(Paper presented at “Journalism Education and Training: the Challenges”. Conference, Department of Journalism, 16 – 18 October 2008, Stellenbosch, South Africa)
Abstract
A recent survey of South African business editors revealed a need for specialist training of business journalists (Rumney 2008). But editors held widely differing views about the focus and form of training, while none offered a coherent vision for the further education and training of their staff. This raises important questions about the relationship between educational institutions offering economics journalism courses and the business media. What do we teach? Whose interests do we serve? An approach which simply attempts to replicate current practice runs the risk of turning economics journalism education into a commodity, with the business media as the consumer. What about the interests of society, and of the educational institution itself? This paper argues for an approach that attempts to produce reflexive journalists who are able to practice their craft, but also to question and challenge accepted practices and procedures and reflect on the role and effects of their work. It sees journalism teaching as a form of social intervention that has the potential to change the way journalism is practiced. The challenge is to design a curriculum that not only straddles the theory/practice divide, a common challenge in journalism education, but that also accommodates the imperative simultaneously to teach and to question prevailing practice.
Introduction
The turmoil in financial markets over the past five weeks has focused attention on economics journalism[2] as never before. The credit crisis, bank failures, government bail-outs, stock market crashes and the deepening global recession have played themselves out day after day, relentlessly, on television, in newspapers, on the radio, in the blogosphere and on the internet – and not only in specialist financial or business media, but in mainstream news bulletins, current affairs programmes and newspapers.