An Open Letter to SJSU Curriculum Decision-Makers

(For a background in what's going on, read here, here, and here.)

To Whom it May Concern;

As this is my first semester as a journalism major at SJSU, I don't claim to know a great deal about the objectives of the J&MC program. Yet it seems to me that turning JOUR 163 into a software teaching class would be detrimental to the students, and the department as a whole. While it's true that commercial skills will benefit us in our field, I believe that it is more important for this class to focus on exploring new concepts of media so that we can keep up with the developments in the world of journalism.

Blogging is one such development. This semester, in Lilly Buchwitz's MCOM 72 class, I feel that I have grown immensely as a journalist by creating and maintaining this blog. I believe this is because the focus in class was on how to become a good blogger, not simply how to blog. Sure, a knowledge of how to use blogging tools such as Blogger would have helped me get started, but I'm glad we didn't waste time in class going over those kinds of details. In my experience, we learn best by doing things, not just by being taught about them.

From what I hear, the students in this semester's section of JOUR 163 have been given wonderful opportunities to explore "new media" and emerging forms of journalism, including blogging and podcasting. I believe this is key at a time when "old media" is on a downslide. Professors Steve Sloan and Cynthia McCune have done a revolutionary thing by bringing in top-notch guest speakers and encouraging their students to take part in the cutting edge of media. As SJSU alumni Robert Scoble said, "You can learn InDesign from a book." I'm willing to bet that what the students of JOUR 163 learned this semester was much more valuable that anything a textbook could provide. I hope that you will decide to keep the course curriculum as is.