It’s a lovely sunny day and I’m feeling happy, but I  took a deep breath and mentally prepared myself to feel miserable before reading Paul’s post [Should journalism degrees still prepare students for a news industry that doesn’t want them? | Online Journalism Blog] .

Paul’s question is highly controversial and, of course, the responses make for very interesting reading.

One thing that dominates a lot of journalism degrees is the philosophy that journalism is a profession and only the ‘pros’ can do it well. It’s this kind of arrogance that needs to change. Courses need to be far more inclusive.

I agree with Paul’s view that students often come in with a ‘mono-media’ view of working in the industry. We’ve just ‘re-valed’ our degree at Solent and hopefully, with the new structure, we’ll beat this kind of thinking out of students [not literally] at level 1!

Kevin Anderson’s view on changing ‘mindshift’  is important. I may want to show his YouTube video to my class – it seems quite important.

I also totally agree with Alison.  On the positive side, students have this amazing  opportunity to create their own brands online. Eventually, if they wish, they will seek jobs in MSM or perhaps not.  Well-known journalists seem to be becoming multimedia  brands themselves. They are bigger than the newspapers and websites that they write for.