J-RAD Blues

Well, "Eschew Obfuscation" was a little obscure, so I've officially re-named the blog. I'm not really blue at Ryerson - I just liked the way "J-RAD Blues" sounds. For those of you not intimately familiar with Ryerson's journalism programme, the moniker "J-RAD" refers to those of us in the school's two-year undergraduate programme for people who already have a university degree. (It's a confluence of "journalism" and "graduate," in case you hadn't figured that out. And if you hadn't, don't feel bad. I didn't.)

Anywhere else, I would have been in a Master's programme, running the gauntlet through theory courses and final projects - and, if I'd gone to Ryerson a year later, I'd have an MJ to show for my pains. No more two-year undergrads. The venerable J-RAD programme is now the victim of inexorable progress, and, with the last week of school upon us, the last of the J-RADs are set to go their separate ways into streams and specialties next year.

So, no MJ for me, and no more J-RADs for Ryerson. Pity.

When I told an old friend I was going into journalism, he immediately flung me an impassioned e-mail borne of a long family association with journalism and journalists. In it, he wrote, "For god's sake, don't let them cram a pile of hoary old theories down your throat. Practice writing, to deadline, as much as you possibly can - and know that theory means nothing in a newsroom."

Amen to that.

I'm glad I escaped the theory nightmare, even if I don't get a graduate degree. I'm glad I'm one of the last of the J-RADs. I don't think we need journalists who can quote Foucault. We don't need journalists who can wrangle ad nauseam over postmodern deconstructionism. We certainly don't need journalists for whom theory is a replacement for real-life experience.

Especially in the wake of Maher Arar and Scooter Libbey, it's become increasingly obvious that we need journalists who aren't tools of the state, who don't mindlessly repeat government PR spin and call it a "scoop," and who aren't interested in how many letters appear after their names. We need journalists who aren't, to use Kathy Gannon's word, simply "stenographers" for governments and the military. We need journalists who are capable of getting to the truth of a story through tenacity, scrupulous research, and insistent verification - and I don't think you need to study theory or have a Master's degree to do that.

That's not to say you can't be a decent journalist with a Master's. I worry, though, that Ryerson is losing something rare and precious in its quest to be just like all the other legitimate universities, no doubt a symptom of the institutional insecurity left over from the days of "Rye High."

I guess abandoning the J-RAD programme is better for marketability, as education continues along its path of inflation, just like everything else. Pretty soon no-one will be able to work at McDonald's without the benefit of a four-year post-doctoral fellowship in nuclear physics.

Farewell, J-RADs.