Off-the-Job Training

Impatience with job-hunting journalism school graduates comes naturally to many a case-hardened newspaper editor. The suggestion that seasoned journalists go back to school stirs up quite another response. At a time when city hall speaks in the lingo of the sociologist and Madison Avenue admen talk like practicing economists, reporters, too, must learn the skills of the specialist. Most newspapers now welcome the chance to give newsmen classroom time in which they can polish their working knowledge of the professions on which they report. And the opportunities for such off-the-job training are increasing rapidly.

Example of Greatness. In addition to the long-established Nieman Fellowships at Harvard and the Columbia University scholarships for advanced science writing and international reporting, there is an impressive roster of new programs, many of them supported by the Ford Foundation. Southern newsmen are now being awarded Mark Ethridge scholarships for study at any of six Southern universities. Stanford University is starting a program for some 40 journalists. Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism this fall will offer 40 reporters programs in urban studies. The Russell Sage Foundation has made two grants for study of the social sciences at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia. The American Political Science Association plans to pay the cost of sending twelve journalists to any universities they choose.

Whatever the program, most journalists who go back to the campus are happy they did. "When a man finishes our medical course," says Columbia's Advanced Programs Director John Foster Jr., "he may not be able to remove an appendix, but he certainly can talk intelligently with the surgeon who did." Atlanta Constitution Editorial Writer Bruce Galphin, an ex-Nieman, offers more general praise of his fellowship: "Just by the example of the greatness at Harvard, you're ashamed not to do better things and try harder." Another Nieman Fellow, San Juan Star Columnist Alex Maldonado, says that "from Harvard, I could look objectively at the years I had been reporting and sort of take things apart and put them together again."

Mixed Feelings. Most editors echo the reporters' pleasure. "Schooling causes only a short-term disruption of the staff," says Chicago News Managing Editor Creed Black, "but it offers a long-term gain." Detroit News City Editor Boyd Simmons agrees: "I can more confidently send out a man on a complicated story like water pollution when I know he has refined his own technical equipment to deal with it." The Washington Post is so impressed with advanced education that it paid for a year's study at Harvard for its Supreme Court reporter.

At other papers, editors are quick to offer the major complaint about graduate schooling. "It tends to stimulate them all right," says San Francisco Chronicle City Editor Abe Mellinkoff, "right out of their jobs." Mellinkoff has lost two top reporters to Governor Pat Brown's staff after they had completed Nieman Fellowships. Though employers usually do their best to persuade their student reporters to return, the reporters are not strictly obliged to go back to their old desks. Many prefer to move on to the expanded vistas of bigger newspapers and magazines, others try for better-paying jobs in public relations or politics. A man's pre-fellowship boss may have an understandable beef, but Nieman Curator Dwight Sargent insists that fiddle-footed journalists can hardly be blamed on higher learning. "With or without a grant," he says, "reporters are a restless lot."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.