Sue Burzynski Bullard, a journalism professor in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at UNL, has been named to a task force looking for ways to bridge the gap between the media industry and academia.
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC) President Paul Voakes created the task force because of changes in the industry and a widening divide between media educators and professionals. Some of the skills taught in classes are not what professionals need anymore, and too often research conducted by educators is no longer relevant to a rapidly evolving industry.
“The idea for the task force started at a meeting few years ago that was made up of leaders of all sorts of journalism organizations,” said Bullard, who is also on the executive board of the American Copy Editors Society. “We started talking about how there was this huge disconnect between the industry and educators…. The consensus, and I felt pretty strongly about it, was that professionals aren’t really reading about what educators are doing in research. They don’t subscribe to academic journals so, even if there is good research out there, they aren’t going to see it.”
This stems not only from professionals not reading academic journals, but also because of the lag time between when research was conducted and when it is published. Too often, the research is outdated or irrelevant.
Bullard said one idea she has for the task force is to summarize research immediately after it is presented at a conference and publish it on websites already accessed by media professionals instead of waiting for it to make its way through the lengthy peer review process for academic journals.
Other ideas to bridge the gap included offering incentives, awards and summer work for faculty. Bullard would like to see more faculty spend time in newsrooms during the summer months so they can see exactly what it is the industry needs students to know to work and be successful.
“Two years ago I won a grant to spend a couple of weeks in the Chicago Tribune newsroom,” she said. “And even though I had only been out of the newsroom a few years, things had changed so dramatically that it was clear to me, after that experience, we needed to do some things different in our classrooms to prepare students better.”
Bullard spent most of her career as a newspaper editor before she began teaching in 2007.
The eight-member task force is working on bridging the gap in such a way that benefits the industry and academia. The group is expected to make its recommendations at next year’s AEJMC conference in August.
“We need to do more things together,” Bullard said. “We need to help the industry and…by helping the industry and making those connections, we help our students.”