ABSTRACT
Professional journalists have been skeptical of the value of college programs in journalism since the first one was established briefly at Washington College following the Civil War. None of the 27 leading journalists profiled by Wingate (1875) supported the idea of academic training in journalism, and a decade later newspaper professionals were saying that the idea of journalism education had “always been a dire and utter failure” (“The Amateur School,” 1888, p. 8). More than four decades after the founding of the first school of journalism in 1908, it was apparent that a number of journalists still did not value journalism education much. A 1951 survey of past participants in Harvard University’s Nieman Fellowship program for professional journalists found many of them had strong reservations about the value of academic training for journalism (Serafini, 1984). Throughout the rest of the century, media-related education was to come under attack from media professionals.
