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agreed!

This sort of thing is always a tragedy, but looking at this critically, just how good of a j-school is this?

Maybe these students will ultimately be better served by a j-school education elsewhere if that is their true passion.

How good a journalism school? You can answer your own question with a couple of minutes of research.

I refer you to this article in Editor & Publisher, posted on the school's web site:

http://jmc.fiu.edu/articles/articlee_andp.htm

You might want to cruise the rest of the site and answer your own question.

Full disclosure: I am an associate professor at the school. I came after spending more than 25 years at The Miami Herald, The Bergen Record and other dailies. You can take a look at faculty bios to learn about my colleagues.

Neil Reisner

Why worry about South Florida's j-school being dismantled if all the South Florida newspapers are being dismantled too? Better to dissuade the young-uns now than lay them off later, I say. I wish someone had done the same for me.

Journalism is a craft and you learn a craft by doing not in college. The reason the world stinks today is that journalists are sent to college and fed nonsense like the myth of objectivity by professors who can’t do; but can teach.

The last lingering aspect of what journalism should be is the byline. Those of us who have not been duped into thinking that journalists are objective, look to the byline to see who wrote the article. If the piece is by a human being whose work has appeared to be accurate before, we give it some credence. We know that there is no such thing as objectivity, that all descriptions are shaped by the biases of the writer. We know that some bylines, like those of Maureen Dowd, indicate mindless shilling; while others, like Hunter S. Thompson, are going to be works by biased humans striving to tell the truth they see.

Reaching back to the first great work of American journalism, Common Sense, one can point to scores of writers who learned their craft, none of whom learned it in college. How can you tell if a journalist is lying? If she tell you she is objective.

I don't know what makes me want to puke more...The fact that the local papers have said nothing about this or Neil Reisner's post.

How interesting that the only comment that was flamed is mine which -- how odd -- is the only one with a name attached.

And you folks speak of honesty? Give me a break.

Flame away. I'll not respond.

FIU J-school .... to Florida Today ... to the Sun-Sentinel. What a career track!

The j-school may be failing for one of the same reason that big-city newspapers are failing: good 'ol street reporting.
FIU valued it but the local newspapers consistently favor outside high brow talent, people who don't know the area and consistently embarass themselves by using incorrect datelines and arriving to pressers late b/c they don't know where city hall or the pd is.

I graduated from FIU's journalism program in 1990, just as it was in the process of shifting from program to school.
At FIU, I learned about ways to improve my writing, differences between ethical and unethical journalism, and court cases that have influenced the profession. I got two internships, the second of which turned into a job I had for 13 years. I got professional connections I still have today.
My teachers were journalists who brought their career experiences to the classroom.
Ever since, I've been impressed with the quality of fellow alumni, some of whom I've worked with. I meet plenty of students and graduates who are enthusiastic about journalism, even with the profession's current strugggles.
That's why FIU's School of Journalism and Mass Communication needs support - not elimination. Journalism schools such as FIU's hold the key to the profession's future.

Sic transit whatever.
Especially since most journalism schools should be charged with criminal fraud for encouraging kids to generate mega student debts to earn a journalism degree -- only to find their diplomas are all but worthless in the print media's shrinking job market.
Frankly, I have little sympathy for the unethical J-school bastards* who bullshit their students into believing there's pie in the sky and a future in journalism.
*Their value system is easily a notch below that of a used car salesmen.

Is anyone promising "pie in the sky" at j-schools? I can't speak about FIU, but at my school one of the journalism professors always spent one day at the end of the semester giving his students the reality check about life as a beginning reporter. Things like how to get by on a low salary and the importance of buying the most reliable car you can afford. I'm sure that's not the pep talk they give to law students and business majors.

ummm....isn't UF's school considered a journalism school? UCF has a school of communications (with a journalism program).

Give me a break!
Rollo Tomasi is a classic bleeding heart, do-gooder who believes stupid people deserve to be protected from their ignorance.
But as far as this child's concerned, anyone dumb enough to think he or she will get a job on a newspaper after four years in a journalism school deserves whatever they get.
So caveat emptor, Rollo. It's a cruel world out there! Whether you like it or not.

Our local papers here, especially the Herald, are more concerned with hiring spoon-fed grads fresh from Columbia or Northwestern. Home-grown talent has been either completely taken advantage of (working 40-hour weeks without the 40-hour salary) or completely ignored. I know because I'm one of them. This makes me think of Don Sneed, an FIU professor who did everything in his power to help grads secure local positions. It does not surprise me that these same papers are ignoring the issue - they seldom give any justice to the FIU grads!

Wait - is this post trying to imply that the people who write for Sun Sentinel might have journalism degrees? Really? They do? Could have fooled me! I'd be surprised if they actually passed their basic English and writing requirements for a degree. Sun Sentinel more and more reads like a high school blog than a legitimate newspaper. If that's what journalism schools are churning out - I agree. Wipe it out and start from scratch. First order of business, give them a dictionary and a proper guide to English grammar. Second, make someone proofread their articles before they go to print.

As an FIU grad, and a Sun-Sentinel survivor now working at a major metro daily, I can only look back at these comments and think I made the right decision to leave the area. Kevin Hall taught me a great deal about both feature writing and storytelling.

And Waldo -- the name "Sun-Sentinel" has been hyphenated for more than two decades. Your sixth sentence, which follows those annoying quasi-conversational fragments, should begin with the article "The" as it introduces a unique noun. The ham-fisted construction of your seventh and eighth sentences can be fixed with a comma and a colon.

I'll leave it to you to figure out where to put them -- and your attitude.

I did not go to FIU and know nothing of what goes on in its j school, but it can't be that bad if some of the region's best and brightest reporters graduated from there. Many of the people who won the Herald's Elian Pulitzer were at the time recent FIU grads, a couple were still in school and took shifts staking out the Elian compound after class. Many other of their high profile reporters - and their metro editor - either attended j school there or have taught there. There are a handful at the Sun-Sentinel and Palm Beach Post, too.

I'm popping back in to amplify the comments of "just visiting' and to elaborate on my own.

I went to FIU as an undergrad, worked for a decade at three different papers, then went to UF for grad school. When I arrived, I discovered I had I had more actual newsroom experience than most of the full professors, most of whom worked for a few years at small papers then returned to academia.

At FIU, nearly all my instructors were working journalists; once, a news reporting class was cancelled because the instructor - a deputy news editor at the Miami News - was busy ripping up the front page for news of the space shuttle Challenger explosion.

We got to experience what these working pros were doing in the moment, not hear dusty tales of past exploits and scoops. In my experience, the education provided by FIU was as good, and in some ways better, than what I saw at UF.

Former,

If you went to the University of Florida to study journalism at the college you missed out. The Independent Florida Alligator is where journalism is taught. Of course, students learn the craft there the same way journalism has been taught since 1439; by doing.

When professors replaced editors as the teachers of journalism good, honest, reporting was doomed.

The Sentinel did write a story, though after you posted this item. Here it is:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/education/highered/sfl-flpfiu0523sbmay23,0,3197781.story