More J-School Notes

What separates the articulate programmer and the clever bystander from the journalist – journalism school.

The depth of knowledge that comes from a reflective liberal arts education is the crucial key.

It’s not the memorization of facts, and not simply the learning of key skills; not even the exercise of learning to learn.

I take this from my work teaching American history at NWACC. More than one instructor derides the teaching of "facts" as we can just google them. Unless, of course, one has no baseline of knowledge to work from, leading to over-reliance on on-line sources.

How does one judge the veracity of a Wikipedia entry? Or discern an advocate website from some strategic communication astro-turfing?

We are only as good as our sources -- whether human or digital.