Pulitzer's School
Columbia University's School of Journalism, 1903-2003
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- £62.99
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- £62.99
Publisher Description
Marking the centennial of the founding of Columbia University's school of journalism, this candid history of the school's evolution is set against the backdrop of the ongoing debate over whether journalism can—or should—be taught in America's universities.
Originally known as "the Pulitzer School" in honor of its chief benefactor, the newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer, Columbia's school of journalism has long been a significant and highly visible presence in the journalism community. But at the turn of the twentieth century, when the school was originally conceived, journalism was taught either during an apprenticeship at a newspaper office or as a vocational elective at a few state universities—no Ivy League institution had yet dared to teach a common "trade" such as journalism. It was Pulitzer's vision, and Columbia's decision to embrace and cultivate his novel idea, that would eventually help legitimize and transform the profession. Yet despite its obvious influence and prestige, the school has experienced a turbulent, even contentious history. Critics have assailed the school for being disengaged from the real world of working journalists, for being a holding tank for the mediocre and a citadel of the establishment, while supporters—with equal passion—have hailed it for upholding journalism's gold standard and for nurturing many of the profession's most successful practitioners.
The debate over the school's merits and shortcomings has been strong, and at times vehement, even into the twenty-first century. In 2002, the old argument was reopened and the school found itself publicly scrutinized once again. Had it lived up to Pulitzer's original vision of a practical, uncompromising, and multifaceted education for journalists? Was its education still relevant to the needs of contemporary journalists? Yet after all the ideological arguments, and with its future still potentially in doubt, the school has remained a magnet for the ambitious and talented, an institution that provides intensive training in the skills and folkways of journalism. Granted unprecedented access to archival records, James Boylan has written the definitive account of the struggles and enduring legacy of America's premiere school of journalism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Boylan, who taught journalism at Columbia from 1957 to 1979, founded the Columbia Journalism Review and served as a Pulitzer Prize juror, was commissioned by the dean of Columbia's journalism school to write this account of the school's history. Working mostly from archival materials from the university's various collections, supplemented by relevant published materials, Boylan has produced a straightforward corporate history of the institution, from Pulitzer's original $2 million grant to start a professional school of journalism on the Columbia campus, up to controversies over the future of the school's mission under its current president, Lee Bollinger. Boylan emphasizes the shifting relationship of the journalism school to the rest of the university, the role of various faculty members in shaping the journalism curriculum and the diverse career moves of the Journalism School staff. Boylan mentions major controversies on the larger campus e.g., the riots of 1968 only in passing, and he sometimes describes the journalism school's politically questionable activities in a less than critical fashion. (For example, Boylan dismisses the journalism school's involvement in training the Kuomintang, with secret funding from the U.S. government, simply as an "object lesson" in the "complications" arising from covert operations.) While it isn't unusual for corporate histories to sidestep controversy, it is unfortunate that Boylan chose not to detail the actual curriculum of the journalism school; readers are left with a sense of the generic problems of a professional school within a major university, but no real feel for the type of training "Pulitzer's School" has offered over the last century. Photos.
