Kevin O’Keefe, who must be the busiest man in the blawgosphere since he hasn’t written a decent blawg post at Real Lawyers Have Blawgs in a long time, comes out with a great one.  He contends that universities need to start teaching online journalism. 

The irony is that newspapers and traditional media are laying off high paid senior people and would love to have students with a hungry work ethic skilled in the ways of new media. Instead of these kids getting journalism and media jobs where they’re needed, they’re underemployed serving tables and lattes while begging to get their foot in the door for an opportunity to learn the skills they need.

This is the ugly truth in journalism, that mainstream media is hemorrhaging money and laying off staff right and left.  While this presents a huge problem, the simple fact of it can’t be denied.  The consequence, at least for the time being, is that Journalism Schools are training budding reporters to work in a dead industry, an industry that isn’t going to hire them and will never be able to subsume these fine young men and women in their chosen craft.  Talk about a group defrauded.

The people who should feel guilty are the deans and directors of journalism schools at Universities who took hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition moneys without telling students and their parents the school will be graduating your sons and daughters without the skills they need to get a job.

Academia historically lags behind the curve, despite its pretensions of being cutting edge.  That is the natural product of being cloistered in the Ivory Tower.  It’s also the by-product of too much time and effort invested in their particular course of study, and the refusal to recognize that change is happening.  Journalism schools are invested in old media.  It’s what they do and what they know.  No upstart like the internet is going to replace their beloved dead trees, right?

When I called the chair of Seattle University’s Communication/Journalism department as a reference and told him about what Rob [La Gatta] would be doing, he bragged that the school doesn’t teach students about things like blogs which are just things used by people ranting on the Internet. When I referenced some of the things LexBlog offered students, he seemed to dismiss them as some sort of ‘tech school skill.’

When I asked the same department chair about what student interns are paid, I was told I would never be able to compete with what newspapers like the Seattle Post Intelligencer paid the school’s journalism interns. Turns out the Seattle PI paid Rob nothing when he interned there before LexBlog and we paid Rob $10 per hour with an increase when he went full time for a quarter.

Dismissing Kevin O’Keefe is something one does at one’s peril.  Kevin is light years ahead of me when it comes to technology, and has pushed the edge of the internet at every turn.  Not that everything he’s done has come out perfect, but Kevin is undeniably one of the best at using the blawgosphere for its highest and best purpose. 

For the professor to demean the blogosphere by saying blogs are “just things used by people ranting” demonstrates how deeply he misapprehends the role it plays today.  A few years ago, there may have only been a handful of serious people presenting serious blogs about serious subjects.  Today, there are not only many, but the influence of the blawgosphere cannot be ignored.

I regularly receive calls from newspaper reporters seeking comment about a case discussed in one of my posts, as do many others in the blawgosphere.  Blawgs are cited in decisions and law review articles.  While blawgs have yet to displace mainstream media, and likely won’t (and shouldn’t), to pass us off as a bunch of lunatic ranters misses the point.  Blawgs are here, and carry some weight. 

And as far as I know, Rob was the only graduate of Seattle University’s Communication/Journalism program who had a job on graduation this summer. A job directly related to the journalism and communication profession.

And that’s the bottom line.  Like the Seattle University’s School of Blacksmithing, a change in demand for certain skills is going to happen no matter what some tweed-jacketed professor thinks.  Even with his dismissive attitude toward the internet, the impending layoffs at the New York Times should tell him something. 

Times are changing.  Journalism, critical to the existence of a viable democracy and an informed populace, needs to change too.  Pay attention to Kevin O’Keefe.  He knows what he’s talking about.

Update:  Interesting side note is a story in today’s New York Times Regional section about Suburban Bloggers.  Apparently, numerous journalists have started blogging on their own, recognizing the vitality of the blogosphere even if their J-profs don’t. 

Moreover, blogging has filled niches neglected by more traditional journalists, such as “hyperlocal” news:

Nearly a decade later, bloggers in the suburbs are starting to answer those questions. Many have let their sites go untended, but a few have built serious local journalism operations, while others have developed a following on certain topics and bask in the muted limelight of Internet fame. These survivors offer newly minted bloggers a pixilated blueprint for how to rise above the chaos of the blogosphere. For readers, the blogs are providing news in ways unseen in traditional local news media.

As has been the case in the criminal blawgosphere, many newcomers fall off the map when they realize what it takes to maintain a substantive blog, and this is necessary to prevent blogospheric overload.  But the few that hang tough and establish a following have an interesting future.