Seemingly forgotten in the proliferation of such information media hardware in the new communications marketplace, however, is the media industries' stewardship of the human, social and philosophical elements of mass communication content and the responsibilities of the mass media in that other market, the marketplace of ideas. At the same time, journalism and communication studies wrestle with an ongoing identity crisis within the academy: Beyond the debate over professionalism versus liberal education, our field is confronted with an opportunity to move from the peripheral position it has held on many college campuses to assume a key role at the core of the academic mission.

The communication industries' attention to (perhaps preoccupation with) the economic implications of exploding information technologies worldwide offers great opportunities and challenges to the academy. Those who educate future communicators and communications consumers, and who have the opportunity to study the changes taking place, have the responsibility to evaluate critically the impacts of convergence of mass media systems on students and on the society in which they will live and work. Colleges and universities carry the charge of serving as society's intellectual and philosophical conscience; the demands of that responsibility on journalism and communication educators and scholars have risen exponentially as new communication technologies have forever changed how informational goods and services are delivered in the new marketplace of ideas. Educators have a responsibility not only to anticipate change and to promote curricular evolution to help equip students for life in the new media marketplace, but also to serve -and to train our students to serve- as the critical conscience of a mass media industry in danger of letting the message become lost in the medium.

As rapid technological development has resulted in a media convergence with great promise of service to society, equally rapid demographic changes have produced the opposite effect among consumers in the marketplace of ideas. As media technologies converge, the gap between the information-rich and the information-poor in this country and globally has widened. Who will be served in the new information marketplace, and who will be left behind? It is not simply a question of access to communication hardware systems, which is an economic issue, but also a question of who makes the editorial content decisions and who forms the messages delivered on those new communication systems. If, in fact, the combined lack of access to both the hardware and the information gate results in a society of information haves and have-nots, what effect will that informational divergence have on a society built on the philosophical guarantee of free and wide-open access to information in the marketplace of ideas in terms of broad participation in a democratic society?

For those of us concerned about the role of journalism and mass communication education both on the campus and in the marketplace, these should not be just interesting intellectual conundrums. Indeed, current technological and societal developments give new urgency to what has been a longstanding debate about the place of communication studies in the liberal arts and sciences academy, and about the relationships among the various communication disciplines themselves.

The question of how "within the context of technological and demographic change" the academy can and should serve a society that is becoming more global and more information-driven, relates to the old debate within academia of the relationship between "professional" communication curricula and the liberal arts. On many college campuses, this artificial demarcation has resulted in communication programs being viewed as second-class "pre-professional" citizens in the larger academic mission. I would argue in the strongest possible terms that this view of the identity of journalism and communication studies as overly vocational misses the true nature of a field that is, in fact, perhaps the broadest and most ecumenical "most "liberal," if you will" of disciplines, even on a liberal arts and sciences campus. It is not only that most journalism and mass communication programs, whether accredited or not, require undergraduate majors to take about three-quarters of their course work outside of the major, but that at the very core of the communication field is the same presumption of breadth that drives the philosophy of "liberal" education. Indeed, a communication major is, perhaps, the ultimate generalist in both training, study and inclination.

There is a crucial link among these three issues: 1) the challenges that new communication technology poses to the academy and to society; 2) the question of disenfranchisement of the newly information-poor in an increasingly multi cultural society from the marketplace of ideas, and 3) the need to redefine the role of communication studies in the academy. These issues represent an opportunity for communication faculties to shed some of the parochial distinctions that have separated them in the past, and which have set them apart from the larger academy. It is an opportunity to take on a larger leadership role in the academy at large as the importance and impact of communication in the broader society transforms the mission of higher education itself. In many ways, these three issues; technology, social leadership and educational breadth, are at the core of what we as communication educators and scholars always have held most important in our missions. The old turf distinctions between professionalism and liberal arts, between skills training and conceptual study, between communication and mass communication studies, that have long balkanized communications disciplines and separated the field from the larger academy no longer are valid. It is our understanding of communication processes in both human and the mediated contexts that holds us together and also should make it possible for journalism, communication and mass media studies programs to become more central to the mission of the academy in an information age.

