Most Business Editors Find News Reporters Unprepared

Newspaper Research Journal, Summer 2004 by Pardue, Mary Jane

However, that does not mean the need for quality business journalism and training for reporters is not an issue and has not been discussed. Attendees to the Society of American Business Editors and Writers annual conference in New York in 2001 were advised in one session "to keep a keen eye on company earnings and disclosures." One panelist acknowledged that some business journalists might find accounting boring, "but accounting is the fingerprint of a company."10 In 2002 at the organization's annual convention in Phoenix, a postmortem session was held on the Enron scandal and business journalists' failure to report it. Questions were raised about what journalists knew and when they knew it and if they should have seen the story sooner. A report on the session in the society's newsletter says, "...panelists hotly disputed the notion that better honed investigative skills would have unraveled more details of the energy giant's fraudulent financial practices...all agreed numerous clues were buried in Enron's financial reports to the securities and Exchange Commission." One reporter for The Wall Street Journal said: "We read things like sec filings and pass by them too quickly. There are things the press could have written that were sitting in a public file."11 It was an issue of journalists' training.

Several studies in the last 20 years have sought to articulate the goals, objectives and success of journalism education. In 1982, the Associated Press Managing Editors Journalism Education Committee published a report that attempted to define the needs of journalism education in 1990. Questions looked at the connection between journalism schools and newspapers, curriculum, emerging technologies and skills students will need for the future.12 The issues explored in the report remain relevant.

In the mid-1980s, The University of Oregon conducted a two-year study to assess the state of journalism education and its future by consulting journalism teachers and scholars, heads of professional and industry organizations and other experts. Describing journalism and mass communication education as "dismal," the report recommended a national model that would give students a better understanding of the industry and would raise the status of journalism / mass communication education.13

A study by the American Society of Newspaper Editors Committee on Education for Journalism surveyed editors in 1990 and found dissatisfaction regarding new graduates' preparedness. Only four percent ranked the quality of training their new hires had received in journalism school as high when measuring news gathering skills, writing ability, command of the rules of spelling and grammar, ability to use computers well arid knowledge of geography, media law and ethics.14

A1995 study, Winds of Change: Challenges Confronting Journalism Education, surveyed journalists and supervisors to assess job satisfaction and journalism education.15 The survey showed that two-thirds of recruiters and supervisors thought journalism educators were doing a good job of preparing students, but only 11 percent agreed strongly. Three-quarters agreed that improvements were needed.16