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Jan. 10, 2024
This is the final in a series of three stories on the deletion of Arkansas State University’s degree program in journalism and broadcasting.
By Roy Ockert Jr.
No doubt, the demise of the newspaper industry over the past decade played a role in the failure of journalism to thrive as an academic program at Arkansas State University.
Last January the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism reported that nearly 60 percent of newsroom jobs had been lost since 2005, most of them in newspapers. However, journalists are employed in many other fields because of the nature of the work and their broad-based experiences. In fact, PR firms, higher education and government agencies still look for candidates with a journalism background.
While ASU’s communications programs have struggled, the School of Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Arkansas, a major competitor, has been growing. The UA offers a degree with concentrations in journalism, broadcast or multi-media storytelling and production, as well as a major in advertising and public relations.
For the past fall semester the UA School of Journalism and Strategic Media enrolled a total of 828 majors, including 13 graduate students. The advertising-PR major accounted for 452 of the undergraduates, and the three journalism concentrations, a total of 308. Another 66 students were listed as double majors with journalism and political science or English.
To compare A-State’s numbers, you must include strategic communications, which isn’t in the School of Media and Journalism. The total of all three, though, comes to 187 students, plus 34 more in master’s programs. Multi-media journalism accounted for only 11 undergraduates. The UA numbers don’t provide a breakdown of the concentrations.
After ASU’s multi-media journalism program was axed by the state Higher Education Coordinating Board last spring, a scramble began to determine what should be done next. However, the discussions remained within academic circles. No public announcement was made, nor were the thousands of alumni in the journalism and broadcast programs consulted. In fact, the school had made little effort to communicate with alumni in recent years.
Only when a letter to current multi-media majors prompted a news story in the student newspaper did the issue gain public light.
Because the board’s action came near the end of the spring semester, getting the relevant people together proved to be a challenge. The school’s director, Dr. Brad Rawlins, was being moved up to interim dean, and Associate Dean Dr. Gina Hogue was tapped as interim director.
Hogue began trying to assemble a task force in June. Records obtained through an FOIA request showed a meeting was twice scheduled and postponed. But Dr. Todd Shields, chancellor of the Jonesboro campus, called for a meeting of all school faculty and staff on July 13.
Minutes of that meeting show that Rawlins urged the faculty to work together to create an integrated journalism and media degree. Shields and the new provost, Dr. Calvin White, both attended, emphasizing the need for a strong journalism program and stressing the importance of faculty collaboration.
Shields said in a December interview that he came out of that meeting hopeful.
But days later the Creative Media Production faculty and staff met and then the program coordinator, Dr. Mary Jackson-Pitts, notified Hogue:
• “We are not willing to reimagine or launch a new journalism curriculum with the existing MMJ faculty.
• “We ask that Brad Rawlins be removed from the leadership of the School of Media and Journalism.
• “We have a proposal to establish a broadcast journalism emphasis under the creative media production program.”
Rawlins then wrote to White, suggesting a meeting with the CMP faculty and staff but asking to be recused because “I am obviously a lightning rod … and I don’t think they are willing to consider anything that I might suggest or be in favor of, regardless of how reasonable it might be.”
Shields and White were disappointed, and the provost quickly notified Hogue that a funding line for possibly creating a new program would be pulled back and that CMP should not expect support for a broadcast journalism emphasis.
In December Pitts responded to written questions about the CMP faculty’s position, saying it is supportive of a strong, independent journalism program.
“We believe the MMJ faculty should take ownership of creating and designing a curriculum that meets the needs of a 21st century journalist,” she wrote. “They need to work with their own advisory board and assessment data to determine their next steps to reimagine their own program.”
As to the request that Rawlins no longer be director of the School of Media and Journalism, Pitts explained: “Dr. Rawlins has lost the confidence and trust of members of the CMP faculty. Enrollment has been in steady decline under his leadership.”
