Theoretical and Conceptual Approaches to Journalism Education

Abstract

Many journalism programs embrace the teaching hospital model because of its practical approach, employing working journalists as journalism educators. However, critics contend a more conceptual model of journalism education is needed. This essay explores the literature on journalism education models and seeks to integrate the teaching hospital and entrepreneurial journalism approaches with the revised Bloom's Taxonomy and Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning. Combined, these models provide a solid theoretical foundation for practical, applied journalism education. This essay applies these four models to journalism education, yielding a matrix of dimensions that can guide the creation or modification of curricula as well as individual courses. The synergy from integrating the practical and theoretical approaches yields a more comprehensive template for implementing journalism education.

In 2012, Knight Foundation Senior Advisor Eric Newton became a passionate advocate for the “teaching hospital” model of journalism education, stating that the disruption in traditional media economics offers an opportunity to make more extensive use of top professionals to guide students in “learning by doing.” The practical orientation of the teaching hospital model makes it a useful tool for designing and modifying journalism curricula because it emphasizes employing working journalists as journalism educators. But there has also been pushback to this model by academics who embrace more conceptual models of journalism education, most specifically Mensing and Ryfe's (2013) “entrepreneurial journalism” model.

Solkin (2022) explores the range of approaches to journalism education, analyzing 20 years of research (including 300+ articles) to provide an overview of journalism teaching models. This analysis confirms the diverse approaches to journalism education, including models described below, but do not address conceptual issues that could strengthen the teaching hospital model.

This essay proposes to extend existing models by integrating them with other models from the pedagogy literature, including the revised Bloom's Taxonomy (Anderson et al., 2001; Krathwohl, 2002; Krathwohl & Anderson, 2010) and Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning (Canan et al., 2024; Fink, 2003). Combined, these models provide a solid theoretical foundation to guide journalism curriculum development.

This essay applies these four models to a three-dimensional conceptualization of journalism education that includes (1) skills, (2) concepts, and (3) context. Here, “skills” refers to the process of gathering (writing, interviewing) and disseminating news and information; “concepts” refers to underlying factors such as press freedom and reporting ethics, and “context” refers to understanding how institutions (government, business, science, art, religion) interact in the larger society. The interrelationship of the four models of education with the three dimensions of journalism education yields a matrix of journalism education that provides a template for creating or modifying individual courses as well as designing journalism curricula. The synergy that results from integrating the practical and theoretical approaches yields a more comprehensive template for implementing journalism education. Rather than simply base journalism education on the skills and routines of news organizations, applying the taxonomies from the pedagogical literature enables journalism educators to draw from other fields, creating educational practices that incorporate broader perspectives on pedagogy. The essay concludes with recommendations framed as “best practices” for training journalism students. These recommendations strive to balance the focused demands of individual media with the broader role of journalism in society.

Revised Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom and his colleagues developed and published the original Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in 1956 (Anderson et al., 2001; Krathwohl, 1994; Krathwohl, 2002; Krathwohl & Anderson, 2010; Mayer, 2002). Despite the original taxonomy's usefulness and longevity, evolving insights about the dynamic nature and process of learning led to revisions that try to capture expectations for what is learned and what is done with the content. The resulting two-dimensional matrix is now known as “The Revised Bloom's Taxonomy” (Airasian & Miranda, 2002; Anderson et al., 2001; Stern, 2018). The two domains are knowledge and cognitive process dimensions (Airasian & Miranda, 2002; Anderson et al., 2001; Mayer, 2002).

Within the knowledge domain, there are four types (factual, conceptual, procedural, and metacognitive) listed within the matrix. They help instructors distinguish what to teach and how to engage students (Anderson et al., 2001). A general overview of each type of knowledge includes the following:

Factual knowledge: basic elements that include terminology, specific details, and elements (e.g., a particular algorithm, practice, or term like “going off the record” or “writing a summary lead”);

Conceptual knowledge: interrelationships among elements within a larger context that enable them to function together as well as they do (i.e., basic news values);

Procedural knowledge: how to carry out a procedure or set of procedures or methods of inquiry (i.e., steps indigenous to the process of journalism);

Metacognitive knowledge: a general knowledge of thinking, as well as awareness of one's own knowledge and cognition (i.e., reflection on how well the group worked together).

