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The faculty senate at Northwestern University has formally accused NU’s administration of abolishing democracy at the Medill School of Journalism. A resolution passed unanimously June 6 by the General Faculty Committee says it found NU’s “suspension of faculty governance at [Medill] to be unacceptable and in violation of the University’s Statutes.” The resolution predicts “curricular changes that are ill considered . . . the demoralization and enmity of the faculty . . . damage to the national reputation of the School . . . the loss of and the inability to hire faculty who believe that the faculty’s role in governance is important for students, faculty and the public.”
The backdrop to this blunt resolution is a series of internal and external audits in recent years that judged Medill--which enjoys seeing itself as a journalism school without equal--as an academic basket case. President Henry Bienen and provost Lawrence Dumas stepped in. Skipping the usual faculty search committee they named John Lavine (pictured) the next dean in late 2005, and in early 2006 they booted aside the incumbent, who had months to go on his contract. Lavine was already on site: he was the founding director of NU's Media Management Center, a fee-charging profit center housed in the journalism school.
An article on Lavine in the fall 2006 issue of the university alumni magazine said he’d been given “free rein to transform the school.” It explained that Bienen and Dumas “suspended formal faculty oversight at Medill for the 3 1/2-year transition period in which Lavine will shepherd the integration and revamping of the [Integrated Marketing Communications] and journalism programs and faculty.” IMC and journalism are Medill’s two basic divisions.
The resolution continues, “If the Administration in the future concludes that an unacceptable academic situation warrants the temporary suspension of the normal role of the faculty ‘to prescribe and define the course of study’ [a quote from NU’s statutes], such suspension should be only for a set, limited period and only after formal approval by the Board of Trustees made after the consideration of the views of all concerned faculty.”
Medill professors I’ve spoken with say a three-and-a-half-year suspension is hardly “temporary.” And it’s news to them if the Board of Trustees had any say in the matter, let alone heard from “concerned faculty.” The GFC resolution was signed by the committee chair, law professor John Elson, and submitted to Bienen and Dumas. They apparently haven't responded. Elson wouldn’t comment, but Lavine did. He said the GFC didn’t talk to him before it acted, and its members obviously don’t know what he knows.
And what’s that? “We’ve had more faculty involvement in the last 18 months than in the decade before that. We have 12 major committees reaching across the entire faculty.” True enough about the dozen committees. But unhappy professors say Lavine just pays lip service to them. A new curriculum is going to be introduced over the next four years, and although professors have been consulted individually, one told me, “We don’t vote on anything. We have no vote. Anybody who dissents is labeled ‘antichange.’” Another outsider heads up the new curriculum project--Mary Nesbitt, who'd been (and remains) managing director of the Media Management Center's readership institute before director of the women-in-newspaper-management project at the Media Management Center until Lavine brought her over.
Lavine wasn’t blindsided by the resolution. Clarke Caywood, who teaches PR and marketing for the IMC side of Medill, was on the GFC when the resolution was proposed, though not when it was voted on (he says he'd have voted "aye"). He says, “I told Lavine a few months ago--truth to power--‘You should know it’s coming.’ His reaction was, ‘I think I’m doing the right thing.’ I don’t disagree with him, but I think his way of doing it leaves something to be desired.” That said, Caywood believes that the Medill faculty has long had a "passive-aggressive" relationship with the administration, with unwillingness to get involved running a close race with willingness to take offense.
To be fair, Lavine did email students a copy of the new curriculum last month just before school let out in order to get student input. The e-mail was a mere three months later than Lavine said it would come out.
I am discouraged to see that in this time of blurring lines between journalism and marketing that Medill has become a follower of the trend instead of a leader standing on principles.
I am concerned that the committees in place are merely smokescreens to allow this unfortunate transformation (that is undoubtedly harming the school's reputation) to continue.
Please ... Get student input. Put a journalist in charge of the journalism program and reassert Medill's place as a gold standard of how journalism SHOULD be done and not how money, marketing and special interest can corrode this public trust.
Instead of sweating the school's reputation, let's care instead about the hack administrators who are overruling faculty by fiat and the talented professors getting pushed out of the school based on pure spite. Lavine fancies himself a revolutionary, and he is -- but he's more Pol Pot than George Washington.
I don't know if my attitudes had any impact overall, but I think there are reasons why Columbia's undergrad J-program is now larger than Medill's--and it's not just our school's very generous admission policy.
However, while I support change at Medill, I believe the change needs to come from a consensus of faculty, not a management guy with bottom line on his mind and an academic ethics disorder. There are plenty of decent faculty at Medill who need to be given the opportunity to look at their own curriculum and challenge their own creativity to meet the needs of the future.