One of the critical questions in the long debate over professionalism in journalism and mass communication curricula has concerned the appropriate mix of skills and conceptual courses, and how best to combine training in communication techniques with the rigors of critical thinking and synthesis of a broad range of knowledge, concepts and ideas. On the one hand, if a journalist is, indeed, the ultimate generalist who needs a wide understanding of many topics in order to write and report about the range of issues that concern modern society, then the broadest possible liberal education is essential. On the other hand, those who would become communicators also require understanding of communication processes and specific professional and technical skills for effective communication of that broad knowledge.

In this way, journalism and mass communication (and to a lesser extent other human communication studies often subsumed under the label of speech communication) has become a hybrid discipline incorporating many of the best elements of traditional liberal education. Beyond requiring acquisition of the breadth of knowledge expected of the liberally educated student, the communication discipline broadens those expectations to include as well understanding of and proficiency in methods and processes of communicating knowledge. Stated in classic journalistic terms, the communication curriculum covers not only the who, what, where, when and why; representing the "liberal" breadth of general knowledge, but also the how of communication processes, effects and implementation. This is the essential premise behind the flawed but well intentioned Standard 3 of the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, which calls for a "reasonable balance" between mass communication courses and study in other disciplines. Students must "learn not only why and how to communicate, but also what to communicate," the standard says. The definition of "reasonable balance" between communication and other course work often has been subject to intense debate, and many in the field argue that Standard 3 artificially excludes all communication courses from broader liberal education. Nevertheless, the basic premise remains sound that the discipline must provide students "whether they eventually become professional communicators or communication consumers" with a full understanding of the processes, effects and techniques of communication, while also ensuring a breadth of knowledge of the society in which they live so that they can analyze and synthesize the information they send and receive.

Making these kinds of connections between communication and the rest of the curriculum; in history, economics, political science, sociology and many other fields' is a longstanding challenge that, I submit, has become even more central to journalism and communication studies in the 1990s. The recent explosive evolution in communication technology has placed in question some of the traditional approaches to the professional preparation of mass communication students. As testified to almost daily in the trade press and by communication industry leaders, technological developments outstrip the capability of the profession to employ them effectively. "Too much hardware," they say, and not enough of what the broadcast and cable industry representatives so euphemistically call "software program" content for transmission on the new technology. As the "delivery systems" expand exponentially, one wonders what will fill the anticipated 500 cable channels, the digitally compressed broadcast signals, the interactive electronic "newspapers" and other new communication hardware that is no longer the dream of tomorrow but almost the reality of today.

Journalism and mass communication programs have long played catch-up to technological change in their professional and skills curricula. Especially in these technological boom times, resources for new labs and equipment inevitably lag behind the industry standard, no matter how often classroom computer systems and labs are upgraded. Many in the academy and the professions lament that students are being taught their craft on state-of-the-art equipment that is obsolete before they graduate. This technological shortfall is used by communication faculty to argue for increased resources, and by university administrators as evidence that such expensive programs should be abandoned if they can't keep pace.

But there is a middle ground that may offer not only a saving redefinition of our approach to communication study, but also may help move the field into a more central role in the larger academic community while revitalizing the academy's character as critic and conscience of the communication professions. With the proliferation of information delivery systems, what is lacking is not hardware, but quality material of relevance and use to the society for transmission through those new systems. In short, we appear as a society inundated by the medium but desperately short of messages. Although students must understand the capabilities of technology as they concern communication, we should not lose sight of the primary goal of our discipline, which is critical analysis and synthesis of information on the media industries that inform the larger society. Creation of the message, regardless of the medium, always has been at the core of communication education. This is a distinction that critics of the discipline have long failed to understand. What is most central to our curriculum in communication and mass communication alike is not the how of communicating messages; what buttons to push or writing style to affect; but the what of message content. Willard Rowland, dean of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Colorado, makes this point succinctly:

