Romancing the stonewall: why does journalism school fetishize failure?

There could be smart instructors saying smart things at the Ryerson School of Journalism, but their magazine program’s current blog leads one to wonder if their watchdoggery has choked on the corporate tail being chased. Their fundraiser next week is even dubbed “The Pink Slip Party.” While final assignments compiled in the Ryerson Review of Journalism started looking critically into the other side of the media mirror in 1983, the public impression is that students graduate from the program feeling they have studied a futile pursuit, too exasperated to even practice it as most people now do — without pay. Six weeks of postings on the RRJ Blog this semester reflect a fixation with frustration, as media companies once anticipated to provide post-diploma employment struggle with solvency, as surviving executives pretend they each have plans for the future. How does this obsession with other people’s problems help in the real world of making media? The lack of attention paid to new platforms for self-expression is palpable. This isn’t exclusively a Ryerson dilemma, of course — even yesterday’s RRJ bit was wearily headlined “The future of news is a future of conferences about the future of news.” Maybe journalism would be better off reclassified as a business program, where an entrepreneurial spirit can be fostered — one that doesn’t involve pitching their freelance story ideas to editors beaten into indifference.