{"id":1720,"date":"2009-11-01T22:14:38","date_gmt":"2009-11-02T03:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/000af36.netsolhost.com\/wordpress1\/2009\/11\/01\/if-this-is-what-j-students-learnwere-doomed\/"},"modified":"2009-11-01T22:14:38","modified_gmt":"2009-11-02T03:14:38","slug":"if-this-is-what-j-students-learnwere-doomed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2009\/11\/01\/if-this-is-what-j-students-learnwere-doomed\/","title":{"rendered":"If This is What J-Students Learn…We’re Doomed"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not longer the five W\u2019s \u2013 who, what, when, where and why \u2013 but the three C\u2019s \u2013 celebrity, currency and conflict \u2013 that they teach in journalism school, according to a writer of a letter to The Washington Post Saturday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The writer comes to the right conclusion regarding the Foreign Service officer who resigned due to his objections to the Afghan war.  But the student\u2019s reason is that the story doesn\u2019t have currency.<\/p>\n

What is disturbing is the lesson he\u2019s learning in journalism school — that to be a story, there must be celebrity, currency and conflict.  <\/p>\n

That\u2019s precisely what\u2019s wrong with journalism.  Celebrity only counts if you\u2019re working for People <\/em>magazine or MTV.  Currency is probably fair; after all we\u2019re not writing history in the morning paper, except maybe the first draft.<\/p>\n

But the focus on conflict is what is taking journalism down.  Newspapers are dying for several reason.  But journalists can\u2019t blame it all on the internet.  Unfortunately, they are taking their cues from the internet, especially rabid partisan bloggers and cable shoutfests.  By doing so, they are leaving readers without the information they need to make informed decisions.  False conflict, i.e., death panels and whether we go all one way or the other in Afghanistan, is crowding out information readers want.   That is one of the reasons they\u2019re losing readers; they\u2019re not any different from what people can get online.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, that’s not always the case, but if they\u2019re teaching the three C\u2019s in J-schools, it will only get worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s not longer the five W\u2019s \u2013 who, what, when, where and why \u2013 but the three C\u2019s \u2013 celebrity, currency and conflict \u2013 that they teach in journalism school, according to a writer of a letter to The Washington Post Saturday. The writer comes to the right conclusion regarding the Foreign Service officer who… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[201],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}