There is no journalism major at Puget Sound, yet The Trail attempts to address a variety of issues related to the campus, the city of Tacoma and national/international current events. Some staff writers have worked for other publications, yet few have formal training. Instead, they learn as they go, crafting their writing styles and reporting acuity to match Associated Process guidelines and the criteria of their columns.
In the era of open access, is it necessary to have a journalism major when anyone with two cents can start up a blog and opine freely? Perhaps the quality of Puget Sound’s sole, ASUPS-condoned newspaper would increase with a journalism major. In fact, the emotions that students might feel in reaction to a lecture, an administrative decision or an aspect of campus culture would be channeled and made more poignant if there were a pedagogical model to draw on.
What is the value of cultivating “investigative” or “journalistic” sensibility if technology literacy and an ability to multi-task, drawing from several electronic sources at once, are prized over inquisitiveness, a sharp mind, interviewing skills and gumption? In the past couple of years, readers have complained that The Trail produces tasteless drivel about things like sweatpants. The fashion is ubiquitous and the theme on the wain, but perhaps the writers should break a sweat once and a while and put their noses to the ground in search of facts and intrigue.
Yet with that wish, we return to the lack of training and exposure. Without being taught the conventions of a genre or studying professional models to get an idea of how one ought to write, for efficacy’s sake, the writing can become soft and careless. Thus, the readership feels indifferent, asking itself, as it eyes last Friday’s issue gracing the floor of a bathroom stall, “Why bother?”
Contrariwise, the University of Washington does offer a journalism major. One of the classes is a lab for which students write articles that are pushed into a pool and swim around until a small town rag or regional paper fishes one out and includes it in the latest market issue. The aspiring journalist has to write to the form and content standards of the professional publication, or his or her article will, mercilessly, hit the cutting room floor.
The English major offers a Writing, Rhetoric and Culture emphasis, while the Communications major boasts a Media Studies concentration, but neither engages with journalistic production beyond the optional internship avenue.
What are the existing venues for amateur journalism on campus? The Trail is student-operated; the alumni magazine Arches runs an undergraduate piece on occasion; the Bygone Bureau blog, although not affiliated with the university in an official capacity, was founded by alumni and accepts student work. And who knows where the odd teamster newsletter or anarchist pamphlet get cooked up.
So, why does Puget Sound not create a journalism major to impose order on and invigorate our media, which, although well-coordinated, stands up for a dying industry? A new department’s not going to spring up from dry earth, but an interdisciplinary one, much like the Humanities and Honors programs, could sink roots. Funding and interest would have to come from current departments and faculty, and a curriculum sketched out with outside support.
A journalism major needs a practicum, a training workshop like the University of Washington’s that reaches beyond the campus perimeter and into a community for which Puget Sound might be just a body of water.
Without a working relationship between writers, teachers and an extra-campus readership, and an evolving approach to its own campus journalism, The Trail will be hard-pressed to foment heated, campus-wide discussion about much more than the Hey You’s.
[PHOTO COURTESY/TEDDI TOSTANOSKI]
