An exhibit titled “Picturing the World:  Carolina’s Celebrated Photojournalists,” opened Friday night at the Ackland Art Museum and will continue through April 6.  More than 750 people attended the opening, representing the largest opening crowd in the history of the Ackland.

This exhibit, conceptualized first by Rich Beckman, the James L. Knight Professor of Visual Communication, is the first major exhibition of internationally recognized photojournalists who have studied at the school.  This special exhibition features six award-winning photographers – Andrea Bruce, Jamie Francis, Janet Jarman, Charles “Stretch” Ledford, Susie Post Rust, and Ami Vitale - along with thirty images by another group of twenty-five distinguished photographers.

Full descriptions of the artists and their work is on the Ackland website, http://www.ackland.org/index.php ,  Some of the photos can be viewed there as well, but an in-person visit to the Ackland will give you excellent exposure to the work of these artists, as well as the ability to view student multimedia documentaries on high-quality flat-screen televisions.

The work is a tribute to Beckman and to the other faculty in the program, Laura Ruel, Alberto Cairo, Pat Davison and Don Wittekind.  These faculty have developed one of the most innovative visual communication programs in the country.  The work of the photographers is testimony to the program.

Today five faculty members from JOMC, three master’s students and I attended the Paley Center’s Summit of deans, faculty, students, and journalists.  The summit was titled “Journalism in the Service of Democracy,” and featured old media and new media journalists.

Subjects addressed included value of journalism schools.  Alberto Ibarguen, president and CEO of the Knight Foundation, likened a journalism degree to an MBA.  He noted that there are brilliant businessmen without MBAs, but that the MBA gives added value…a sense of discipline and an understanding of principles.  The comment made me think of the value JOMC offers to its students.  We give students time to learn the values that anchor good communication, time to practice new techniques, and time to reflect on and improve their skills before being thrown into the “real world.”  We simulate real world activity, but then we step back and ask students to think about the work they have done.

Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, argued that journalism education can help future journalists to learn to distill an idea from a set of complicated facts.  Journalism education instills intellectual discipline.

Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, argued that journalists need a broad education, but that specialization advances civilization.  He said journalists need to put things together, to make sense out of the myriad facts and opinions that circulate freely.

Send me some comments…how would you characterize the value of your journalism education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill?

Deans from 12 journalism schools gathered this week at the Carnegie Corporation to discuss improving the intellectual content and rigor of journalism education. The meeting of deans preceded the “Journalism in the Service of Democracy Summit” to take place tomorrow at the Paley Center for Media in New York.

These events are part of the Carnegie-Knight Journalism Initiative begun in 2005. The initiative was the brainchild of Carnegie President Vartan Gregorian, who argued that journalism education needed to reinvent itself in order to meet the needs of the 21st century. He described the initiative as a way of making the “changes that must take place in journalism schools and their curricula if tomorrow’s journalists are truly going to make a meaningful contribution to our knowledge and understanding about the forces that shape our lives.”

Many of the initiatives discussed represent exactly what Carolina already is doing.

1) A major thrust of the Carnegie -Knight Initiative is to integrate journalism schools into the life of the universities in which they are located. The Initiative encourages interdisciplinary coursework. As an example, in 2007, we initiated a master’s certificate in health communication. This certificate is an interdisciplinary effort with JOMC, the Department of Psychology, the School of Public Health and the School of Information and Library Science. We also provide a joint M.A./J.D. degree and we collaborate with the School of Law in the Center for Media Law and Policy. The school also requires that undergraduates take 80 of their 120 credit hours outside of the school. Many of our faculty collaborate with faculty from other schools and departments in the University.

2) The Initiative also encourages excellent journalistic practice. Stay tuned to this blog to read about innovative curriculum change that will engage students in providing information to the residents of North Carolina. We are beginning a major news initiative that will set standards for journalistic practice and will serve Carolina citizens.

3) The Initiative emphasizes the relationship between policy, media industries and academia as essential to providing information to create an educated electorate. Tomorrow at the Paley Center more than 100 faculty and students will discuss this relationship and how to engage individuals in the political process.

As the dean of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina, I hope to use this blog–one of the new media forms–to keep you up-to-date about the school’s initiatives to serve the state of North Carolina, to emphasize the importance of journalism in a democracy and to properly educate a workforce that will serve our population.

I invite your comments and questions.