| This narrative, pragmatic case study examines the academic, professional, and social cultures that led to a call for, and implementation of, sweeping curriculum reform in the Graduate Journalism Program at Columbia University in New York. The writer/researcher, a veteran journalist and doctoral candidate in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, relies heavily on low-inference descriptors gathered from the principals involved in what became a topic of widespread discussion within the academic and journalistic communities as well as the general public. This study includes context of the long-standing debate about educating students on the 'craft' of journalism and/or the 'discipline' of mass communications theory; whether journalism is the stuff of trade schools or rigorous academic study; and, in particular, what role a great Ivy League University such as Columbia has, can, should, and will play in advancing the practice of one of the minor professions. The writer/researcher concludes the reforms eventually enacted at Columbia, and closely monitored in journalism schools and newsrooms across the country, had been all-but finalized years before by previous administrators and researchers; that little new of academic substance was gained by the delay; but that at the same time, the changes might never have been brought to fruition, or likely would have been delayed still further, were it not for the extraordinary intervention of a university president whose personal background and professional agenda forged a political spectacle that spilled far beyond the halls of academe into the national and international media. |