The second dimension, cognitive processes, indicates what the learner does or should do with the knowledge. The cognitive processes include remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating (Anderson et al., 2001; Mayer, 2002):

Remembering: The student retrieves the information from memory in a way that is consistent with what was received. This level of cognition is also considered as rote memory or a regurgitation of information.

Understanding: The student attaches personal meaning to the information that s/he receives.

Applying: The student uses the knowledge in a context or situation that the instructor provides, for example, conducting interviews, writing stories, and editing video.

Analyzing: The student reduces the knowledge into smaller parts and determines how those pieces are related to each other and to the overall purpose.

Evaluating: The student uses knowledge as a criterion to make judgments, although not all judgments have to be evaluative (Anderson et al., 2001). For journalists, evaluation can occur at multiple points, including assessment of newsworthiness, editing, and post-hoc analysis (e.g., critically watching the newscast).

Creating: This process involves combining knowledge to form a new product or information that is unique to what they received from the instructor or was previously unavailable to them.

Using the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy in the context of journalism education is not completely new. Kilpert and Shay (2013) investigated the context-dependency of learning to characterize journalism students’ potential for lifelong learning. The resulting tool distinguishes levels of learning beyond context-dependency, drawing upon the Revised Bloom's Cognitive Dimension (Anderson et al., 2001; Krathwohl, 2002). However, they conclude that this dimension does not reflect the practical tasks that journalism students must complete. For example, it cannot classify whether writing articles is a process of application or a creative endeavor (Kilpert & Shay, 2013). The authors admit that the coding is intuitive and based upon personal adjustments. Conversely, Anderson et al. (2001) indicate that distinctions within cognitive processes are predicated upon the intent of the instructor in relation to the meaning of the objective(s), the purpose of the activities, and the focus of the assessments.

Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning

While the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy illuminates the educational process from the instructor's perspective, a complementary perspective from the learner's view is Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning (Fink, 2003). Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning adds stability to the foundation upon which the three-dimensional conception of journalism stands. The Revised Bloom's Taxonomy (Anderson et al., 2001) has broad implications for teaching and learning at multiple levels, and Fink's Taxonomy for Significant Learning focuses on pedagogical methods that occur in college contexts (Barnes & Caprino, 2016). Fink believes that the divide between students’ academic and personal lives hinders learning, and recommends teaching practices that enhance both their individual lives and their social interactions. In this context, they would be better-informed citizens and better prepared as journalists.

Fink's (2003) taxonomy has six categories: foundational knowledge, application, integration, human dimension, caring, and learning how to learn. Foundational knowledge includes the subject-specific information students need to understand and remember; this category parallels the intersections of Revised Bloom's factual, conceptual, and procedural knowledge with the remember and understand cognitive processes. Application refers to learners taking the knowledge they have learned and turning it into action, which mirrors the cognitive process of application in Revised Bloom's Taxonomy. Integration permits learners to make connections between the learning and other learning or life experiences, as does Bloom's cognitive level of understanding. The human dimension allows learners to consider learning in the context of their own or others’ lives. Caring encourages learners to be interested in or sympathetic about something as a result of a learning experience. And, finally, learning how to learn reflects developing an appreciation for the act of gaining new knowledge or skills, similar to the revised Bloom's metacognitive knowledge subcategory. Unlike the revised Bloom's Taxonomy (Anderson et al., 2001), Fink (2003) describes his taxonomy as relational and “interactive,” rather than “hierarchical,” portraying a synergistic view of learning. As a result, course instructors strive to promote students’ growth across multiple categories simultaneously.

These models provide a solid theoretical foundation from the pedagogy literature. The revised Bloom's Taxonomy (Anderson et al., 2001) emphasizes the range of learning that takes place from the most basic, concrete level to the highest. It moves through increasingly complex levels, from understanding to applying, then analyzing, then evaluating, and finally, creating; intersecting with different levels of knowledge throughout. Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning places more emphasis on the learner, with a model that includes learning how to learn, caring, and the human dimension, along with foundational knowledge, application, and integration in a synergistic manner (Fink, 2003). This foundation integrates well with the teaching hospital model of journalism education.

