Is Accuracy Making A Comeback In J-Schools?

Its return has been long overdue and the president may be the catalyst. “Madeline Purdue, the editor in chief of The Nevada Sagebrush at the University of Nevada at Reno, has taken note of this uptick in intrigue,” Adam Harris writes in The Atlantic. “The rhetoric from the president has trickled down to the campus level, she told me in an email.”

“Some students who are upset with articles the Sagebrush publishes retaliate by calling the paper ‘fake news’ or trying to personally discredit reporters.” Nevertheless, Harris reports, available data indicate more students are considering journalism as a career.

“Gail Wiggins, the interim chair of the journalism department at North Carolina A&T University, told me that the department saw a 6 percent increase in enrollment from 2016 to 2017,” Harris writes. “North Carolina A&T requires incoming students to write about why they chose journalism as their course of study, Wiggins said. More and more students, she told me, write that ‘they want to tell their own stories … they want to provide truthful information to improve their communities.’” That would be a refreshing change.

“We are reemphasizing truth and accuracy,” Wiggins told Harris. “With all of the new digital tools that we have at our hands—being accurate, checking your sources, doing your research: We definitely talk more about [those values] now than ever before.” Than ever before what?

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