Exciting
times for On-line Forty-Niner
These are exciting times for the On-line
Forty-Niner, which is in the process of
making the transition from a departmental
paper to an independent campus newspaper.
To learn more about these changes, and to
have a say in this process, I urge all members
of the university community to come to a
town-hall style meeting at the University
Student Union on Tuesday from 1 to 3 p.m.
in #224 (Huntington Room). Refreshments
will be served.
At this gathering On-line Forty-Niner editor
Kimberly Pasquis and University Magazine
editor Amanda Wright will field questions
from the audience on how students can make
a difference by participating in these publications,
and tell how the change will provide more
opportunities to hear more diverse student
voices from across the campus.
For many years now the On-line Forty-Niner
has been a departmental publication, where
one or more department of journalism classes
directly or indirectly provide nearly all
the copy for the newspaper.
Last fall, however, an external reviewer
said such newspapers were clearly the exception
nationally, and that Cal State Long Beach’s
journalism school daily was the first lab
paper he had encountered in his 25 years
of curriculum reviews.
The department of journalism faculty came
to the same conclusion, and voted late last
semester to turn the On-line Forty-Niner
into an independent campus newspaper.
There are two major reasons this change.
First, when a department focuses its energies
on publishing a newspaper, that department
runs the risk of training students to work
for the departmental newspaper. We
can do better. Instead, we should be training
students to better understand, work in and
critically evaluate the mass media.
At the end of this academic year, the department
of journalism will have added eight new
tenure-track faculty members over a five-year
period. That’s a phenomenal growth spurt
for a department with fewer than a dozen
tenure-track faculty, and it reflects the
tremendous vote of confidence from both
the university and College of Liberal Arts,
the journalism school’s home. These new
faculty members are eager to teach courses
that are not currently in a curriculum focused,
in part, on putting out our lab newspaper.
Such needed courses may include business
reporting, environmental writing, science
communication, political reporting, media
management, minorities and the media and
others. A departmental committee currently
is revamping our curriculum.
In addition, there’s the matter of the First
Amendment and media ethics — subjects we
teach in our classes but need to better
institutionalize in practice. If we truly
believe in a free press and in free speech,
as well as the need for journalists to responsibly
use the Constitutional gift Americans have
been given, then we have no other choice
than to empower our students to independently
operate a campus paper.
As a result, the department of journalism
voted in December to form a transitional
board to oversee the publication of this
semester’s daily newspaper and lay the foundation
for its independence. This board —made
up of student editors, journalism faculty
and the On-line Forty-Niner advertising
manager — has been meeting this term on
a weekly basis to determine the feasibility
of this change and how the paper might best
be financially supported.
By separating the On-line Forty-Niner from
the department of journalism all CSULB,
students and members of the academic community
will have the ability to write for and contribute
to this newspaper without enrolling in a
journalism class. Now that’s exciting not
only for the On-line Forty-Niner, but for
all of CSULB!
William A. Babcock is the Professor
and Chair for the Department of Journalism.
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