Recommended reading: Steve Outing - is 'journalism' losing higher ed clout

Steve Outing has written an interesting column at his Media Disruptus site looking at the waning of "journalism" in the name of higher ed programs professing to do at least a little of it. (He also reflects on the efficacy of keeping "mass communications" in the mix in an age when "mass" increasingly is becoming "targeted."

I think he's right about the direction this is going. And I think it is for two reasons:
- The waning influence of journalism in society.
- The "penury" of the industry when it was in good shape when it came to actually funding the schools and paying some attention to the research they've produced.

This industry never has seemed to get the message: You pay to play. It's that simple.

As for the "mass communications" thing, there are many reasons for that. Among them:
- Schools that could only get that as the name because there was a dominant "journalism" program.
- The difficulty -- in the extreme in some cases -- of changing names in academic programs. Sisyphean doesn't begin to describe it in some cases.