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Vartan Gregorian, page 3
The value of a good liberal arts education, moreover, is its ability to enhance a journalist's powers of rational analysis, intellectual precision, independent judgment and mental adaptability — a characteristic sorely needed, especially now in an era of rapid change. A liberal education also will help journalism students to become familiar with the best our culture has taught, said and done — as well as the dead ends and aberrations that clutter our history. It may help young journalists to know and understand the sweep of our culture, the complex nature of our society, the achievements, the problems, the solutions and the failures that mark our history.
I also believe that a liberal education would enable journalists to integrate learning and provide balance in a world where dependence on experts of every kind is increasingly more common. With that trend comes an even greater temptation to abdicate judgment in favor of expert opinion — or be hopelessly lost amid conflicting expert opinions. Unless we help our journalism students acquire their own identities, they will end up not just dependent on experts but may end up at the mercy of experts — or worse, at the mercy of charlatans posing as experts.
A one-day dialogue between educators and business leaders falls far short of answering the large questions facing the profession, but the tensions that grip an industry in the midst of change, diminishing profits and complicated demands were apparent in the conversations that filled the day. I believe raising the kinds of serious questions about the news business that surfaced in this forum is critical even though no specific conclusions were reached, if for no other reason than those who are shaping the next generation of America's journalists must not exist in a vacuum but always be aware of the real-world needs and demands of those who will employ their graduates. Educators in America's schools of journalism and communications produce the men and women making the decisions about what America reads and watches. They shape those who determine what is news and what is not. And because these same educators also judge and award the national prizes that validate the work of the news industry, the educators must also ask critical questions that challenge and provoke the profession out of its status quo. Publishers and broadcasters, also, must be involved in this process, not remain aloof from it, because journalism is not a business alone, it is a public trust…
Journalists have served our nation well. So have many courageous publishers who put the national interest above their own parochial interests. Today, it is apparent that journalism is straining under increasing corporate, educational and socio-economic pressures. Equally apparent, it is in our democracy's interest to confront these challenges and help solve as many as we can. Journalists, after all, are America's eyes and ears and often the voice of its conscience. As Arthur Miller once wrote, "A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself."
Vartan Gregorian is president of the Carnegie Corporation. He previously served as president of Brown University and, earlier, as president of the New York Public Library and provost of the University of Pennsylvania. As a young man, he was a contributing journalist to major Armenian newspapers in Iran, where he grew up. This essay appeared as the introduction to The Business of News: A Challenge for Journalism's Next Generation, written by Cynthia Gorney and published by Carnegie. Gregorian's essay is used by permission.
The full report, summarizing a conference among
key players in journalism and journalism education, is available here.
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