On The Professionalization Of American Journalism Education

Journalism Education in US has been keeping ahead among those in all other countries since it has born. The most obvious character of Journalism Education in US is the "Professional"and the main purpose of that so-called "professional"is to train the skilled journalists to meet the needs of the practical work in media career. Meanwhile, professionalization refers to a developing process from the meaning "Occupation"to "Professionalism". In my opinion, the conception of "Professional"includes three factors: Skill training, Professional Spirit and Academism. Skill Training is the foundation of those three factors and which was required in all kinds of media career and all historic periods. In that case, journalists should firmly handle all kinds of practical skills such as reporting, interviewing, editing and criticize, etc. However, skill training is by no means the only one ingredient, besides, the professional sprit and the ethics codes should be regarded as same important as well. In the US, this professional spirit or code of ethics has been elevated to the height of "media professionalism." From the angle of individual entities, media professionalism represents a series of internalized professional perceptions, beliefs, value systems, professional ethics, and norm of practitioners' conduct. From the angle of institutional norms, these include recognition of eligibility for practice, examplars of manifested professional spirit, institutional internal mechanisms for setting up the norms, self-regulation by industry organizations, as well as rules and regulations for ethical criteria and principles. Academism was later integrated into the former two components as the third factor of 'Professional"accompany with the higher requirements to journalists from the continuing developing society. Since the journalists are required to have more and more ability, the sole skill training is gradually showing less and less predominance in media career. No other than skill training gets along with academy then the professional will have a long last life. Therefore, in their teaching process, educators should combine more theories and knowledge like philosophy, psychology, linguists, history, economy, Nature Science together to join into journalism education and so that the students they trained will be qualified enough to adapt to the continuing developing society. However, we should always make clear that the Academy can not replace to skill training, instead, Academy should keep the balance with skill training, decline to either of which will fall journalism education to the crisis. Nevertheless, the shaping of professional in US was based on its own social background, though it sometimes deficient, it is indeed successful. Compared with the Journalism Education in Europe which emphasis more on Academy and those in Japan which emphasis more on Quality Education, the professional journalism education has its own advantages. In China, journalism education related to American congenitally and we may to some extent accelerate our own Journalism Education by using the reference of US. The dissertation is divided into 8 chapters. The preface introduced the research purpose, meaning, background, innovation and research method; Chapter 2 is the review of history which shows how and why professional journalism education formed in the American history; Chapter 3 is the core of the whole paper and it goes deeply into the thoughts of professional and analyzed the reason why the thoughts constructed; Following that, chapter 4-6 described the current situation of how professional has been put into practice from three aspects as Teaching Content, Teaching approaches and Methods, Educators. Further, we dispose the pitfalls that the Journalism Education in US would most likely to meet and then will make efforts to solve those problems. In chapter 7, we explored a series of new issues that could be put forward in new century and predicted the future prospect of Journalism Education in US; Finally, based on the rethinking of professional in Journalism Education, we drop an evaluation to the professional of Journalism Education in US which includes the relationship among three factors that we mentioned; how Journalism Education in US compared with those in other countries; and whether or how it can really influence the Journalism Education in China.