Can the Trade Be Taught?

The editor glared at the job-seeking undergraduate and rasped out just one question: "You ever been to journalism school?" Uh, stammered the student, no. Snapped New York Herald Tribune City Editor (1928-35) Stanley Walker: "You're hired."

Such reactions to journalism schools have mostly gone out of style with U.S. editors who no longer seem to fly into spike-throwing rages at the notion that the craft of journalism can be taught in any school except the school of pavement-pounding, doorbell-ringing experience. Most papers now prefer to hire the J-school graduate because he does have some practical experience, however limited, grafted on to a liberal arts education, however minimal. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Managing Editor Ed Stone expresses the prevailing attitude: "We hire the best man, whether he's had journalism training or not. But I think most papers have come to depend on journalism schools to recruit their help." Even such a salty old-schooler as the Detroit Times's City Editor Jim Trainor concedes: "Journalism school won't hurt a good smart kid."

This year, the University of Missouri School of Journalism--the oldest, biggest and most celebrated undergraduate J-school in the nation -- is marking its 50th anniversary of helping good smart kids. Missouri has turned out some 6,500 graduates, including U.P.I. Vice President and Washington Manager Lyle Wilson, Publisher Jack Flynn of the New York Daily News, and the late sportswriter Bill Corum of the Hearst papers.

Four to One. Founding Dean Walter Williams, Bible student and orator, was a Missouri editor who did not go to college. But he insisted from the start that a Mizzou journalism student devote some 75% of his curriculum to the liberal arts and sciences, a requirement still in effect and now the standard for most schools. To give his students practical training, Newsman Williams mortgaged his house, set up the Columbia Missourian, a daily largely written and edited by students under faculty supervision, which competes in Columbia (pop. 45,000) with the Tribune, trails its opposition in paid circulation (4,062 v. 10,120) but not in zeal.

Although attendance in the nation's journalism schools is down to 11,000 students, a 40% drop since the high of 1948, Missouri still has plenty of applicants. Some 300 students are majoring in such subjects as news-editorial, radiotelevision, and weekly and small-daily publishing. Since most of its graduates go to work for small dailies or weeklies--fully 30% stay in the state--the school offers noncredit courses in backshop work. Editors have long since been shown by Missouri; the graduating class annually has four times as many job offers as members.

Despite this record, Missouri has some weaknesses that are reflected in journalism schools as a whole. By nimbly dodging through the course catalogue, an aspiring newsman can get away with only one term of general economics, one year of English literature, one year of history. Few faculty members have major professional credits. Dean Earl Franklin English, 53, an earnest, dark-haired man with seven years' experience as a newsman on small papers and a doctorate in psychology, grants that he would like to bolster his faculty, but says frankly that he cannot with Missouri's salary scale ($4,500-$13,000).

Two Out of Three. On a broader basis, the critics of Missouri and the other dominant journalism schools, e.g., Northwestern, Illinois, Wisconsin. Minnesota, argue that the liberal arts major is more suited to the long haul of newspapering than the J-school man: his background is broader, better preparing him to cope with assignments from atomics to Zionism. Instead of taking journalism courses, says Managing Editor Al Friendly of the Washington Post and Times Herald, "a boy would be better off reading Carlyle or studying the pigmentation of butterfly wings."

Perhaps the most persuasive answer to such criticism comes from the 45-year-old Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where professional training comes only to those who already have college degrees. Columbia requires applicants to show some evidence of bona fide professional interest, turns down two out of three applicants, including some Phi Beta Kappas. The student body of about 70 takes broad subjects in the field, e.g., the law of libel, under an excellent faculty (average salary: more than $10,000) backed up by guest lecturers from Manhattan publications.

As a result, Columbia has awarded master's degrees to an impressive roster of the successful in journalism, at last nose count had produced 64 publishers, 67 editors in chief, 36 Washington correspondents, and 66 Timesmen. Says Columbia's Dean Edward W. Barrett, class of '33: "If anybody asks me if he must go to journalism school, I'd say no. It's not necessary like law or medicine. But for the average person going into journalism, the training allows him to advance five, six or even ten years faster."

On that, Dean Barrett can get an argument in most city rooms. For since Walter Williams started it all at Missouri 50 years ago, the schools of journalism have made progress--but they are still far below the status of the other major professional schools.

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