It looks like Medill School of Journalism at NorthWestern University is trying to lure programmers and web developers towards its master’s program in Journalism with a scholarship or three.  This has been developed courtesy of a grant by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation (to the tune of over $600k).

The’s school’s site has all the details, but this is what struck me as being interesting:

We believe there are programmers who want to do work that makes a difference to society’s future,” Gordon said. “We want the new scholarships to generate interest among computer specialists who want to make a difference and who might never have considered applying their technology skills to journalism.”

and …

Students awarded Knight News Challenge Scholarships will complete the same academic program as other MSJ students. The first academic quarter is spent learning reporting and storytelling skills in multiple media. At least one other quarter is spent in Medill’s Chicago newsroom, covering a beat and creating multimedia stories.

As part of the program, scholarship recipients will have an opportunity to apply their technology skills to journalism in an “innovation project” course in media management, new media publishing or magazine publishing. In these classes, teams of students create new products or work to solve a problem facing a media company.

I think it was Dave Winer who mentioned that for print media to grow and change, there has to be change at its roots (I’m paraphrasing liberally of course) — and that journalism should be a required course for students.  Since he doesn’t have a search on Scripting.com (and therefore making it difficult to find that particular piece) I’m hoping that’s what he wrote.

Nevertheless I think there is a grain of truth to that sentiment.

Print media is being assailed on all fronts, and in spite of optimism on behalf of their European bretheren, the reality in North America is brutally slow growth (if at all), and dwindling offline profits  that can’t seem to be matched by the growth of online sales / advertising.

Magazine and newspaper publishing is going through a time of transition, and amongst all the other tricks it can pull out of their hats, clearly re-energizing itself with a hot injection of cross-trained personnel can be nothing but a good thing.

Formal training can help with this as the Medill Scholarship will no doubt do.  And I think if nothing else, its a signal that schools are acknowledging this change, and want to be a part of it.

What will be interesting, however, is what the graduates of the master’s program decide to do and where they will go.  Will any / some / many of them enter the program with an eye to be hired by new or old media companies?  Probably.

Or will be see any of them use it, and the contacts made within the context of the degree, as a stepping stone to something else entirely? 

Will any of them start their own mini publishing empires, starting with a strong technical foundation, edified by their learning experiences on journalism, focused on a narrow subject or niche of their own choice?

Maybe.

In fact, it almost sounds like blogging to me.

And in that case, what could a program in journalism offer to a potential or existing blogger, where recent history has shown has formal education isn’t a prerequisite of any kind for success?

Besides that, would graduates who go out on their own and “self-publish” under a blogging paradigm — would they be considered “professionals” or “amateurs”?  Is that something that goes along with your educational credentials or the fact that you’re creating a profitable concern?

Because there are so many interesting questions that revolve around this debate I’m convinced that the distinction between amateur and professional is not a binary one, but, like many things in life, a distinction that is blurry where both terms are points on a continuum.

This blurriness will no doubt continue to evolve and change as experiments in citizen media, crowdsourcing, and social / participatory media — coupled with the maturation of blogging as a medium and tool — continue to grow.