The Teaching Hospital Model

In 2009, Columbia University Dean Nicholas Lemann first suggested the teaching hospital model for Journalism Education (Anderson et al., 2011), which was then elaborated upon by Newton (2012a). Newton argues the teaching hospital was the best model for journalism education in the twenty-first century because the approach reflects people “learning by doing.” A second assumption is that the Teaching Hospital is an apt metaphor or model for Journalism Education. In hospitals, medical students are tutored by doctors in day-to-day basic practices like inserting catheters, setting broken limbs, and delivering babies. The proof he offers is that few of us want surgery from someone who has only read about it in a book.

Elements of a Teaching Hospital:

Newton (2012a) outlines six key aspects of the teaching hospital model that must coalesce for journalism education to be a center of innovation. The six are (1) Students doing the journalism, (2) Professionals mentoring students, (3) Professors who bring “topic knowledge and raising issues,” (4) Innovators pioneering new tools and techniques, (5) Academics doing major research projects, and these five working together to (6) inform the community and engage with the community.

To inform and engage with the community, Newton (2012a) suggests that three categories of activity must be routinely conducted within the journalism teaching hospital.

Category 1: First Aid. Basic activities must be routinely practiced. In this context, students are drilled in the basics of reporting assignments—gathering content, packaging it, and disseminating it through appropriate platforms (print, broadcast, web, or some combination). The so-called “flipped classroom” applies, where most faculty's contact time is spent directing students as they gather and package information. Lecture materials are posted and read online when it is convenient. Many news and media production instructors recognize the benefits of this practice-emphasis approach.

Category 2: Clinics. Professional care under a trained and qualified supervisor. Clinics enable workers to treat walk-in patients. In the event of an emergency, an experienced professional can step in to manage the situation. According to Newton, the key element is oversight by a person with significant professional experience in the event of an emergency.

Category 3: Labs. Labs are open, entrepreneurial spaces that allow students to experiment with content creation. These are spaces where improvements in practice can be tested. Several programs have this kind of space with this type of charge, where professors conduct research and test new procedures or forms of journalism.

Newton says the challenge is to put these three spaces together and operate them in tandem to create synergies for journalism education. Students learn basic journalism “first aid” practices and are mentored in “clinics” where they practice producing new content. At the same time, an innovation lab allows faculty to conceive, try out, and evaluate new practices. Better ways of doing things can then be implemented, and the system is ever-improving.

The heart of the teaching hospital model is the role of students. Students have the energy and inquisitive drive to lead change. Furthermore, students are by definition transitory, with most transitioning after four years, undergirding a culture of continuous change. To allow needed innovation, there must be space in the curriculum to expose students to new and innovative practices.

Whether the teaching hospital model produces the best journalism education remains a topic of discussion. Picard (2015) notes that “journalism and higher education have always had an uneasy relationship” (p. 6), and Journalism has famously been viewed as more of a vocation and a craft than a university intellectual discipline. Placing journalism with communication programs has been helpful, but communication is also criticized for borrowing heavily from other disciplines in the social sciences and liberal arts.

The unfortunate result is that journalism education often fails to articulate its own unique professional knowledge and practices. Other programs and fields think they know what it is, but more often simply perpetuate twentieth-century stereotypes (newspaper reporters, television anchors).

A second concern with the teaching hospital approach is the familiar criticism that journalism education remains co-opted by industry. Journalism programs teach the traditional best practices, but inadvertently perpetuate some practices that may be outdated. Building upon this point, Picard (2015) states, “journalism programs will never move forward by hiring middle-aged senior journalists” (p. 8) because they tend to come from big organizations, which are no longer the norm. The journalism business continues to fragment, adopting new tools and practices. Some of the people wishing to move into academia may lack the skills or knowledge of key industry trends.

Many programs fully implement the teaching hospital model, yet journalism education may still lack credibility from inside the academy as well as from the profession itself. Journalism provides cheap student labor for news organizations, and research is needed to determine whether those efforts are sufficiently reciprocated by the industry in terms of stable employment, careers, or respect or status. Picard (2015) states that students must be trained in storytelling, information gathering, and being more specialized so they understand data and information. The list of desired skills and practices is extensive.

