We went back in person this year. That prompted a spate of questions that were on everyone’s lips in fall 2021: How is your school doing it? Are they requiring vaccines? What’s the mask protocol? What about Zoom? I think we all look forward to the day when these questions might be a distant memory. It might feel like a utopian fantasy right now, but it’s a day that cannot come soon enough. Nevertheless, we had quite the year together, both in-person and virtually (and sometimes hybrid). And we were even able to end the year with a picnic together in Schenley Park!
I’d like to take a moment in this column to speak about an area of our practices that has continually come up in recent times—and one that I cannot treat adequately, I will admit from the start: journalism. It is a platitude to say that the landscape of journalism has changed dramatically in all our lifetimes (no matter your age, dear reader). We still have a great number of alums connected to the department whose relationships to Pitt English were fundamentally shaped by their journalism courses and by writing for publications such as The Pitt News. They have remained in contact with us and told us about how those experiences, the skills they learned, and the modes of writing they mastered have benefited them for decades.
In most cases, this meant traditional print media newspapers. As we know, these media are struggling financially in the current media ecosphere, which digital startups and even simply digital versions of newspapers dominate the marketplace. The growth of this ecosphere has expanded what counts as “journalism” and, with that, has enabled more of our students in many different courses—from all of our programs and majors—to think critically about how they can contribute to the contemporary journalistic environment, all while keeping journalism anchored in its Writing core.
Journalism, that is, still relies on its traditional strengths of investigation of facts, sources and verification; close attention to editing; publication and platforms; and an intense focus on narrative, point of view, and human stories. Add to that what we can now do with audio narrative, with web-based and interactive texts, with video-based storytelling, with photo essays, and with multimodal compositions that blend all these elements, and you have the recipe for different readerly and consumer experiences than print media alone affords. And these types of stories can be consumed instantly when posted online, rather than relying on once-per-day delivery.
Fortunately for our department, we have expert teachers in a variety of courses in all our programs who can help students learn the skills and master the narrative forms that employ these new media and platforms. Our students have done exactly that, and they have taken those skills to some very impressive places. But they started very close to home: we launched, for the first time this summer, a dedicated summer internship program for the English department with The Pitt News, which itself is a multimedia publication these days.
It's easy to lament the state of journalism in America these days. We hear the cries of “fake news,” we bemoan the poor quality of writing and the political hacks at various outlets. We dread when our browsers try to tempt us with the latest clickbait of faux-journalistic listicles, such as “15 Things You Must Know about Prince Harry.” If we want journalism to improve, whether in its long-standing forms or in its newer platforms—or, ideally, in both—we are in a good position to affect that change through the faculty in our department. I’d be foolish to try to predict what journalism will look like in 10, 20, or 50 years. But I’m grateful to have colleagues who are eager to help shape its path forward.
—Gayle Rogers
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