The Press Professor As Dean, Nicholas Lemann Sets a New Course for Columbia’S Journalism School
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Alumni-final 8/8/05 2:45 PM Page 78 ALUMNI The Press Professor As dean, Nicholas Lemann sets a new course for Columbia’s journalism school. Nicholas lemann ’76 seems an unlikely “Things are not great,” Lemann ac- and ethical standards. At home, he’s over- candidate for the role of higher-education knowledges when asked about public seeing a major expansion of the 93-year- reformer. Best known as a columnist and perceptions of American journalism. “We old school’s o≠erings by supplementing Washington correspondent for the New have an unregulated and unlicensed pro- the existing master of science degree, Yorker, he doesn’t hold a graduate degree. He fession—and that’s the way it should be which o≠ers a broad, practical, learn-by- has taught occasional journalism classes, for a free press.” At the same time, he doing syllabus, with a new master of arts but has never held a full-time teaching job. notes, the barriers to entry have dropped: degree consisting of a highly specialized And until two years ago, he had exactly no thanks to websites and blogs, anybody and somewhat more intellectual program experience in university administration. He can publish anything anytime. That cir- that debuts this fall with 26 students. The doesn’t even like the idea that the august cumstance has not only generated tre- new M.A. lets students immerse them- institution he now heads—the Columbia mendous new competitive pressure for selves in such areas as business or science University Graduate School of Journal- the mainstream media, but fueled a credi- journalism. Instructors are themselves top ism—needs reforming. “I thought it could bility crisis as well. practitioners in the fields they teach. be improved,” he says. “I always had in my Lemann acknowledges that even the na- mind an idea about this being an institu- tion’s best-known journalism school can’t In retooling the school’s curriculum, tion that could be taken to the next level, single-handedly salvage the profession’s in- Lemann has stepped squarely into a long- about being a great institution that could tegrity, but he believes that better educa- standing debate about journalism educa- be made even greater.” tion would help. To that end, he has joined tion. Do journalists really need craft- And yet Lemann (pronounced “lem- the leaders of four other prominent jour- specific higher education, or might they be on”), who is entering his third year as nalism schools in a three-year initiative to better o≠ getting a general liberal-arts ed- dean and Henry R. Luce Professor at the intensify journalistic training by, among ucation, or even degrees in the areas they school, is spearheading a series of other things, promoting stricter academic plan to cover? If journalism school is nec- changes that are redi- essary, what should recting its curriculum the curriculum in- for the first time in clude? Finally, as at decades. His e≠ort least one critic has comes in the wake of charged, do journal- media scandals rang- ism schools in gen- ing from revelations of eral—and Columbia’s plagiarism and falsifi- program in particu- cation at the Boston lar—simply teach the Globe and New York elite to report on the Times, to the disclos- elite? ure of a CIA o∞cer’s The debate dates identity by the politi- back at least to the cal columnist Robert mid nineteenth cen- Novak, to a Newsweek tury, when some jour- report about Ameri- nalists for the first can interrogators’ mis- time began viewing treatment of military their craft as a profes- detainees at Guantá- sion worthy of col- namo Bay that was lege-level study. Then, credited to an un- in 1902, Joseph Pulit- named government zer, a Hungarian im- source, blamed for migrant turned mil- deadly rioting abroad, lionaire newspaper and later retracted. Nicholas Lemann publisher, broached Alumni-final 8/8/05 2:45 PM Page 79 the idea of founding a school for journal- the first job,” Lemann explains. “The and some well-known journalists who ists. He envisioned the school teaching whole curriculum flows from that.” viewed a two-year program as unneces- both scholarly subjects—literature, con- sary or too expensive. Newsweek columnist stitutional principles, history—and practi- Lemann’s first job came while he was a Robert J. Samuelson ’67, in an op-ed in the cal skills, such as reporting, editing, and senior in high school, in his native New Washington Post, dismissed Bollinger’s plan writing. He also believed that it should Orleans, when he began covering educa- as “snob journalism: journalism by an elite award annual prizes for journalistic and tion and politics for the Vieux Carré Courier, for an elite.” (Columbia estimates the cost literary excellence (one of which became, an alternative weekly newspaper. He