…is give class credit to any student who gets published during the semester.
I had a former professor and Inquirer writer Tom Gibbons speak my “Journalism and Trauma” class (one of my favorites, taught by Pulitzer Prize winner Jim MacMillan). In the lecture, he said he often gave students extra credit for getting published.
Why isn’t this done more often?
This would help combat reason #4 in my “Confessions of a Journalism Student” post, where students are often forced to choose between doing work for an internship/school paper and doing work for class.
Now, I understand not enacting this policy if you are teaching the class to write features and they are only getting hard news published.
But for more general writing and journalism classes, why not?
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Shouldn’t “real world” recognition count for credit, anyway? Look at universities that are powered heavily by co-op and internship programs. Real world experience and employer evaluations (most of whom are simply pass/fail) count as credit. Why shouldn’t a more concrete evaluation from a “credible journalist” count as credit too?
Not to discredit citizen journalism and blogging, but I think that your definition of “hard press” here is critical. If a publication designates a portion of its paper-based press to you, your name, your words, and your thoughts, there’s NO reason why a university shouldn’t recognize that.
I don’t think this is or should be limited to journalism students. If within your discipline, you go out of your way to market and share your work, or if your work contains information that’s valuable enough to merit print, it should be recognized.
Thanks for writing this, Sean. You’ve rekindled an interest of mine and, along with Kelly Sutton’s post about petri-dish universities at HackCollege.com (where he mentions you), I’ve got lots to think about.
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Im glad you liked Kelly’s post, he does a great job.
I did not mean to single out the more “traditional” journalism methods, however as of today it is largely what we are being taught. On the flip side , if they ever wise up and offer a blogging/new media class, starting a blog should give you credit as well.
This can apply to nearly every subject, but journalism is unique because in class you produce nearly the same exact thing you would be getting paid for in the market. Some majors don’t work this way.