Len Strazewski
Medill 1975
If not for the professors, my days at the school would have been a complete loss. And now, I have the pleasure of watching them be pushed aside by an arrogant administration. Steve Garnett, Mindy Trossman and Jon Ziomek (just to name a few) are the types of professors that made an indelible impact on my life, but alas, they have been "removed" and "reassigned" to positions or projects where future students won't have the benefit of their teaching.
THE MEDIUM IS NOT THE MESSAGE!
Tkx,
Tom Johnson
tom@jtjohnson.com
They make us buy cameras and don't tell us how to use them. They are getting rid of the clients in DC, so we can't get clips anymore. Dean Lavine hasn't even visited a single one fo my classes. This is the worst place ever.
Shouldn't the Medill News Service have a monopoly on its own hometown, at least?
Lavine has been eliminating the gems of the school!
Journalism is being assaulted on many fronts: by the government, by propaganda, and by the erosion of public regard for the free press.
Therefore, the major journalism schools should be focused on addressing THOSE concerns, and *quality* writing and reporting, to win back the public's trust.
Can someone please slip a link to this blog to the president of the university? He chose Lavine and he needs to know that Medill's prestige is being eroded among the journalism community. Even if Medill isn't a huge money-maker, having a top-notch program has helped NU's reputation. Does he care?
I'm very sorry that I wasted thousands of dollars on my little misadventure. I can't tell you how turned-off I am from journalism.
Who exactly thought it would be a good idea to put a businessman in charge of an academic program?
Over the past several years, however, it's become clear that Medill has totally abdicated its responsibility to prepare students for the world they'll be entering.
They come out today shockingly ignorant. contemptuous of anyone who isn't, and with a passive approach to their role in shaping their own future.
The school needed a drastic shakeup. It couldn't possibly do a worse job with the resources it had.
Just one opinion from a narrow perspective.
Even the good ideas he DOES have are poorly executed. Seriously, someone find some students and faculty members and ask them about those friggin' laptops they've been saddled with, the ones that were shilled to them for $3k a pop, including free but crappy tech support. They look like Russian surplus from the Cold War era.
kind of botched that metaphor didn't I?
Cut the crap, Levine!
Do you want to go down in Northwestern History as the man who ruined Medill? The Jim Florio of the Medill School of Journalism? (Look it up.)
Don't stomp out quality journalism.
Current Medill students, don't lose heart. Maybe practice some of your reporting and writing skills on your new dean. Write about what you find in the Daily Northwestern. Write news reports. Write columns. Don't let up. Get attention.
Medill is still a great journalism school -- stand your ground.
Future editors will be impressed. And side with you.
I know I will.
--From a reporter who could be your boss one day. ;)
If you don't like where something is going -- change it!
An apathetic attitude, whining -- "I wasted my money!" -- doesn't do anything.
You got into journalism, if you're like me, because you care.
Show that you care. You'll feel a lot better.
And redeem the school's name in the process.
Good luck.
I had always planned on donating some money to Medill when I had a bit more ... after Lavine's changes, I never will.
I think it will be rather difficult for Medillians to make significant contributions to journalism -- how can we refine American journalism when we're simply taught how to fit into the current media market? We'd need something much greater than an example of "what not to do," certainly.
Under Lavine's reign, we weren't required to take proper writing classes, but rather were drilled in test classes. We were instructed to write for an "audience," and weren't challenged to think critically about the world around us. Oh, but we do have lots of expensive technology equipment that we don't really know how to use.
I saw Lavine speak at an alumni gathering and I think his perspective is fairly sound. Anyone who has listened to him closely or read the school's materials carefully will see that the aim of the new endeavors is to enhance relevance in response to changes in how news and information gets consumed and created in this day and age. While it's sort of fun to get all worked up by deciding he's trying to eviscerate journalistic integrity, I just don't see it.
Just like "strong mayor" policies in cities like Oakland or Washington D.C. I get it that any suspension of normal governance procedures isn't to be taken lightly. It's only warranted when big changes are needed. It strikes me as telling that outsiders to Medill see the need for change but those of us from the inside seem unwilling to admit that big change was needed because it threatens our own sense of greatness.
Clearly a policy of "free-reign" is controversial but let's pause and take a minute to consider why a university would undertake such an extraordinary measure, knowing that it would be criticized for doing so. Things need to get mighty screwed up for something like this to happen.
In so many fields it seems like highly ranked schools stagnate and fall victim to their own past sucess. Innovation seems unnecessary and risky if you believe in your own pr and think you have and deserve the best reputation.
I think Lavine is simply trying to narrow that gap between the ivory tower and the real world in a place that has been falling behind the times for years.
Yes it's a shake-up and big change is challenging and unsettling though at best revitalizing. Still, our time can be better spent actively influencing the process than bystanding and complaining about it.
"enhance relevance." - How? And why at the exclusion of the Legal Rpa, for example?
"unsettling though at best revitalizing" -- How is it revitalizing? That's a great word, but where's the meaning?