Newton (2012b) warns that taking the teaching hospital concept too literally distracts from the basic premise. Journalism is not Medicine, and many schools train journalism students well without using the teaching hospital model. The teaching hospital model emphasizes the role of those with industry experience. Newton and others believe professors without industry experience may not know how to handle newsroom crises. For example, “deadline pressure” can paralyze some students; those who face it and overcome it can pass that wisdom on to students better than someone who discusses it as an abstract concept.

Young and Giltrow (2020) suggest reexamining the teaching hospital model because it relies on a “supply-side” focus in journalism newsrooms. They suggest using a more critical approach that applies lessons from other fields to help refine learning outcomes from the teaching hospital model.

Entrepreneurship Model

A counterpoint to the teaching hospital perspective is the entrepreneurial approach to journalism education (Mensing & Ryfe, 2013). The entrepreneurship model advocates journalism education taking an audience-oriented approach, placing the focus on journalism rather than the news industry. This approach encourages students to find out what the community needs and then engage with others to identify and offer possible solutions. This runs counter to the hierarchical medical approach, where medical “experts” diagnose and treat the patients and create psychological distance between practitioners and patients. While elements of the teaching hospital approach can be found in virtually every modern journalism program, a perspective embracing disruptive innovation can keep journalism education fresh, changing, and relevant. By definition, “entrepreneurialism” pursues change rather than resists it (p. 32) and is more focused on what could be rather than what is.

According to Mensing and Ryfe (2013), the Entrepreneurial Perspective shifts thinking in several ways:

From the supply side to the demand side (because the focus is on the audience and community rather than the day-to-day demands of the news organization).

From institutional networks to social networks (the importance of developing sources that are outside the news business).

From habit to reflexivity (journalism is unpredictable by nature—events “break”—but to cope with such uncertainty, routines are developed and practiced). Reflexivity puts the emphasis back on change and what-may-happen-next.

From drill and practice to experimentation (journalism emphasizes a core set of skills and practices resulting in particular outcomes. Students are drilled on writing leads, sourcing, and identifying good quotes or soundbites. But entrepreneurship's focus on the audience can open up the debate to “what does the audience want?” and “how can we take this information and present it in order to get the most attention?).

Applying the Entrepreneurial Model to Curriculum

Mensing and Ryfe (2013) say entrepreneurialism embraces disruptive innovation and can be applied practically throughout the curriculum:

Foundational courses; all curricula have foundational courses. “Journalism 101” is often an overview of the news industry and addresses basic practices and issues of concern. This introductory course can emphasize media effects, funding/monetization models, First Amendment law, media regulation, ethics, advances in technologies, etc.

Skills and methods courses: basics of writing, reporting techniques, shooting, and editing. These courses are staples of journalism curricula. Entrepreneurialism opens up the courses to include change, for example, encouraging students to experiment with new formats and media.

Sequenced courses; journalism education, because it emphasizes drill-and-practice of skills, will have students take courses that build through experience. For example, basic writing is followed by advanced writing; basic video recording and editing lead to a class in advanced electronic news. These courses use repetition to add more advanced tactics and techniques—including performance, using effects, recording in stressful or unconventional situations, etc.

Internships: Confronting the issue of whether students are observers (fetching coffee for the pros) or participants who are allowed to make mistakes (learning by doing); perhaps sending them to mobile startups where they do app development or some other innovative work.

Media literacy: offering a course that is open to majors as well as non-majors is important to the university community at large. Such a course provides the critical thinking skills needed for non-majors to better understand concepts such as “fake news.” Teaching students how information is weaponized and used as propaganda can empower journalists to support the operation of democratic institutions.

Thus, from an academic perspective, entrepreneurial journalism offers an alternative to the teaching hospital approach. Journalism education embraces a set of skills and practices, but it must also serve a larger mission to include areas such as media literacy, ethics, freedom of speech, and democracy. In order to invigorate journalism education, the authors recommend training in civic entrepreneurship, social innovation, and areas such as user-centered design (p. 40).

To summarize these four approaches, Figure 1 presents a comparison of Bloom's Taxonomy (revised), Fink's Taxonomy, the Teaching Hospital model, and the Entrepreneurship Model, comparing attention to skills, concepts, and context.

Figure 1.

Comparison of models of journalism education.

