Journalism department needs serious help

Sure, we'll get some photos from somewhere. Unfortunately, the department doesn't even seem to know. The plan, I think, is to have freelancers take the photos, but even the journalism department doesn't know. 

The department chairman, Lee Brown, admitted as much in a conversation last month. 

But there will be no photojournalism students next semester. There will be an intermediate photo class in fall, but people who enroll are just learning how to use a camera. 

All of the photojournalism classes have been disbanded. Wayne Kelly, the former photojournalism option head, retired last semester with no one to take his place. 

Brown said it would be at least two years before he would try to pick up the photojournalism option again, but only if photojournalism students started pouring into the department. But why would they if all the necessary classes have been cancelled? 

It's very hard to come out with quality issues when only four photographers are on staff. 

The magazine option has been dropped and hasn't come back. If students could see a University Magazine from 1992 their jaws would drop. It has 40 pages, all in glossy color, and looks like a professional publication. Look at the magazine now. That's what happens when the department merges both newspaper and magazine sections, which is what happened in '95-'96. One will get left out and funds dry up. 

And at the California Intercollegiate Press Association conference awards April 14-16, the magazine won eight awards to the Forty-Niner's two in the mail-in competition. 

With all due respect, William Mulligan, the previous journalism department chairman and current Forty-Niner publisher, did a questionable job in recruiting students for both the magazine and the Forty-Niner. Kelly did the same with the photojournalism option. The jury's still out for Brown, who's been chairman for a year and a half. 

Blame a faulty journalism department that doesn't recruit outside its own basement. Blame a publisher who seems to not care. 

Luckily, the students care.  At the CIPA newspaper conference, three Forty-Niner photographers placed, and three Forty-Niner editors placed third or higher in the competition. 

When the journalism department lost its accreditation, that didn't change anything in the photojournalism option. What the loss did do was eliminate any chance for high school students to discover that a department even exists here. 
 
Wes Woods II is the city editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.