Mizzou journalism school celebrates 100 years

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- As they celebrate the past, the future will be foremost on the minds of University of Missouri School of Journalism alumni gathering in Columbia this week.

The school -- the first and still regarded as one of the best in the nation -- will celebrate its 100th anniversary with dozens of events, lectures, panels and discussions running through Saturday.

"Given the resources we have here, this is an opportunity to really jump-start the next century of journalism," said Suzette Heiman, the school's director of planning and communication.

The occasion comes at perhaps the most uncertain moment in the modern history of journalism, when the demand for news has never been stronger but the business model that supports it is increasingly obsolete.

Consumers are moving to the Internet, where smaller advertising revenue is unable to support comprehensive newsgathering. To compensate, media are cutting staff and reducing the breadth and depth of coverage.

Even the Columbia Missourian, the student newspaper largely insulated from economic pressures by the university, announced recently that mounting losses would force it to partner with another paper or cut back its print schedule.

The events scheduled for this week will not ignore these industry realities, faculty and organizers said. Rather, they will examine new technologies and strategies that might reverse the decline and preserve journalism's role in society.

"The timing couldn't be better," said Dean Mills, the dean of school. "The industry is really hungry for new ideas and approaches to support good journalism."

Many of the events will focus on how technology has affected journalism.

On Friday, the school will hold a technology summit with seminars focusing on innovations, online journalism and new economic opportunities.

"There are literally hundreds of sessions aimed at peeking at the future and also trying to figure out ways to preserve traditional journalism values as audiences and delivery systems change," Mills said.

Also Friday, university president and former Sprint chief executive officer Gary Forsee will lead a discussion of technological innovation featuring journalists and business leaders.

"Technical devices are an increasingly important part of how we access media and information today," Forsee said.

"This panel will think forward about how technology and always-on communication tools can have a positive impact on the next 100 years of journalism."

All the discussions, whether about online journalism practices or industry business models, will return to one question, said George Kennedy, a professor emeritus.

"What, if anything, is going to come along to enable us to produce an informed citizenry and continue to do, in some way, shape or fashion, the quality of journalism the country needs?" he asked.

Several potential answers will be outlined this week.

In a session Kennedy will moderate Thursday, editors from several new, not-for-profit media will describe their publications and the possibilities they hold.

Some, like the St. Louis Beacon and the Minneapolis-based MinnPost, seek to shore up local coverage lost when newspapers downsize, while others, like ProPublica, pursue complex and potentially expensive public-interest stories and offer them to other media.

"It may be that all of these turn out to work or may be that none of them will and that something we haven't seen yet is just over the horizon," Kennedy said. "We have to hope there's an answer, because neither the profession nor democracy can really stand to continue in what looks like a downward spiral."

The centennial celebration will include the opening of a new building for the Reynolds Journalism Institute, the school's research center. The institute is involved in numerous research projects on the future of the profession, Mills said.

The innovations needed to adapt journalism to new technologies will likely come from younger people, who are more comfortable in the digital world, Mills said.

With that in mind, the school is teaching students journalism tenets but encouraging them to experiment in how they gather and broadcast the news.

"Faculty see themselves not as mentors with apprentices, but as guides or coaches," Mills said. "We want students to try out new ideas while at the same time seeing that the traditional journalism values of accuracy and fairness are preserved."