The people who dislike Medill's new direction aren't scared of change. Journalists have to adapt and change every day. We switch jobs every couple of years and move to new cities.
We aren't afraid to leave the status quo.
But we are smart and we do know what journalism demands, and we see that the new curriculum isn't preparing students as well as it was.
New technology is great, but it shoudln't be at the expense of the meat and potatoes reporting.
Cut the spin. Tell us how we can "actively influence" the process when all opposition to the plan is censored?
In my own career I’ve seen merit in developing greater insight into end-users. Who are they, how do they intend to engage my work? Same goes for considering where/how my stories will appear and considering this beforehand to increase the impact of my work.
The bottom line is that reportorial quality and consideration of audience aren’t polar opposites. Same goes for technology versus meat and potatoes reporting. They can and should be mutually reinforcing.
It’s curious to me that the previous respondent writes in the plural voice and claims to know the motivation of all who dislike current changes. If that’s not spin I don’t know what is.
It’s also foolish to equate day to day adaptation with major change. Just like journalists, soldiers have to constantly adapt to change and move from location to location. That’s a fundamentally different order of change than questioning basic operation assumptions or rethinking core strategies.
Revitalization can come from questioning long unchallenged traditions and practices. It can also come from seeing change take root and realizing some benefit from new approaches. Sure that’s abstract but I’m referring to how major change can be revitalizing in a general sense.
I thought it would be patronizing to suggest specific ways we Medillians might influence the process but my respondent, and the minions (s)he speaks for, argues otherwise. So here goes: What about truly organizing alums/students to act in a more collective voice? At a more modest level how many here have written the dean with specific concerns or suggestions? How about checking in with favorite faculty and sounding them out? I’m sure others have even smarter ideas than this. I’m guilty of inaction too. I’m just saying that complaining on a blog is different than trying to actively influence what’s going on. My sense is that Medill has committed to general strategic goals but much about exactly how those goals are reached can be influenced.
Your arguments, which echo Lavine's, make sense. You and he are right: Journalists must understand their readers or "end-users," as you call them. And you are both right that reportorial quality and consideration of audience aren't mutually exclusive.
Yes, change must happen at Medill, but what's going on has little to do with understanding an audience. Instead, administrators are cutting back on writing and reporting training. Guest lecturers are visiting classes to persuade students that newspapers will soon be dead, if they aren't already. Wonderful, experienced instructors are facing new and hastily-designed curricula they don't know how to, or simply cannot, implement. Students are being told to purchase thousands of dollars worth of fancy technology, barely any of which they have used in classes so far. Lavine promises this will soon change, but I'm skeptical. What is the purpose of every student owning Adobe Fireworks and Microsoft Access? (These are but two of the dozens of required applications, which cost over $1K.)
While I'm sympathetic to several of the arguments of Lavine supporters, I don't believe they realize that the dean's rhetoric doesn't match his actions.
Consider this. Lavine quietly made a semantic change last year that received little attention: He removed two words from the school's name. No longer do I attend the Medill School of Journalism; it's now simply the Medill School. Perhaps this seems insignificant, but I find the dean's explanation telling. Medill isn't only a journalism school, he says when asked. It's a school of so many things: journalism, marketing, media management, advertising... the list goes on, but I can't remember the rest.
Certainly, the shortened name indicates that journalism is no longer the school's sole primary focus. But I'm willing to go further and argue that Medill is becoming something other than a journalism school. The new administration exhibits fascination with technology, pessimism about the future of print media, and disinterest or disdain for teaching writing and reporting. That doesn't sound like what goes on at journalism school, even in 2020.
To modify a Douglas Adams quote: If it looks less and less like a duck, and it quacks less and less like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that it's stopped being a duck.
Perhaps that is why the Dean is too busy to comment here or to the MANY grads that have started e-mailing him about their dissatisfaction with his changes.
Is this really where the Administration's priorities are at?
I'm glad I graduated several years ago before having to put up with what sounds like poor organization under b/s marketing-style principles.
But I'm worried that the $500 per month that I'll be paying for my Medill education for nearly two more decades will seem less worth it if the school's current leadership runs its reputation into the ground.
I do not like the current web page, for example, which blurs the line between IMC and the journalism program more than ever. I'd prefer a church-state separation between journalism and marketing communications. But ha, maybe that website is a reflection of the current state of corporate media after all...
I've interviewed Lavine. He is excellent at handling reporters' questions. But he MUST now concede that he , at the very least, failed in communicating Medill 2020.
Medill's reputaion has been severely tarnished. I propose that Lavine hold a townhall meeting sometime this fall, inviting all interested alumni, local media, facluty and students to ask him face-to-face their concerns. I believe Lavine's views should be tested in a public forum. Newspaper articles and blogs are not enough to save the school.