Training for journalists, continued.

Elevated from the comments. By reader "sab":

John S Knight, the grandfather of the late lamented Knight Ridder News, and also publisher of my hometown paper (a tiny paper, but the Knight Ridder flagship) used to say that he really didn't want to hire journalism majors at all, but that he thought it was a bad idea to exclude from his hiring pool so many applicants who had always wanted to be journalists (i.e. journalism majors.)

In other words he thought their training was not helpful, but he hoped their desire to be journalists and their own personal efforts could overcome the limitations in knowledge and training caused by majoring in journalism instead of something more useful (history, economics, any science degree.)

I haven't been to journalism school, so I don't really know what they offer and whether it is of value. But I do know that whenever I ask people whether or not I should go back to school in journalism to further my career I am always told to save my time and money -- even by somebody who has a masters in journalism.

I think that colleges should certainly offer classes in journalism. I think some training would have helped me immensely. Just not years of it. If there are workshops covering different areas of the craft and ethics of reporting, I'd take them. Degrees? Not so much.