The News Industry and Journalism Education

Anderson (2014) elaborates on the problems of the news industry and its relationship with educating the next generation of journalists. Advertising revenues have dropped precipitously over the past 30 years, and it's been difficult for the news business to adapt to the new pay structures and economics of news. Likewise, journalism education has had to adapt and justify its existence. Although the teaching hospital model works for medicine, law, and other professions, journalism has not been able to stake out the same boundaries that would help educate future practitioners. Journalism does not have a “distinct pedagogically enforced style of thought” (p. 64). A claim of jurisdiction whereby journalism is granted exclusive rights. Only doctors can practice medicine, only lawyers can practice law. But random acts of journalism can be practiced by anyone at any time in any context (Lasica, 2003).

Anderson highlights the weakness of traditional media funding, stating the “crisis in news is mostly an advertising crisis” (p. 65) in that advertising spending is unpredictable. Thus, Anderson argues that media economics do not seem to support the teaching hospital approach or the entrepreneurial approach. Anderson criticizes the teaching hospital approach because there are some assumptions that seem disingenuous and even unfair. It is not fair to place the burden of informing one's community and upholding democracy on the backs of untrained and uncompensated neophytes. They will make mistakes and miss things, but that does not justify dismissing their reports as “fake news.” Also, it may not be appropriate or fair to lay this burden on the professors who have specialized expertise in more esoteric subject areas. Again, undergirding democracy has not been formally assigned to journalism professors. Professors are hired to be educators and are rarely regarded as professional journalists, who mentor students to do the same. For generations, journalism educators have enforced the industry practice of having students take unpaid internships and practicums in the name of the public good.

Conversely, there are also problems with the entrepreneurialism approach. The term itself is not well understood and implies that students must create their own jobs. It also suggests a liberal arts education, which benefits neither journalism nor a journalism program, so it does not give journalism a needed distinct identity. Entrepreneurialism “is a catchall term referring to a … disposition: a student who is boundlessly energetic, game, and highly adaptable” (p.66).

Anderson suggests four pedagogical adjustments in tandem. First comes the expectation that many students will become reporters at some point and in some capacity. Second, they should be able to create professional-looking reports (print, broadcast, online platforms). Third, students should be encouraged to assess the models of journalistic professionalism, and fourth, higher education must reassess the relationship between journalism and the liberal arts.

But if these changes were made, Anderson warns, the lines begin to blur whether we train students to create media or learn how to critique it. As such, there may not be any use for a journalism school. It would also force professors to perform “triple duty,” taking care of (a) students, (b) part-time and momentary journalists, and (c) full-time journalists, a group that seems now to be ever-decreasing in numbers. In conclusion, Anderson says “if we teach our students how to live and create within that system, can we have any hope of turning the slow, steady decline of professional journalism into something that benefits society, rather than simply something that diminishes it?” (p. 67).

Journalist-turned-educator Gillmor (2016) notes that, in this time of upheaval, undergraduate journalism programs provide excellent training in liberal arts, preparing students for careers in law, politics, education, and more. Journalists need to be able to work across disciplines—computers, advertising, marketing, search engine optimization (SEO)—and educators need to embed entrepreneurship into their programs. Students must understand startup culture, lifestyle businesses, and how data is generated, stored, accessed, and mined. On top of that, students must create journalism for the community.

Gillmor also suggests dropping some things to make room for the skills that will prepare students for twenty-first-century careers in news. Graduate programs should orient toward tactics and practice at the Master's level, and PhD programs must focus on research. The type of research needed should have “deep connections to key media issues of today.” Faculty need to translate the “dense, even impenetrable, prose that can only be understood, if at all, by readers of academic journals” (p. 818).

Spaces and Newsrooms: Practical Examples of Teaching Hospitals

Francisco et al. (2012) identify several programs that were launched between 2000 and 2010 as the industry moved aggressively to partner with universities to create “teaching hospital” type programs. Schools like Missouri, Florida, Syracuse, and others have long implemented “teaching hospitals” by combining commercial outlets with student workers, under the guidance or supervision of paid professional staff.

