Abstract
The book, ‘Global journalism in the 21st century: Challenges & innovations’, sheds light on the emerging field of comparative journalism worldwide. Around the world, journalism as a profession is challenged by political, technological, commercial and socio-cultural forces and has to be rethought and re-invented. Journalism educators have the unprecedented opportunity to move from the follower mode to the innovator mode; to ‘significantly shape the future of journalism’ (p. 1). According to the book, the need for international cooperation in this field is growing, especially since ‘strong waves of nationalism are spreading worldwide’ (p. 1).
Global journalism in the 21st century offers conceptual, theoretical, empirical and practical insights, building on past research and scholarly debate. It does so in almost 500 pages, with 20 contributions grouped into three overarching themes, such as country case studies, contextualising global journalism education and global innovations in journalism education. These contributions are accompanied by an introduction and an epilogue by one of the editors, Robyn Goodman.
The ‘Introduction’ starts with underlining the reforming power that journalism education can have. At the same time, many educators are concerned with the growing emphasis on the training-for-the-industry paradigm in journalism education. This narrowing down of education to training is regarded as an important consequence of ‘a product-oriented teaching culture instead of a process-focused learning culture’ (p. 6). Journalism education worldwide should have a broader scope than teaching the tricks of the trade; it should help students to develop analytical and critical thinking skills for changing society in positive ways.
The first part of the book contains 10 country case studies (225 pages in total), starting with Australia and ending with the United States. These chapters give an interesting overview of the state of affairs with regard to journalism education but in a more descriptive than analytical way. So we learn, for instance, that in China journalism education is caught in a struggle between totalitarian control and market liberalism, that in India market pressures accentuate the need for speed over standards, that in South Africa the uncertain political climate makes fostering individual critical thinking the most important challenge for journalism education and that in the ‘curious case’ (p. 219) of the United States a journalism is needed that facilitates civil discourse and empowers citizens to act.
Many of the country themes are recognisable, but the country cases are not accompanied by an analysis of the similarities and differences and what we should make of those. In the epilogue (pp. 449–455), there is the beginning of such an assessment, but it rapidly concludes that ‘the situation of journalism education seems to be quite specific to each country’. For the ‘emerging field of comparative journalism worldwide’ (p. 1), this might be seen as a disappointing conclusion, but the second and third part of the book offer some compensation.
Part 2, Contextualizing Global Journalism Education, consists of three informative chapters. The first examines global journalism education beyond academic borders and concludes that journalism educators should get more involved in hybrid forms of education. The second underpins the importance of journalism education associations for the development of global journalism education. The third examines three different approaches to quality assurance systems.
Part 3, Global innovations in journalism education, contains six chapters that deal with different aspects of renewal, within the classroom and beyond, with key words being entrepreneurial, fluid, mobile, alternative reality games, coding and programming. It offers an insight into the various ways in which innovation is defined within the field of journalism education, with attention focused on techno-economic aspects of innovation, rather than socio-cultural renewal. This part ends with a description of 100 years of journalism education by Joe Foote, the chair and godfather of the World Journalism Education Council. This insightful overview concludes with 10 thought-provoking predictions for journalism education (p. 445). These include that journalism will become fully accepted as an academic discipline, media skills and media literacy will be taught to students of other disciplines, teachers will be held to a higher research standard and they will increasingly be expected to be a beacon of conscience as press freedom continues to be challenged around the world.
Global journalism in the 21st century appears in a time of growing scholarly attention for the theme. 1 In the epilogue, Robyn Goodman addresses the persistent problem of Western bias in global discussions about journalism education. Ironically, this bias is reflected in the Anglo-American overrepresentation in the list of contributors: more than half of the authors have US-background, while most of the others come from countries that have a historical link to the United Kingdom. The paradox is that one of the best ways to challenge Western bias is to have an ongoing global conversation and that Global journalism in the 21st century offers a solid and invaluable contribution to that end.