Tweets like this drive me crazy.
- AEJMC tweet
AEJMC stands for Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication. The tweet linked to a post on Mediashift.
Stop the presses: an association for journalism education thinks all students should learn journalism skills.
In related news …
- Ford thinks everyone should buy Fords
- Nike says runners should buy new running shoes every six months
- Local farmers encourage everyone to buy organic produce
Is AEJMC wrong? I don’t think so, but I work in journalism education. What do you expect me to say? The point is when AEJMC tweets something like that it makes me wish Twitter had a delete button for others’ tweets. No one should take tweets such as those seriously.
Tweets like “every student should learn journalism” need to come from sources outside journalism and media if they’re going to carry institutional and public credibility.
Let’s look at our examples again, using outside sources:
- Motor Trend and Consumer Reports encourage car buyers to consider Ford
- The American Podiatric Medical Association recommends avid runners get new running shoes every six months
- Health officials encourage everyone to buy organic produce
The tweet is reminiscent of the awesome “Journalism Kids Do Better” study, produced by Indiana University. Data showed high school journalism students scored higher on the ACT and performed better in their first year of college than non-journalism students. The problem is, the study came from the IU School of Journalism and was distributed by the Newspaper Association of America Foundation. A prettier bow around the present could not have been tied for the study’s skeptics, even though the researchers did a thorough, professional job.
Now imagine if that study had come from the office of the U.S. Secretary of Education, or The Education Trust. Then what would you think of it?
And what if that tweet had come from a teacher’s union or The Chronicle of Higher Education?
Find Dave Schwartz on Twitter @daveschwartz.