Program Collaborations

There are several notable programs where the industry has significantly partnered with education. Examples include Alabama (2006, Anniston Star), City University of New York (NYC News Svce, 2007), Florida International University (2009, South Fla News Svce), University of Southern California (2009, Intersections South LA), Northeastern (2007/2011, reporting class for Boston Globe), Columbia College, and Youngstown State University (2009). The Youngstown case study elaborated by Francisco et al. (2012) identifies various ways an industry-academia partnership can be launched and managed.

There are several positive aspects and outcomes of these collaborations, but the schools must answer a host of questions. Will their journalism hospitals integrate graduate and undergraduate students? Will the news product be exclusive or shared? Will supervision come from school faculty or news partner editors? Will media partners also be active in the classroom, or act more as a silent partner? Will students be paid (and how much)? Will clients be charged (and how much)? Can the outlet operate all year round? Each of these questions is not simple, and any action taken will raise a host of additional questions.

Francisco et al. conclude that the Medical Teaching Hospital may be an imperfect analogy and suggest the Music School may be a better fit. “Music schools enroll highly motivated and often talented students and turn them out as improved, well-qualified musicians who enter a world in which relatively few will be able to make a living as performing artists” (p. 2695).

While musicians create music and enrich social culture, journalists are expected to inform society and strengthen democracy. There are several examples of resource-intensive news stories that accomplish these ends, supporting the Teaching Hospital approach. The authors conclude that, when “the pros in the news organizations and the profs and students in the classroom collaborate, they can bring those possibilities to life” (p. 2696).

Another investigation into teaching hospital efforts nationwide was compiled by Anderson et al. (2011). They extensively cataloged innovations and collaborations undertaken by many programs around the country. They found that most programs innovate, and some particular schools are well-known and equally well-funded. But it takes all the programs, large and small, to bring about the needed changes in national journalism education. Referring to the 2009 annual survey of journalism and mass communication programs, there were 483 schools reporting information about their programs. The estimated student enrollment was 200,639 undergraduates, 13,034 master's students, and 1,623 doctoral students. These are healthy numbers overall, but demonstrate the concerns that the shrinking demand for journalists cannot accommodate so many students seeking careers in the news industry.

Several journalism programs have multimedia efforts in evidence of cooperation between print and broadcast outlets on campuses. Teaching technology and tech skills are common in many programs, as is collaborating with campus units, including Law, Education, Library and Information Sciences, among others.

One of the most common features of the teaching hospital model is the broadcast journalism capstone experience. Akalonu and Grant (2025) looks at several school's capstone experience using Kolb's (1984) four stages of experiential learning and finds that virtually all of the capstones include concrete experience. But only 38% include an abstract conceptualization component, 65% incorporate reflective observation in a peer review format, and 64% include active experimentation.

Many programs are developing research centers and finding industry support, such as the News21 initiative, with Arizona State University, Berkeley, Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, Northwestern, USC, and Syracuse. Other funded initiatives include the American University School of Communication Center for Social Media, The Center for Future Civic Media at MIT, The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, and the New Media Innovation Lab at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

The authors conclude that there are many programs embracing the teaching hospital approach, producing four important trends in journalism education: (1) connecting the program to the whole university, (2) innovating content and technology, (3) teaching open, collaborative models, and (4) providing digital news in new, engaging ways.

Some recommendations for change and/or improvement:

Increase coverage of local communities outside the university or college in conjunction with local media.

Redraw the boundaries of journalism education to encompass a broader set of skills for the multiplatform journalist of the future.

Extend and increase partnerships both with other journalism programs as well as find synergies with other campus programs.

Collaborate with other journalism programs on state and national news bureaus.

Collaborate on adopting open education materials and open software platforms.

Experiment with ways to move emerging important material into courses and bring that to the center of the undergraduate core curriculum.

Extend and focus research towards an agenda that clearly locates journalism in relation to its role in local democracy.

Incorporate best practices in experiential learning, including reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and experimentation.

There are consistent calls for the media industry, government, community foundations, and others to work together to bring about positive and lasting change. Such collaborations with journalism programs can collectively become an anchor for essential community journalism in the twenty-first century.

