Extra! Extra! Read all about it — Penn recently created a minor in journalistic writing. Drawing on the resources of high-profile English professors with journalism backgrounds, the new program is likely to be popular among students.
But in this day and age, the media landscape is rapidly changing, and a good journalist needs to be much more than a good writer. A minor whose courses are almost exclusively focused on writing isn’t going to truly prepare students to be working journalists. Though the program is named “journalistic writing minor” and not “journalism minor,” we’d like to see the course offerings expanded so Penn could truly have a program with the latter name.
The Creative Writing Program and the Dean’s Advisory Board should work with other academic programs to make the minor more comprehensive. Faculty and administrators should collaborate with the Annenberg School of Communication to include courses on the media industry and media behavior. They should also look into incorporating courses about video and web into the minor, because multimedia skills are becoming increasingly important as online journalism becomes more and more prominent.
Penn prides itself on its interdisciplinary nature. An academic program relating to journalism should be no exception.
