What should journalism education be about?

Meanwhile, here are some thoughts from Jim McClellan, of publish first, edit later who has also been musing on what the future directions of journalism education (cited on Martin Stabe's excellent blog, which should be required daily reading for journalism educators!). AJE delegates will be interested in another of Martin's links, this time a post by John Robinson, editor of the News Record, Greensboro, North Carolina, which sets out his version of What a journalist needs to know.   

Comments

[Omar Ha-Redeye]

When driving in today in Toronto, they mentioned on the radio about one of the biggest challenges we face in Canada.
Our media here is increasingly becoming homogenous, with ownership residing in smaller groups of individuals. (To complicate it further, foreign ownership (typically American) poses additional challenges.)
This trend is occuring across North America, and one of the outcomes has been that the media openly espouses a role of relaying messages of governmnental agencies without scrutiny or criticism. The example cited was the war in Iraq, and how a content analysis of coverage prior to the conflict revealed only 3% of broadcasts were at all critical, even though over 1/4 of the American population opposed the war. In fact, the war in Iraq has been cited by several sources as of "spin" gone bad - I intend to blog something on this in the future.
I wonder if you face similar challenges over there in the UK. Even if you do not, I am certain that this is a trend that your journalism studetns should definately be aware of, and possibly brainstorm solutions about how to address it properly.