She recalled the restructuring in 2013 of the College of Communications and traced a history of actions and inactions that she said are related to the dramatic decline of enrollment in print journalism, broadcast journalism and photojournalism.
That restructuring placed multi-media journalism and creative media production in a Department of Media, and a professional advisory board was soon formed to help develop a plan of action for curriculum and activities that enhance needed skills and opportunities for students in the respective programs. Pitts said little of the MMJ plan has been implemented.
Further, differences between the two faculties arose over the re-accreditation of the journalism program by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. Pitts said she came to the conclusion that accreditation was no longer beneficial to either program, and she resigned as chair of the re-accreditation committee in 2018. At the same time she sounded warnings about the dangerously low enrollment and the need for curriculum change.
Nevertheless, the CMP faculty “reluctantly” went along with Rawlins’ appointment as director of the new School for Media and Journalism, Pitts said, because of his ACEJMC board position. Indeed, re-accreditation did occur in 2021-22, but that did not protect the MMJ program last year because of low numbers.
[Click here to read the full text of Pitts’ responses to written questions.]
As for the broadcast curriculum, once a strength of the College of Communications, no courses have been taught since Larz Roberts left A-State for another position after the spring semester of 2022. Rawlins said a job freeze prevented him from replacing Robert last year and that this year he doesn’t think anyone would take the courses if taught.
Dr. Calvin White
Recruiting has been an obvious problem. For more than 80 years a spring competition in journalism and broadcasting brought dozens of high school students to campus, but Communications Day was canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic, and it has not been held since then. However, in 2022 the school hosted the annual convention of the Arkansas Scholastic Press Association.
More than eight months have passed since the state board’s action deleting ASU's multi-media journalism degree, and nothing yet has been done to redesign the program “in a newly configured format.”
Provost White came on board only a couple of weeks before he and Shields met with the School of Media and Journalism faculty. In a Nov. 29 appearance at a meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Greater Jonesboro, he was asked about the journalism situation.
“My colleagues [on the faculty] knew of the problems they were having with journalism and creative media,” he said. “And so it was a lack of response on their part to satisfy the Arkansas Department of Education’s mandatory requirements. … There was no administrator on our campus or in Little Rock who cut the journalism program on our campus.”
“Is the journalism department on our campus dead? … It is not dead,” he said “And if it dies, that is a choice internally that the people who live and work — your colleagues — have decided not to work together. Because the Arkansas Department of Higher Education has told us that we can repackage it.”
[Click here to read the full text of White's response to a question about the journalism program.]
In the December interview Shields expressed disappointment the faculty had not produced anything in the way of a proposed new program by the end of the fall semester.
In a Nov. 30 letter to alumni of A-State’s journalism and broadcast programs, which were merged into multi-media journalism in 2013, he said the loss of the journalism degree “is unacceptable for a university with a storied history of producing outstanding print and broadcast journalism graduates who have become state and national success stories.”
Shields outlined efforts that had been made to kickstart a new program, pointing out that under the university’s shared governance system the faculty “must develop and approve all curriculum changes.”
“We remain optimistic that the faculty will work together, not only to save a rich and historically strong program, but also for the benefit of our students and university,” Shields wrote.
Click here to read Shields full letter.
In the interview he was more explicit about his expectations. “We would prefer that the faculty come together [and produce a program proposal], but if they don’t, we [the administration] will have to make a decision to save it.”
“People would ask about the past history. No, I want to go forward,” he said. “Absolutely, we need strong journalism now, arguably now more than ever. I worry about our democracy without strong journalism.”
“We’re not going to let the program die,” he added. “If we have to step in, we will.”
Shields said he had hoped to have a proposal ready to present to the ASU Board of Trustees in December. That didn’t happen so he now has his sights set on some action in spring, even if he has to bring in consultants to get something ready. His goal is to gain the approval of the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board in time to have a new program in place for the fall semester.
Dr. Todd Shields
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