In their essentials, journalism, speech and all professional media programs teach the basics of writing, information-gathering, oral expression and the public presentation of ideas. . . . In all these cases and in most related cases, the "skills" being taught are those of careful, disciplined thinking, analysis and explication. Such attributes have always been understood to underpin and infuse the goals of liberal education. . . . Further, beyond cultivating talents of critical thinking and expression, most skills courses teach much more. For instance, even the most ordinary reporting course can be an intensive seminar in civics, politics, and ethics. (Rowland, p. 4.) It is just this central character of the communication disciplines, in both their human and mediated forms, that presents such opportunity for the field as media technology converge and the larger academy seeks the means to prepare the well-rounded student for life in the 21st century. Distinctions that separate us from the larger academy as "pre-professional," and thus somehow substandard, shortchange both our field and those other disciplines throughout the university that communication, in fact, can serve to link. Further, the linkage function we can play among the diverse disciplines on campus is also our responsibility in terms of connecting the university to the larger society of which we and the academy are part. As observers of the human condition, of politics and socioeconomics, of the broad society beyond the campus, we in communication education are ideally placed as resources for the academy, as a medium of information exchange for our colleagues in other disciplines, and of thoughtful criticism of the media and larger society. As the walls separating other disciplines in the academy crack and new interdisciplinary approaches to old problems and concepts emerge; what Ernest Boyer terms the "scholarship of integration" (Boyer, p. 21); communication studies are ideally positioned to provide linkages both within and beyond the academy. What the fields of journalism and communication have to offer is not merely the means for transferring information among related parts of the new integrated academy, but also the mechanisms for synthesizing and analyzing seemingly disparate information into a more useful and ecumenical whole, both in the academy and in the larger society.

As part of that process of integration of the communication disciplines to serve other fields of study, it is important to recall within the context of technological and social change what our field is all about. As we study communication processes and prepare students as creators and consumers of communication messages, we have the opportunity to help mass communication industries correct their shortfall of communication "software"; the industry term for media content. It is the responsibility of the academy and of educators and scholars to serve as the critics and conscience of the society. The proliferation of communication technologies and expanded delivery systems implies a challenge to our role and performance as critics and critical consumers of the informational goods and services in the new, expanded communications marketplace. In many ways, our educational roles have not changed, but simply must adapt and expand the preparation of critical thinkers and enlightened communicators in a new technological context. Indeed, the growth of communication hardware implies a greater demand than ever for qualified critical thinkers to collect and synthesize the raw material to create the "software" messages that hardware will carry. These personnel must be more than technicians, but also students of the society that they attempt to capture in message form, with the breadth of experience to observe, analyze and report with accuracy and understanding the forces within and upon a rapidly changing society.

The field of journalism and communication has come of age, with new opportunities and responsibilities within both the academy and the global society. But even with these new roles in an information age of broad technological and societal diversity, the challenge facing communication educators and scholars in the 1990s and beyond is in many ways the same as ever: To draw connections and help make sense of the world. Because that world is increasingly complex, so is the intellectual challenge to lead as a central and essential player in both the academic community and the society beyond.

References

Boyer, Ernest L., Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professorate. (Princeton, N.J.: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1991).

Rowland, Willard D. Jr., "The Role of Journalism and Communication Studies in the Liberal Arts: A Place of Honor," presented to the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication seminar on "Contesting the Boundaries of Liberal and Professional Education," Boston, Aug. 10, 1991.

See also:

"ASJMC Roundtable No. 3: Administering J/MC Units in the 1990s: Problems, Issues and Opportunities," ASJMC Insights (The Journal of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication), December 1990.

Dennis, Everette E., and Melvin L. DeFleur, "A Linchpin Concept: Media Studies and the Rest of the Curriculum," Journalism Educator, Summer 1991, pp. 78-80.

Hoskins, Robert L., "A New Accreditation Problem: Defining Liberal Arts and Sciences," ASJMC Insights, (The journal of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication), October 1988, pp. 3-8.

Project on the Future of Journalism and Mass Communication Education, Planning for Curricular Change in Journalism Education. (Eugene, Ore.: School of Journalism, University of Oregon, 1984).

Rovosky, Henry, The University: An Owner"s Manual. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990).

Task Force on the Future of Journalism and Mass Communication Education, Challenges and Opportunities in Journalism and Mass Communication Education. (Columbia, S.C.: Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 1989).

Wartella, Ellen, "The Integration of Journalism and Speech in Communication: Transcending the Professional/Non-Professional Divide," presented to the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication seminar on "Contesting the Boundaries of Liberal and Professional Education," Boston, Aug. 10, 1991.

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