, it's all relatively simple stuff that could be learned in a few months as a working stiff rather than a couple of (very expensive) years on a picturesque campus.

What makes a good journalist is an active mind, a passion for language and—as a former boss of mine liked to say—a certain rat-like cunning. Since all of those qualities are inherent rather than learned, here's my proposal for a truly useful journalism education:

1) Only accept applicants who already have at least an undergraduate minor related to what they want to cover. Discourage applicants by revealing the horrible salaries earned by most journalists.

2) If a few of the beggars persist, throw 'em in the deep end by forcing 'em to work full time at putting out a newspaper every day for three months under the distant but kindly eyes of a few instructors. Followed by three months of putting out a three-times-a-day TV broadcast. Then three months of constantly updating a web site.

3) Base a large part of their mark on real audience numbers: number of newspapers sold, number of TV viewers, number of unique visitors to the site. They might as well get used to being judged that way from the start.

4) Once a week, bring in a panel of critics to tear apart whatever the students have done. Brad could show them the holes in their economic coverage; a couple of politicos of opposing ideologies could vent their spleen--or shower their praises---upon the political coverage; and so on. Of course, you should include a couple of people whose activities have been covered by the students. There's nothing like being told by your subjects exactly what you got wrong.

5) Periodically fire students who aren't cutting it. The world needs fewer journalists, not more.

6) After the nine months of intensive doing, treat the students to a final three months of intensive thinking about what they've experienced. At this point, they have the practical grounding to understand moral and legal issues and (maybe) the applicability of some media theory. They'll also be avid to learn how they can do things better, find information more efficiently, etc.

7) Finally, graduate your faculty nearly as frequently as you graduate your students. No journalistic professor should ever be given tenure or allowed to stay for more than five years. Teaching should be a stop in a journalistic career, not a destination. Trust me on that point.

[John Emerson]

I really think that Brad's new interest in journalism is a great thing. Some people above are so cynical that they seem tothink that journalism is by definition worthless, but it doesn't have to be that way, and journalism fills a needed function (whether well or badly)..

Channeling smarter people into journalism and training them better would be a good thing. But as I keep saying, you really need new media organizations, or at least new management of the present media.

[AF]

"What skills would you think you needed to learn immediately if you were starting in journalism right now?"

Just to round out a blogger's skill set, I would first send them out to report a story without using the Internet, other than to look up phone numbers and such. Experiential reporting as boot camp.

"What does a good Graduate School of Journalism look like early in the 21st century?"

One simultaneously strives for three things, ok four:
1) equip students with a knowledge of history to provide context in their stories
2) churn out graduates who deliver news of the utmost quality, even as defined in the traditional sense
3) research the cutting edge of information delivery, study what readers of all levels read and what they retain, what catches their eye that they were not looking for
4) persuade and assist primary, middle, and high schools in the area to mandate media literacy courses as required curriculum

[ogmb]

It's UC Berkeley, Dr. DeLong, not U.C. Berkeley. It's also not UCB, Mr. Huang, it's Cal or Berkeley.

[jjb2]

You wouldn't hire a Dean of the Business School without asking a question or two about globalization, so why the narrow focus
for the J-school? How about...

Clashes of civilizations and values systems may define our era -- Islamic vs. Western, Tribal and Ethnic vs. Nation State, Red State vs. Blue State. How should the J-school address this in designing its programs?

or, this could be a follow-up to a more generic "How should the J-school respond to globalization?"

Good Luck.

[Corvid]

Hmmm. Lots of interesting thoughts here. I like the idea about hiring Mark Danner, as well as Brad recommending himself for the job. An intelligent, thoughtful reader of newspapers (broadcast media aren't worth mentioning) would actually be a much better choice than someone who has been in the profession. And I say that as someone who has 30 years' experience on newspapers and wire services.
However, if experience is required, I'd strongly advise aiming for someone with extensive reporting background but no experience in management, which is where journos tend to begin to lose their souls. Finally, I'd recommend someone who has a very critical take on the commercial demands of the profession, which are usually in conflict with the actual practice of good journalism. This is highly important, as we see even now in the newspaper business that there is precious little professional resistance to the recent job slashing and disinvestment in the product, all in spite of the industry's enormous profit margins. Where's the integrity? Where's the pride in the profession? Maybe that needs to be instilled during j-school.

[Cranky Observer]

j.a.y.j,
There is the fundamental question of whether people who will do what it takes from age 15-20 to get admitted to any school at UC Berkeley are the personality type who can be successful in reality-based reporting (as opposed to journalism). The old "_Front Page_ vs. J-school" argument. But if you are recruiting for a J-school dean it is most likely that you have agreed to politely ignore that question.

Really, a six-month technical writing class at the community college level followed by 2 years of working for a local paper making the rounds of police stations, city council meeting, neighborhood organization meetings, and then actually learning about the details of the issues involved would be the best possible training for real journalism. Along with some hard-headed, practically-oriented classes in the nitty-gritty (not the theory) of statistics, science, and engineering.

But again the decision has already been made on a whole different plane of existence to Brad's to create j-schools ;-)

Cranky

[The Editors]

I nominate Bob Somerby.

[Matt]

Dean Search sounds like a good candidate, why not hire him?

[shander]

Why is the Buisness School seperated from the School of Leters and Sciences / school of social sciences where economics resides? Why are mathmeatics and statistics are in Letters, and even biology schools / departemnts in schools under the college of letters and sciences? Most writing and languages are in the the college of letters and sciences, Arts and humanities, where English, Rhetoric, Philopshy, Art history, Art Practice, Music, French reside.

Seems to me that commenters above raise good issues on the notion that Professional programs tend to be seperated from academci pursuits.

Seems like the study of Media and commucications is more a social science, the craft of writing, or video, etc more a Arts and humantiy department, but the Inormation school teaching rigors of organization and systems of service to end users stands alone more like Engineeering is apart from Math and Physics which are maters of knowledge more than aplication.

Why Mass com and "new media" need to be seperated isn't clear. It almost seems to me to be proof in itself of inneficiencies of the tenure and beuracratic social functions of a university system. It looks like a end run by social scientists and techology lovers to respond to an area that Mass Comm needed to be rapidly expanding into. Archeology and Geolgy with thier USE of picks and use of mass spectrometers are still social scientists.

Probably if the decision is to keep a professional school of journalism, the hiring of the dean would be the place to commit to making it an applied program that turns out people who can be extradinary at Seizing upon questions that a community should be askinging itself, able at gathering information with little error or ommission, able at taking such information and putting it in a relevant and easy to comprhend form geared to the particular autdience or medium in which such story will be conveyed and likely all three (present same story in 50 words, 200 words, as script for a 30 second news piece, a 5 minute news piece, adjust the print piece text/by lines as necessary to maximize RSS type blog feeds, list html links that would be included in the text piece)

I would think medical schools might be as good or better a model as Law or B schools. All have large elements of academic context on which courses in specific industry/field knowlege must be laid a top of. But it seems to me that the "lab" and "practice" in a medical school could be more easily applied to journalism school than the briefs and moot courts, or buisness proposasl done in B schools. If the J school is about the theory of communications and its historical human repercussion, instead of the traininge and enabling of professionals who will be most able in the field, then merge it into the social science department.