Lessons taught and learned

I finished my first week of classes at the University of Ljubljana today with a two-hour session in a sophomore reporting classes. It was a very different - but equally pleasant - experience from yesterday, when I spoke to a small graduate student class on trends in journalism. 

As you might expect, the graduate students were much more willing to engage with me and even question me. Almost all of them work in the professional media when not taking classes. While young students just starting, like my sophomores, are all ears and prefer to just listen to what I say, the graduate students have had enough life experience to know that nothing is cut and dried – even if pontificated by someone with a Ph.D.

That meant that I could have a long, Socratic conversation with them that wove its way through the impact of social media on their careers, demographics, new technologies and the logic Walter Williams used to promote the need for journalism schools. We will spin off of that discussion over the next few weeks, adding in deeper looks at a few specialty areas of journalism (investigative, fact-checking, drones, etc.).

The sophomores were bright, but a little more timid. As in almost every undergraduate class I’ve taught, they had retreated to the back row and scattered across the width of the room. That means if you want to make eye contact, your head bounces back and forth as if you were watching a tennis game.

The reporting students were about 19 to 21 and, with only a few exceptions, were from the smaller towns Slovenia. That will be great fodder for discussion later this term. Slovenia has only 2 million citizens, but has 212 municipal governments. That means that there is a city official under every rock. We can have a great time talking about government coverage and the value of hyper-local journalism.

In the end, we broke into a discussion of why they chose to be journalism students. That’s always a hard question for newer students. They know in an ethereal sense that this is a good thing to do, but have difficulty articulating why.

So I challenged them. Why do you want a job that pays poorly, is hard work and makes you unpopular with almost everyone else?

Silence.

I admitted it took many gray hairs and many beers with colleagues, but I can finally say why I became a journalist.

It’s the best job in the world.

I know, I know – that’s more than a little hyperbole. But consider:

· Where else can you vicariously be a heart surgeon one day, a factory worker the next and a politician the third? For anyone who really can’t make up their mind about what they want to do when they grow up, journalism is like hitting the jackpot.

· Who else has the power to make the strong weep, the staid laugh or the confused understand? It usually takes years to realize how much writing well sets you apart from the rest of the world. When you do, however, you can appreciate that your talent is a gift that goes far beyond anything you learned in school.

· Who else gets an inside look at history as it is made every day, then lives to tell about it?

· Who, in the white collar world, goes home every day with their name on something. We are professionals, yes, but we are also craftsmen who proudly take credit for what we offer to the world.

· We make a difference.

When I first came to the University of Missouri, I was both impressed and puzzled by the admonition inscribed over the School of Journalism’s famous entry arch:

“Wise Shall be the Bearers of Light.”

There was no doubt in my mind, however, about the mission given to Missouri journalists on the flip side of that arch as they leave the school:

“The Schoolmaster of the People.”

As I said, we make a difference.