con- of the current 10-month program at in 1917, the prestigious Pulitzer Prize pro- tinued writing at Harvard, where he was $56,000, including tuition and room and gram that recognizes achievements in president of the Crimson and an American board.) As part of the task force, Lemann newspaper journalism and literature; later, history and literature concentrator. “I drafted a 7,000-word memo describing a the school began overseeing top broadcast covered everything there was to cover at possible two-year graduate-degree pro- and magazine awards as well). the Crimson,” recalls Lemann, whose Har- gram, which he presented at one of the With a $2-million pledge in hand, vard years coincided with the Watergate task force’s final meetings in early 2003; by Pulitzer took his proposal to Columbia scandal and the end of the Vietnam War. the time the committee wrapped up its president Nicholas Murray Butler and Har- “I basically lived at the Crimson.” He re- work that March, Bollinger had o≠ered vard president Charles W. Eliot. Butler members, with some embarrassment, the him the dean’s job. replied first. In the next few years, Colum- Crimson’s “very, very strong position that Early in his tenure, for what he de- bia built the school and launched an under- the Vietcong were a democratic indepen- scribes as “practical, policy, and political graduate journalism program that dence movement”; later in his Crimson ca- reasons,” Lemann shifted his vision from switched to an exclusively graduate-level reer, he wrote an editorial repudiating the one two-year program to two one-year program in 1935. Throughout its history, paper’s earlier stance. programs. During the next two years—an the school’s degree has always been o≠ered After college, he became an editor at astonishingly short time for academic- in science, rather than in the arts, a tradition the Washington Monthly, later moving on to program development—he and his sta≠ that reflects Butler’s view of the school as a Texas Monthly, the Washington Post, and At- pulled together the curriculum for the skills-based professional institution. lantic Monthly. Along the way, he wrote new M.A. track. His plan won final ap- Today, the school’s 10-month M.S. pro- four books, including the The Big Test: The provals late last February; the first year’s gram still focuses on craft. Students Secret History of the American Meritocracy, an class was selected from 70 applications study the basic reporting and writing exhaustive examination of the SAT. received during a one-month admissions skills necessary for most newspaper, mag- Beginning in the late 1980s, Lemann also window that closed on April 1. azine, broadcast, and on-line media jobs, occasionally taught magazine writing at About two-thirds of the inaugural class then practice what they’ve learned by, for the journalism school, with no intention came from the M.S. class of 2005; the rest instance, producing TV documentaries or of becoming a full-time educator or ad- are working journalists. Class members writing and editing the Bronx Beat, a ministrator. That changed early in 2002, are typically in their late 20s, with a few weekly community newspaper. Although when Dean Tom Goldstein stepped down. years’ experience at small or midsize the M.S. program has some specialized In a controversial move, Columbia’s then- newspapers—and a passionate interest in courses, such as international, metropoli- new president, Lee C. Bollinger, a First one of the four major subjects. Each M.A. tan, and business reporting, it emphasizes Amendment lawyer whose father was a student will complete a journalism-his- the good general grounding it provides. newspaper executive, put the search for tory course, a class on gathering and ana- The new 10-month M.A program is tar- Goldstein’s successor on hold—a depar- lyzing information, seminars in their spe- geted at young journalists seeking to spe- ture from the university’s traditional cialties, a thesis, and relevant courses at an cialize in politics, the arts, science and hands-o≠ policy toward the school. In- historically underutilized resource: the technology, or economics and business. stead, Bollinger convened a 30-plus-mem- rest of Columbia. Lemann sums up the difference between ber task force that included Lemann, Busi- Lemann has tapped some major figures the two degrees this way: “The M.S. pro- nessWeek editor Steve Shepard, CBS News from inside and outside the school to teach gram o≠ers concentrations in the types of correspondent Susan Spencer, novelist the M.A. specialty courses. Current faculty news media; the M.A. program [o≠ers] and Newsweek columnist Anna Quindlen, members James B. Stewart (J.D. ’76, author concentrations in realms of knowledge.” and other important journalists to rethink of Disney War) and Sylvia Nasar (A Beautiful One could argue that this fulfills the other its mission and curriculum.