The best journalism school adapts to a widening crisis
A special place
COLUMBIA, Missouri - The news about the news is grim, according to the 2025 “State of Local News Report” from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
“News deserts are widening. Newspaper closures continue unabated. Independent publishers are calling it quits at an alarming rate,” says the report. More than 130 newspapers shut down in the past year. “Newspaper employment is sliding steadily downward.”
Northwestern is in Evanston, Illinois, but this column is filed from Columbia, Missouri — home of the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Fifty years ago, I stumbled into this place, not realizing how much it would shape my life. Back then, newspapers, magazines, and the big three TV networks dominated the media landscape. This weekend, I returned for a reunion, curious to see how one of the world’s top journalism schools is weathering the industry’s many storms: falling revenue, political pressure, and audiences splintered into ever-smaller niches.
Dean Dave Kurpius admits Mizzou’s J-School is a very different place than it was when we all dreamed of being the next Woodward and Bernstein.
In my day, students picked a single path — print, radio, TV, photojournalism, or advertising — and never crossed tracks. Today’s freshmen do it all. They first learn to write, shoot, edit, record, and broadcast across every medium. Only later do they specialize. The logic is simple: in the real world, journalists must now be one-person news operations — reporting, photographing, shooting video for TikTok, and finally writing for print or web.
A visit to the school’s campus newsroom proves the point. The building where The Missourian newspaper was written, and the radio newsroom was housed in my day doesn’t exist anymore. It was torn down. The new newsroom combines it all in one place. Students write for the print paper and its website. They record audio in sound booths. There are cameras, lights and a teleprompter in one corner to do live shots in the local NBC affiliate that the university owns.
Dean Kurpius says despite all the challenges, Mizzou still attracts top-notch students who want to work in journalism. The school has had a 100% placement rate the past two years.
The school also attracts top-notch faculty. John Anderson, who spent 25 years anchoring ESPN’s SportsCenter, returned to his alma mater earlier this year to take a full-time job teaching sports reporting and writing. It’s a strong draw for students and a chance to learn from one of the best in the business.
But Mizzou isn’t immune to journalism’s economic pain. Advertising revenue is down at the university’s NBC affiliate. The public radio station lost federal funding after President Trump and Congress eliminated support for NPR, though private donors have helped fill the gap — for now. The rise of AI is unsettling, threatening to reshape newsrooms yet again.
The Columbia Missourian — the school’s daily paper — is surviving partly because its main competitor, the Columbia Daily Tribune, is a shadow of its former self under Gannett ownership. The Tribune is now printed in Des Moines and trucked five hours back to Columbia, meaning local stories that break after mid-afternoon won’t make the next day’s edition.
And Dean Kurpius says professors spend a lot more time these days teaching students how to handle political pressure in the field. “We train them to have direct and respectful conversations with newsmakers,” he says.
With low wages, difficult hours, and the threat of AI, one would think students would be looking to work somewhere other than journalism. But Dean Kurpius told us students from the 1970s that some things never change. “They come for the same reasons you did. The want to find out things and tell good stories.”
A special place
This school has a special place in my heart. I came here as a sheltered, blue collar, first-generation college student with a love of writing. They took what raw material there was and molded me into someone who could get a job, do interviews, tell stories, and be on air without embarrassing myself too much.
Walking the halls this weekend, I stopped beneath the same bronze plaque I first saw half a century ago, containing the Journalist’s Creed. The language from a century ago is dated, but the message endures. A few lines stand out:
“I believe that clear thinking and clear statement, accuracy and fairness are fundamental to good journalism.”
I believe that journalism that succeeds best “…is stoutly independent, unmoved by pride of opinion or greed of power, constructive, tolerant but never careless, self-controlled, patient, always respectful of its readers but always unafraid, is quickly indignant at injustice, is unswayed by the appeal of privilege or the clamor of the mob…”
Maybe some day the plaque can be mounted at the White House or in the newly emptied press room at the Pentagon where Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth could see it and stop attacking journalists as “the enemy of the people.” I will not hold my breath.
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Never since 250 years ago have we been so desperate for a free press. The issues that fueled the drive for independence are now current events.
Dave, I want to first commend you for the thoughtful work you're doing on your Substack. What stands out most is how you actually engage with your commentators and readers—a rarity in the Substack universe where too many writers treat their newsletters as one-way megaphones. Your willingness to respond, discuss, and genuinely listen creates the kind of community dialogue that journalism desperately needs right now.
Your piece on journalism education adapting to the current crisis is timely and important. But I'd argue there's a deeper failure we need to confront: over the past 10+ years, journalism schools appear to have failed to train journalists to effectively address lies and misinformation and successfully confront and overcome claims of fake news. This failure has become exponentially more dangerous with the rise of AI-generated content and viral memes—both of which can weaponize falsehoods at unprecedented scale and speed. I am speaking in terms of generalities, of course. For example, Missouri and Iowa State Daily recent editors deserve praise, and of course many on substack.
Margaret Sullivan recently wrote about how the "partisan bickering" frame fails the public—presenting false equivalences when one side is simply lying while the other is stating facts. This bothsidesism has become journalism's original sin, and it may start in J-schools where aspiring journalists learn to prize "balance" over truth-telling. Perhaps Missouri and ISU are different. Other examples of media criticism includes currying favor with a current administration and corporate media philosophies: https://www.stopthepresses.news/p/the-medias-kissing-up-to-trump-started?r=9e9e3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false or https://open.substack.com/pub/saltypolitics/p/the-day-corporate-media-finally-died?r=9e9e3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
We're seeing the consequences play out in real time. Media outlets either kiss up to power (as documented in the pieces about Trump coverage) or have lost so much public trust that corporate media is effectively dead as a credible institution--or considered as 'fake news' by 30% + of America.
Meanwhile, journalists still aren't equipped with the basic tools to call out lies in real time, to deconstruct manipulative memes, or to identify AI-generated misinformation.
The question is: How do we fix this? Your work suggests part of the answer—journalists need to be more transparent, more engaged with their communities, and more willing to explain their decision-making process.
Can national associations of journalism schools fundamentally help assessments of each school's mission. Training journalists to be stenographers for competing claims isn't enough. We need them trained as truth-seekers who understand information warfare, who can forensically analyze digital content, and who have the backbone to say "this is a lie" when something is demonstrably false.
Thanks for creating this space for these conversations. It gives me hope that there are still journalists committed to getting it right.