As journalism faces a crisis, what is the future of journalism education?

The news in June that the Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media in Bengaluru will no longer be offering programmes in journalism due to inadequate applications has revived existential questions around the profession – and, by extension, the need for an education for it.

What has happened to IIJNM does not seem to be an exception. Reports point to other media institutes also seeing a decline in admissions, or preferences of students shifting from journalism to other fields of the media such as advertising and public relations.

Among the reasons cited for rising disillusionment with journalism are the financial precariousness that comes with working in the industry and operating in political contexts that render the profession vulnerable. These are legitimate concerns with no easy answers – perhaps a discussion for another time.

But what about journalism education? While the power of journalism professors and scholars is limited in addressing the factors mentioned above, is there something that they can do to make the education for it more open, flexible and utilitarian?

Recalibrating journalism education

Over the course of three years since I have been taking classes relating to journalism, I have found myself constantly recalibrating my approach to teaching it in an attempt to make it more relevant and broad-based.

Firstly, I have attempted to reframe what journalism is and what all it entails in today’s context. The digital era, especially marked by the rise and dominance of digital intermediaries (search engines, social media platforms, and now artificial intelligence platforms), has been constantly changing the very nature of journalism over the last two decades.

In such a context, students need to be taught about a journalism that is much more loose in terms of its boundaries and not just confined to our normative understandings of the profession. I make it a point to emphasise that those aspiring to become journalists need not have to land up working in institutionalised settings, part of a typical news organisation structure and the hierarchies that come with it. They may also end up becoming independent content creators or curators dealing with contemporary happenings across different platforms. Or they might end up straddling both sides.

Of course, the teaching of professional values and ethical norms associated with journalism must remain common to all. However, what should not be done on the part of media and journalism educators is inherently attaching a status of superiority to the former and that of inferiority to the latter.

Changed roles

A related aspect is the roles people perform in journalism today. The normative understanding amongst students of the roles they would be expected to perform in the profession may be limited to those of reporters, editors, anchors and so on. However, it needs to be emphasised to them that the kind of roles they would be offered in the profession might not align with these expectations.

Media scholars have pointed towards the centrality of audiences in today’s journalism. Many journalistic accounts today have become “iterative” in nature, subject to constant evaluation and correction. Journalists often find themselves functioning as “secondary eyewitnesses”, managing and curating information already posted online. The production of original content may not be a central task for a lot of journalists today.

In that context, new and unique roles involving organisation and curation of content or information management, community and audience management have become key in the profession, aside from the typical roles of reporting and editing. These roles are especially relevant in an environment where the amount of information is overwhelming and there is a need to guide audiences who might often be left with a feeling of incompleteness. With generative AI’s popularity soaring and its adoption across industries over the last couple of months, one could also expect newcomers being hired for roles such as prompt engineering in the journalism industry (if it isn’t already happening).

Thus, an education in journalism should not just be accepting of such roles, but also seek to constantly revise curriculums and devise best practices and ethical guidelines to adequately train students for a constantly evolving scenario. Simply looking the other way or scoffing at such roles and lamenting the death of “old-school journalism” would not be helpful to anyone.

For instance, those looking to join the field need to be taught what the role of curator could be in a newsroom, how the ethical concerns surrounding the usage of content from outside sources can be addressed and how such a form of content production can generate value, even if its practitioners are not partaking in producing original content.

Similarly, devising guidelines on the ethical use of content produced by generative AI in journalistic settings needs to start at the level of the educational institutes itself. Whether one likes it or not, generative AI is going to be used by journalists for their work in some way or the other going forward. By not acknowledging it or ignoring the development of frameworks for its ethical use or putting in place blanket zero-tolerance policies, one will only be encouraging its improper use.

Seeking out good journalism

Another factor that might be discouraging students from taking up journalism could be to do with how the profession is being seen as undergoing a process of rot and decay, in the Indian context at least.

The conduct of the television news media has played no small part in contributing to that narrative, with coverage that is often partisan, sensationalist or plain dishonest, or a combination of all. The pop culture portrayals of the profession – cue films or television shows – don’t help either.

By the virtue of its show and pomp, it is easy to equate the state of the TV news media as being symptomatic of the entire journalistic industry. In such a situation, what gets hidden in plain sight is the impactful work being done by various print as well as online publishers – both in terms of the kind of stories being covered as well as innovative formats of delivering news.

Good journalism still exists in India, that too in plenty, but one just needs to know where to look. For instance, in terms of content, there are a myriad of news publishers one can find that have produced extensive reportage and analyses in beats that might be considered overlooked – health, education, rural, environment and climate change – adopting a grassroots and/or data-heavy approach. In terms of formats, there are initiatives offering smartly curated credible news across platforms such as Instagram, email newsletters or mobile applications.

It is such coverage that needs to be the focus of journalism education – with reporters and editors involved in those stories serving as role models – rather than fixating on the broadcast news entertainers who just happen to be categorised as journalists due to our inertia.

Of course, one must not ignore the fact that many of the journalists behind these hard-hitting stories operate in precarious settings both financially and politically, making their work all the more laudable.

A recalibration of journalism education will also not help solve either the financial or political precariousness associated with the profession. However, what it could do is to make the pedagogical approach more open and relevant keeping in mind the changed circumstances – making students aware of the fact that the avenues for journalistic work after education could lie not just in typical institutionalised settings; that the roles may often not correspond to their expectations and preparing them for the same; and, that there are a myriad of examples of news coverage that could be cited to counter the doom-and-gloom narrative about the profession in India.

Kabir Upmanyu is an Assistant Professor at the Symbiosis Centre for Media and Communication.