ABSTRACT
Mass media education could follow one of a number of directions based on different visions of its future. Newsom (1985) suggested three possible futures for mass media education: (a) the re-absorption of studies in journalism/mass communication into classical disciplines; (b) the establishment of a few large umbrella mass communication schools that are primarily research oriented but tied to industry; and (c) fragmentation. Under the first option, mass media education would become a subset of sociology or go piecemeal into political science, history, sociology, or possibly English. Under the second option, the few large schools of mass communication would provide graduates for the larger publications rather than provide entry level graduates for smaller publications, who would have to look elsewhere than journalism schools for their new hires. About the third option, fragmentation, she wrote:
Some schools will specialize in various areas like newspapers, magazines, photojournalism and broadcast, with the management of all these in one school. Advertising in all media, and the management of advertising wherever it is practiced, agency or inhouse, may be in another school either mixed with public relations or not. PR may exist apart in still another school teaching all facets and the management of PR agencies, in-house and in counseling. In this case specialists will be teaching and will be moving in and out of industry and academe. (p. 23)
She concluded, however, “It could be (that) without securing our role as an academic discipline, we will have no future.” (p. 44).