News Work and Moving “Beyond Journalism”

Both the teaching hospital and the entrepreneurial approach to journalism education have shortcomings. Deuze and Witschge (2018) describe the collective efforts for change as taking us “beyond journalism,” adopting practices and going into areas that have not traditionally been what educators envisioned journalism to be. The modern economics of news work are changing expectations in the workplace, redefining the spaces (i.e., newsrooms) where journalists create journalism as well as experience it (on location, in the community). They note that “journalists are expected to reskill, deskill, and upskill their practices and working routines, generally without any direct say in the way the organizations they engage with operate” (p. 176). Modern news workers face pressure to “both make a difference and to make ends meet in an exceedingly competitive market” (p. 176). Journalism should be considered as “a profession, a set of institutional practices, a system of education,” as well as a theoretical concept which privileges “reality as a processual, heterogeneous and emergent configuration of relations” (p. 594, 176).

Journalism should be reconsidered at both the organizational and individual levels, as well as in light of the changing nature of modern audiences. Journalism is in a permanent process of becoming. It is networked, individual, formal, and informal, involving a range of actors and actants, involving both paid and free labor, covering events (news) “in real-time across multiplying platforms, often in competition and collaboration with publics.” Deuze and Witschge bring a macro-view to journalism and grapple with concepts, practices, and the industry in all its forms and iterations. Journalism will survive; the news business must change and will continue to change. Some of these changes may make it unrecognizable to many of today's journalists and journalism educators, hence the phrase, “beyond journalism.”

Technology and Newswork

Creech and Mendelson (2015) consider the role of technology and how the teaching hospital approach has been used to obscure larger debates about journalism education. Technology and disruptive innovation have often been invoked as practical realities of newswork. The context is typically that innovation is happening in the industry, and academia is lagging behind. The notion of the “ideal student journalist” is someone trained in coding and reporting, who is entrepreneurial enough to move into newsrooms and immediately begin reporting assignments. But many newsrooms operate with strict divisions of labor. The industry has led the way and set the agenda in arguing what the profession wants from educators; rarely, if ever, has it worked the other way around. The debate about “creating the idealized journalist” offers competing visions of journalism as a whole and the role of individuals in it. Journalism implies democracy, an informed citizenry, and a stable and just world. Individual reporters are expected to work long hours with little pay or benefit, little prospect for career enhancement, and an ever-shrinking workforce in the field.

Journalism programs are often criticized inside the university for being too vocational, placing too much emphasis on the basics of writing, reporting, and editing. It is common for industry professionals to criticize professors for “ineptitude and irrelevance,” respecting neither their research nor their experience or ability to teach and mentor students. Given journalism's history of feeding young talent into the news business, professional experience is always presented as superior to academic training. But “by obscuring the conditions under which journalists produce the news, studies of journalism reinforce labor relations where individuals are part of a professionalized machine built to extract profit from the news product” (Salcetti, 1995, cited in Creech & Mendelson, 2015, pp. 147–148). News workers are exploited and yet romanticize the job despite its precarity, low pay, and drudgery (Cohen, 2012, cited in Creech & Mendelson, 2015, p. 148). In this context, news workers are subservient to the product. However, the disruption from technology has shifted the value of the person who can create that product. Being able to code, design visuals for the web, and post reports in mobile media is more valuable than critical thinking and in-depth reporting skills in contemporary media markets.

The authors examine keywords and ideas coming out of the largest, most influential news industry organizations such as the Online News Association, the Knight Foundation, the Nieman Foundation, Poynter Institute, PBS's MediaShift blog, American Journalism Review, and more. They provide an analysis of text and statements referring to technology, journalism education, news work, and the role of the journalist.

The results confirm that technology is often presented as disruptive and challenging. But optimism hinges upon the capabilities of the individual; smart people who are entrepreneurial will succeed. But this finding is at odds with rank-and-file news workers who—at the same time—report in surveys that they did have such hope for their future (Willnat & Weaver, 2014, cited in Creech & Mendelson, 2015). Further, the hospital model is firmly endorsed by the industry (Newton, 2012b). Coursework in newsrooms staffed by professional journalists is the preferred way to go. Professor expertise is valuable yet inferior to the pedagogical value of individual experience as brought by the (former) news worker (Newton, 2012a). In this way, as Newton describes, “schools are becoming comfortable with a kind of reverse mentoring, where smart students teach the professors about cutting edge digital issues and the teachers help students infuse our great values—the fair, accurate, contextual search for truth—into the new things they are creating” (Newton, 2012a).

