In her recent Salon piece, “Advice from a J-school dropout,” Lea Aschkenas has a point. Journalism schools are not for everyone — evidently, at least, not for her. Indeed, whether I myself was cut out for a journalism school was also a question I wrestled with before becoming dean at the University of California at Berkeley two years ago. I had not gone to journalism school and yet still managed to make my way. Of course, there are a great variety of journalism schools. But much of what I knew of their mélange of mass communications, advertising, public relations and journalism had not always impressed me as creating the optimal environment for some smart, energetic and able person who wanted to become a first-rate journalist, especially someone not attracted to newspaper reporting. So what am I doing here at Berkeley?
Read more…Justifying J-school