Workshop Course/24
The Journalism Workshop Course: What is the Nature of This Beast?
Drs. Bob Bergland, Ann Thorne and Ken Rosenauer
Missouri Western State College
Introduction
Most colleges and universities today have student media – newspaper, yearbook and/or magazine – many of which are campus fixtures, often as old as the schools themselves. This longstanding tradition has withstood administrative pressures, legal challenges, social and cultural upheavals and shifting student interest.
In addition, many schools offer a journalism workshop class that gives academic credit to students who work on these media. The course typically awards between one and three credits to participating editors and/or staffers. Depending on various criteria –survey size, sample, date and methodology – the percentage of schools that have offered workshop courses, notably for work on the campus newspaper, vary widely. They range from one-quarter (Kopenhaver and Spielberger 2000) to one-third (Kopenhaver and Spielberger 1993, Spevak 1977, Bodle 1997, Trayes 1973) to one-half (Kopenhaver 1983) to nearly two-thirds (Reuss 1975). Even though multiple surveys have reported the prevalence of this class, very little has been written about the course itself – the schools that offer it, the number of hours of credit awarded, how it fits into the curriculum and why schools choose to include it in their curriculum.
The majority of the scant literature that surveys or mentions journalism workshop classes instead has noted the relationship of the campus press to journalism departments, the frequency and amount of credit offered for working on student media and the impact of these courses on the independence of the student newspaper (see above; also, Stewart and Atkins 1970, Deaver 1977, Rampal 1982). These articles not only have focused narrowly on topics related to journalism workshop courses, but also have dealt only with newspapers. To our knowledge, no research has been done about journalism workshop courses for other campus media: yearbooks, magazines or multimedia publications.
In short, while journals such as Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, Journalism Quarterly and College Media Review have published numerous articles about journalism curricula and the content and pedagogy of other traditional journalism courses, the journalism workshop course largely has been ignored. This itself is a curiosity. Journalism educators seem to have pried into every other nook and cranny of the profession, attempting to offer insight and understanding. That the journalism workshop course is the stone left unturned piqued our curiosity.
Beyond the fact that the journalism workshop course has been underreported, our interest also is based on its unique position in the journalism curriculum. It is the on-campus proving ground for student journalists, where they can begin to ply their trade, producing real journalistic content for real audiences – and with real benefits and consequences. In that capacity it stands to enhance student engagement, to offer numerous and substantial critical-thinking challenges and to meet the current curricular interest in applied-learning.
Our first foray into investigating the journalism workshop course seeks to answer the following basic questions:
· What is the size and type of school that offers workshop credit?
· How many hours of credit do schools award for workshops?
· Are workshop classes required?
· What are reasons for offering or not offering credit-producing workshop classes?
A Review of the Literature
As early as 1970, Stewart and Atkins suggest that journalism schools and departments had been cutting ties to the campus press for years and that the trend was continuing.[i] At the same time, though, they note that journalism advisers continued to be commonplace, though their power and duties varied widely from school to school. Another trend that their study revealed was the diminishing number of campus media where journalism students were given academic credit. Instead, students were earning credit for working at local commercial papers. Although Stewart and Atkins did not suggest it, we might conclude that the downtrends they describe likely would have negative consequences for traditional media workshops in those programs.
Spevak offers evidence concerning the lack of formal connection between the campus press and news-editorial sequences. He found in a survey of 59 university catalogs published by ACEJ-accredited sequences that two-thirds, or 41, “neither require their students to work on the student newspapers nor do they provide courses whereby the journalism students may earn academic credit for working on student newspapers.”[ii]
Thirteen of 18 accredited sequences with connections to student newspapers require news-editorial majors to work on their student newspapers, according to Spevak. The other five provide credit for working on the student newspaper, with one of those allowing students to earn academic credit for working on either the student newspaper or a commercial newspaper.
