Searchlights and Sunglasses Chapter 2: Guided Reading Questions

1) Journalism and mass communication education matter because students that are well-prepared in that regard are able to adapt to an ever-changing digital world, and, statistically speaking, 9 of every 10 entry-level newsroom hires are graduates of journalism and mass communication programs. 2) It does make a difference whether a community is informed by a professional journalist, a student journalist, or a citizen journalist because the level of understanding greatly varies as well as the levels of skill and ability to pass on news correctly. The professionals have the deepest understanding due to the significant percentage of their life spent studying, but then again, the students - so long as journalism education changes with the times - may be more up to date on how to inform their communities. 3) I agree with the author that journalism education must modernize, for the traditional newspaper will no longer cut it. Journalism needs to change with the times so that people may remain informed of the truth. If it does not modernize, then the news will be spread partly by the uninformed as well as the deceptive and manipulative that can endanger people if they do not learn the truth. The quality of journalism, however, may suffer because if we shift to focus primarily on shifting to making everything digital, less time will be spent ensuring the quality of the writing and perceptions of the truth. 4) There are greater implications for society if we change the way journalism is taught because this society will become one that is better-informed and manipulated far less. 5) There are about 450 college or university journalism schools in the country. Not even that considerable number, however, can satisfy the information needs of communities. 6) University faculty members should be hired for both their degrees and their real world work experiences as opposed to only one of these because ability is not just measured by one's experience in school though schooling is of course crucial in this selection process, and real world experience can never make up entirely for a lack of proper education. Rather, a combination of the two can give the ultimate professor with copious knowledge on the subject of journalism from their schooling alongside the experience that can allow aspiring journalists insight as to what they are getting into. 7) Interdisciplinary study is very important when studying journalism because one must not only understand how to write and how to spread news and the truth to the community - journalism is much more than that. Journalists must also understand the field they are writing about to properly inform others and avoid deception. 8) The team-teaching concept works in the context of journalism education in that multiple professors from different fields teach journalism courses that teach students about the subjects they want to cover, anywhere from art to science. 9) The advantage of team-teaching is that it allows students to avoid going out into the world of journalism as lone wolves while they also were not forced to work in huge groups under bosses that they despise. 10) Knowledge journalism is journalism with a foundation of knowledge of other subjects or disciplines. 11) According to the author, the potential news outlet underused at many universities is The New York World. 12) The four steps universities need to take to become relevant in journalism education are: (1) expand their role as community content providers, (2) innovate, (3) teach open, collaborative methods, and (4) connect to the whole university. 13) The college level teaching model foundation leaders advocated in a letter to university presidents was the teaching hospital model. 14) Some pros of the teaching hospital model are: informing communities and providing them with civic engagement, understanding what makes a story a story, etc. Some cons of it are: it requires schools to have to step up their digital game, it asks schools to modify their teaching methods, etc. 15) A newspaper or teaching newsroom needs libel insurance because the stress journalists undergo while writing on tight deadlines can lead to issues with the legal matter of libel - the publication of slanderous writing. 16) I agree that journalists should be able to earn a professional doctorate. What harm would that do? And why should other fields have it while journalism does not? 17) Licensing is a good idea because it would allow those with a deep passion for the field to reach the highest level of expertise that people in other areas have had access to while journalists have not. It would definitely make journalism more of a profession. It seems that the First Amendment does allow the licensing thereof because it dictates no limitations on the free exercise of the press. Governments have abused licensing by restricting first amendments rights by asking for proper licensing. 18) Research is important to those who teach journalism and professional journalists because when it boils down to job advancement, research beats teaching. 19) Journalism and media research would be better if scholars and professionals did it together. Some types of research would benefit more than others, such as academic research in the field of science, for example. 20) Student journalists should be connected with their communities by means of the teaching hospital model in that the student journalists would pass on the news to their community while still in school. 21) According to the Federal Communications Commission, over 18,000 journalism jobs have been lost over the past few years. The bulk of these jobs have been erased from daily newspapers alone. 22) The author compares watchdog journalism to a security camera that keeps the powerful honest. 23) Without watchdog journalism, the powerful are then able to more easily get away with things that harm American citizens. 24) Journalism students can become better prepared to enter the current job market by becoming better acclimated to modern journalism, consisting largely of digital techniques.