Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/326

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310 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

least suggests the possibility of creating an approximation to working conditions. At present the following seem to be feasible first steps toward journalism courses in any urban university:

1. The appointment of a journalist, who combines practical experience with academic tastes, to a permanent faculty position.

2. The appointment on salary of leading men from the city press to lectureships in the several fields of journalism. This would be strictly analogous to the relation which practicing doctors and lawyers sustain to medical and law schools.

3. The establishment of a museum, such as the writer has begun to organize, designed to illustrate (a) the history of news- papers by originals and facsimiles of old papers; (fr) the mechanical side by showing all the stages from copy to the printed paper; (c) the editorial side by scrapbooks containing actual copy from newspapers in the transition from reporters' manuscript to final proofs; (d) a seminar room in which files of prominent typical papers, including a few foreign journals, are kept for reading and study.

4. The installation of a small plant, with a linotype machine or access to such a printing-office for setting up the daily exercises of the class.

5. Frequent visits to the leading newspaper offices for obser- vation in connection with class lectures.

6. Assignment work for students, at first independently, and then, when experience warrants, as understudies to reporters on the staffs of the city dailies.

7. Courses in English especially adapted to the cultivation of a good newspaper style, which is far from deserving the opprobrium which too many literary men and college instructors heap upon it.

8. Courses in modern history, diplomacy, political science, economics, and sociology may easily be given slight modification which will make them of more value to men preparing for journalism.

The sum of the whole matter, however, is to bring practical newspaper men into the lecture and seminar room, not for mere general addresses on the importance of the press to civilization,