Culture

A journalist and blogger tries teaching

Jeff Jarvis, a well-known blogger, has been named director of the new-media program and associate professor at CUNY.

Sept. 19, 2005 1:00 a.m. PT

2 min read

For some old-school journalists, blogging is the worst thing to hit the print medium since, well, journalism school.

They may want to avert their eyes on Monday, when Stephen B. Shepard, dean of the new Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, is to name Jeff Jarvis director of the new-media program and associate professor.

Jarvis, 51, has been developing the new-media curriculum for CUNY's journalism program since last year. As part of the core curriculum, all students will be required to take at least one new-media class exploring digital journalism.



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"New media will be a big part of the school," said Shepard. "And Jeff is a major figure in the world of citizen journalism, blogging and online journalism."

Currently, in addition to consulting for About.com (which is owned by The New York Times Company), Mr. Jarvis avidly posts to his blog BuzzMachine about news and media coverage.

Jarvis said that the media could achieve greater transparency by using blogs, podcasts and online video. "I want students to explore the relationship of the media with the public," he said.

Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, said this represented a good chance for journalism education to reinvent itself beyond teaching the nuts and bolts of reporting and writing. "There is nothing to compel a tenured professor of journalism to engage with the Internet other than as a user," he said.

Jarvis has been involved with online media since 1994. As president and creative director of Advance.net, part of the Newhouse publishing company, he developed many of the company's newspaper sites.

Jarvis was the founder and managing editor of Entertainment Weekly, and served as a television critic for TV Guide and People magazine. He has worked for The San Francisco Examiner and The Daily News of New York, and was an undergraduate at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University when The Chicago Tribune hired him in 1974.

New media, he said, breaks down the economic model of the business he has worked in all these years. "This is really the first time since William Randolph Hearst that a young journalist can think like an entrepreneur," Jarvis said.