A brief survey of 28 journalism departments, all with fewer than 100 undergraduate majors, showed that only 18 allowed academic credit, typically limited to six hours.[iii]
Reuss said, “Some schools allow neither credit nor payment for work on the student newspaper. Some are considering allowing credit in order to attract more able staff to their student publications.”
She observed that credit seemed tied to how close newspaper staffs were to journalism advisers and journalism departments. In those instances where credit was given, students had to complete specific assignments for a journalism instructor.
Workshop media courses seem as commonplace on college campuses as freshman composition classes. Yet, only a handful of articles dealing with them has been published in journals during the past 30 years. Such a paucity in coverage is hard to explain. Even if the popularity of media workshop courses may be declining – as alluded to by some research – the topic deserves much more attention.
Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver and Ron Spielberger have conducted regular surveys of the college media, beginning as early as 1983. While their focus often is on advisers, since their articles often are published in College Media Review, they also regularly provide data that reflects the status and development of college media. Yet, their extensive surveys do not deal specifically with media workshop courses. At best, they have reported course credit granted to editors and other media managers; these data suggest that a traditional media workshop course is in place.
Fortunately, some of those data are revealing. For example, a 1993 survey showed that credit was most likely for newspaper editors and managers on the editorial side from two-year schools, where the percentage ranged from 57 percent to 64 percent. Credit for comparable positions at four-year schools drops considerably, ranging from 11 percent to 25 percent.[iv] In a comparable survey in 1999, Kopenhaver and Spielberger reported that credit offered at both two-year schools and four-year public schools had dropped; a slight increase was noted for four-year private schools. Interestingly, salaries over the same period increased. The fact that fewer newspaper editors and managers are earning college credit may herald a decline in the traditional media workshop course.[v]
A related topic, college newspaper independence, also has drawn limited interest in the journals. It bears mentioning here, because several key criteria for independence may discourage any relationship to traditional media workshop courses. Louis Ingelhart is probably the chief arbiter in determining those criteria, totaling 25, with the following seven considered relevant:
· The publication cannot receive student fee funds.
· The publication cannot receive college or university subsidy, directly or indirectly.
· The publication cannot use campus facilities or space.
· The publication cannot have a university adviser.
· The publication cannot have any relationship to any instructional program.
· Membership on the staff of the publication cannot be limited to or specify student status.
· The university cannot provide placement assistance to staff members on the basis of learning done on the staff of the publication, nor can it grant course credits for work on the staff not awarded in a similar manner for work on commercial publications.[vi]
Bodle writes, “An AEJMC curriculum task force, after considering more than 100 earlier studies and articles, concluded that the ‘purpose of media education is to produce well-rounded graduates who have critical-thinking skills as well as practical skills.’ The instructional role of student newspapers was not included in their published findings and discussions” (emphasis added).[vii]
Bodle’s survey of 97 student dailies also reported:
· One-third had an adviser supported by university funding.
· 17.5 percent had business managers paid by the university.
· Three-fourths had student-only staffs.
· 21 percent of student staff earned academic credit in a manner similar to work for commercial publications.
Bodle’s interpretation of the data suggested that 26 of 97 newspapers were “moderately” to “strongly curriculum-based,” with only 12 “strongly independent.” The presence of or lack of traditional media workshops likely relates to these numbers.
Kopenhaver and Spielberger, as well as Frank Deaver[viii] and John V. Bodle, offer data to suggest that the number of truly independent college newspapers is quite small. Yet, even those who do not meet all the criteria may negatively impact traditional media workshop courses as they strive to meet many of the criteria above.
Overview of survey selection methodology
While we were very much interested in practicum/workshop courses for radio, TV and magazines, we decided to narrow our survey to only newspaper and yearbook to allow the questions to be more focused and to decrease the time needed for respondents to complete the survey, especially those respondents who advise multiple media. We plan to conduct a similar survey for radio, TV and magazine advisers in the near future.