The skills of creating product are the ones most valued by the industry, particularly coding. As such, the vision of journalism education will remain tightly bound to industry needs. Professionals say a primary obstacle to robust, technologically driven change is the structure of academia. The semester system keeps students out of the newsroom in the summer; accreditation limits the number of courses in writing and editing; tenure demands distract faculty away from mentoring reporters. The authors note this is the industry-centric logic. Academia is to serve the news industry and integrate student training into the production processes of news companies. All of this ignores the acknowledged deficiencies in the journalism professional culture, which tends to stymie innovation. The authors conclude that there is no resolution, and debate must continue as journalism remains a precarious and uncertain profession.

Synthesis: Relating Bloom and Fink to Journalism Education

The core of both the teaching hospital model and the entrepreneurship model of journalism education is the integration of skills and practice to prepare a student to enter the field of journalism. The preceding discussion illustrates the emphasis on the development of skills and the importance of a trained faculty that includes both professionals and academics to guide the development of the skills and cognitive processes necessary for the practice of journalism.

But these and other models could be strengthened considerably by applying lessons from both the revised Bloom's Taxonomy and Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning. Bloom's Taxonomy considers both the need for metacognitive knowledge and the ability to analyze and evaluate the process and product of the educational process, in this case, journalism. Perhaps more importantly, half of the elements of Fink's Taxonomy address the impact of the end product: the human dimension, caring, and learning how to learn. All models of journalism education, including the teaching hospital model and the entrepreneurial model, might benefit from embedding these elements more deeply into the fabric of journalism education.

Specifically, three practices should receive greater emphasis in the process of journalism education:

The curriculum and related practical assignments should include elements of analysis and evaluation of the journalism created by students, allowing them the opportunity (and the time!) to critique both the product created and the impact of that product on the news consumers and those impacted by the news.

The curriculum should emphasize that both journalistic processes and the underlying stories involve fellow humans, with all of the foibles, insecurities, power issues, and neuroses that accompany human behavior.

More emphasis is needed throughout the curriculum on learning how to learn, providing better preparation for evolving journalism practices, media, and content.

Implementing the first recommendation for additional analysis and evaluation will necessarily slow the process of teaching, and reduce the number of stories produced. However, the overall quality of the work and the consideration of the impact of that journalism should have a long-term, positive impact on both the quality of the reporting and the sensitivity of the reporter to the environment.

Implementing the second recommendation, placing a stronger emphasis on the human and caring side of journalism, requires more fundamental attention to the nature of news itself. Attention to these areas will remove presumptions of objectivity and impartiality, replacing them with a sensitivity to the impacts of both the processes and the products of journalism. For example, sources will be less likely to be seen as tools and more likely to be seen as participants in relationships that must be nurtured. Some stories of scandal or victimization might be better left unreported if journalists believe the harm caused outweighs the benefit to the public of telling the story.

Implementing the third recommendation, to emphasize learning how to learn, could require a fundamental recasting of most journalism curricula. Even though the heart of journalism is the acquisition and sharing of information, little attention is paid in most journalism curricula or textbooks to the process of learning. Helping budding journalists learn concepts as fundamental as the difference between short-term and long-term memory, the importance of repetition, and the role that context plays in information retention and application should have a dual impact. First, these journalists will have a more grounded understanding of themselves and practices that will help them retain and apply the information they learn. Second, these journalists will better understand news consumers and factors that will assist (or impede) news consumers from retaining and/or acting on information received through the news media.

These recommendations are not intended to provide a comprehensive application of the revised Bloom's Taxonomy or Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning. They are intended to provide useful illustrations of how both of these educational perspectives can be applied to improve journalism education. It should be noted that a major limitation of this conceptual discussion is that it applies only these two taxonomies. Further research could provide application of other areas of the educational literature to inform journalism education.

Finally, this application of taxonomies of learning to journalism education illustrates the benefits of interdisciplinary work. The perspectives on teaching and learning provide specific guidance for those in the field of journalism education. Integrating these theoretical perspectives can help journalism educators build upon their successes and continue to show their relevance and value to free and democratic societies.