Columbia J-School’s Existential Crisis -- Daily Intel -- New York News Blog -- New York Magazine

Grueskin wants to make multimedia skills and storytelling mandatory via the school’s core course, RW1, shorthand for “Reporting and Writing 1,” which has, since its inception in the early seventies, stuck to very traditional lessons in beat reporting and on-deadline news writing. Though RW1 has undergone upgrades such as a class website, Grueskin wants a more significant shift. "Where the transition needs to go is from a skill set to a mindset," he explains, citing a live blog of a news event, followed by a slideshow, followed by a longer story a week later as an example of new media practices.

But the push for modernization has also raised the ire of some professors, particularly those closely tied to Columbia’s crown jewel, RW1. “Fuck new media,” the coordinator of the RW1 program, Ari Goldman, said to his RW1 students on their first day of class, according to one student. Goldman, a former Times reporter and sixteen-year veteran RW1 professor, described new-media training as “playing with toys,” according to another student, and characterized the digital movement as “an experimentation in gadgetry.”

Columbia J-School’s Existential Crisis -- Daily Intel -- New York News Blog -- New York Magazine