Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/313

 THE AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

VOLUME XI NOVEMBER, IQ05 NUMBERS

A LABORATORY EXPERIMENT IN JOURNALISM

PROFESSOR GEORGE E. VINCENT The University of Chicago

The enthusiasm of the universities during the past fifteen or twenty years for " getting into closer relations with the national life" as the phrase runs has led them to establish technical schools and courses of many kinds. Of these several notably curricula in engineering and agriculture have been undoubtedly successful. Even schools of finance, giving instruction in bank- ing, insurance, railway administration, etc., have met with some favor from the business world. But academic courses in journal- ism have so far failed either to define themselves clearly within the university or to commend themselves to a cynical newspaper- dom without. The proposal of Mr. Joseph Pulitzer to endow a school of journalism at Columbia University revived for a time the flagging interest in the experiment, but the character of the studies outlined, and even the vigorous defense of the plan by its author, 1 seemed not to carry conviction to the doubters.

The reasons for this skepticism are not far to seek. While as a rule editors admit that, other things being equal, a college training is of distinct value to a newspaper worker, they say that the university cannot create conditions in which the future reporter or leader-writer must learn the technique of his profes-

l " The College of Journalism," North American Review, May, 1904.

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