Over the summer, I often talked with my friends back home about my job editing Bearings. They all had the same question: “How in the world did you, a political science major, beat out all of the journalism majors for the job?”
So I had to explain that WU has no journalism school, no journalism major, no communications department. Most of them were surprised that a “smart school” like WU didn’t offer these. We have many esoteric majors and minors-linguistics, PNP, American culture studies, and so on. Yet we lack this common and useful major. Starting a J-School at WU would benefit the students and the university alike.
One of the best bumper stickers I’ve ever seen is “If you really want to be a winner, go pick a fight with a 4 year-old.” With the current “rankings are God” mentality of our university, entering the relatively uncompetitive field of journalism would be extremely beneficial and fairly easy. Every university competes to have great programs for pre-med, business, and engineering, but year after year, journalism remains outside the foray, with universities such as University of Missouri-Columbia ranked in the top five. “If you do something, do it well.” With few universities concentrating their resources on journalism, we could become major competitors within a short period.
Is this really feasible? A journalism school requires few resources, compared to other disciplines. There are no expensive laboratories to build, it takes very little building space, and we already have solid faculty in the English department that could assist with the creation of the new department. Students would have more than enough co-op and internship opportunities, with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Riverfront Times, KMOX, and the numerous smaller papers just across the river in Illinois (not to mention the normal assortment of TV/radio stations in all major cities.) Finding and hiring the faculty would probably be the biggest hurdle.
So why should you, Joe Pre-Med, care if we have a journalism school? A J-School would help this campus in a variety of ways. All of the print publications on campus would be enhanced and new ones would be started, because journalism students would be eager to build up their portfolios. And it wouldn’t stop with the print media-J-Schools offer broadcast journalism as well. WUTV and KWUR would improve too, and students that became involved with them would have a place to go if they fell in love with what they were doing. Students training for careers in journalism would be able to devote much more time to producing the publications, radio shows, and TV shows. Overall, we would see better writing in the papers and more original programming from WUTV and KWUR.
So, this editorial might not be a controversial, McKenzie-esque piece on some hot-button issue, but it highlights an important opportunity for the university. With colleges getting more competitive each year, it’s hard to find an untapped market to specialize in. By building a J-School, the Chancellor gets his rankings, frustrated StudLifers can major in journalism, and the students get a better campus media overall. And finally, St. Louis, the city of Joseph Pulitzer himself, would have a journalism school.