To establish our survey target audience, we used the 2003 College Media Advisers directory. This directory is created from data on the membership forms, which have each member circle all media, if any, they advise. To ensure the information was up-to-date, we requested a current (December 2003) CMA mailing list. We then selected all 2003 directory members whose listing was coded with an "N" (for Newspaper advising) or "Y" (for yearbook) and who were on the current mailing list. We excluded the following:
· members who only advised radio, TV or magazines
· members who joined after the directory was printed (the December mailing list update did not indicate media advised)
· members who did not advise media (vendor representatives, journalism educators, honorary/lifetime members, etc.)
After excluding ourselves, we ended up with a list of 555 members out of the 840 on the December mailing list. While this number is fairly large, we felt it was small enough to be manageable and to not necessitate using a random sampling, so we sent surveys out to all 555 people.
The survey included a cover letter and three pages that covered the 36 questions. Nine questions were demographic questions for all respondents, five were questions specifically for those who were not at a school that offered workshop classes for credit, and 22 were questions for those at schools which did offer credit classes. An addressed, stamped envelope was included with the survey, which was mailed Jan. 15, 2004. Of the 555 surveys, 164 were returned, for a 29.5% return rate.
Caveats about the survey selection process:
1) Completeness
We did not survey nearly every college publication, as Kopenhaver and Spielberger (2000) most recently did in their survey of 1,000 college newspapers listed in Editor & Publisher. Our goal was not to determine what percentage of schools offer workshop courses (indeed, Kopenhaver and Spielberger had already found out this information in their surveys), but to gain more insights into which schools offer credit, why the courses are or are not taught and how the courses are taught and evaluated. Consequently, we felt a smaller target audience would be sufficient. In addition, in some ways our survey is more complete, because it includes yearbooks, instead of just newspapers.
2) Representativeness of publications and advisers
Culling a random sample from the Editor & Publisher list would have supplied a better random sample of all programs. But, again, we were most interested in finding a survey group that would be most likely to offer a workshop class or have opinions about such a class. Naturally, publications that have an adviser--not to mention an adviser who joins a professional adviser organization--are more likely to have a workshop class than publications with no adviser. We thus decided to use the CMA group.
3) Representation within the CMA group
Regardless of having a selection method that didn't exclude or marginalize any one particular demographic group, the results may be slightly skewed because some groups of people may have been less likely to return the survey. One would expect that those advisers who do not have workshop courses would be less likely to respond to the survey, either because they mistakenly thought their responses were not wanted or because they did not have a vested interest in the survey topic. And, while giving one's name and school was optional, some respondents may have been reluctant to answer some sensitive questions or return a survey with their answers to such questions (such as grade distribution).
5) Duplication
Some publications, especially the larger ones, may have multiple advisers. A large college daily might have an Ad Director, an Editorial Adviser and a Publisher (or even more positions), all of whom may be members of CMA and all of whom may have indicated that they advise the newspaper. Under our selection criteria, all three of these people would have been sent a survey, and all three may have responded. So, it is important to remember when reading the results that they do not reflect the number of schools or publications but the number of advisers surveyed. Consequently, we will not report that "56.7% of schools offered a newspaper workshop course," but rather, "56.7% of advisers responding were at an institution which offered a newspaper workshop course."
Results
Respondent demographics
Because we had hypothesized that the size of the school, the journalism offerings at the school and the department offering the journalism courses may have an impact on whether or not workshop classes were offered for credit, we asked numerous demographic questions. While cross tabulating the demographic data with later questions did yield intriguing answers, the demographic information was interesting in itself.
The survey respondents were distributed fairly evenly across our size categories: 18.9% in the under 2,000 category, 17.1% in the 2,000-5,000 category, 18.9% in the 5,001 to 10,000 category, 21.3% in the 10,001-20,000 category and 23.8% in the over 20,000 category. Approximately 44% were from public four-year schools, 35% from private four-year schools and 20% from public two-year schools. One respondent was from a private two-year school. (Graph I)