East meets west: Refocusing communication and journalism education

Writing, reporting, interviewing and editing remain the pillars of any journalism programme. The problem is what journalism educators put around these pillars, how they are made internationally relevant and given an intellectual foundation. The difficulty with journalism today is that it’s at the bottom of the pile in terms of what readers and viewers think of its trustworthiness. Something has to be done to redeem its credibility and social responsibility. John Herbert refers to a new book The Dao of the Press (Gunaratne, Shelton, 2005) in proposing an approach to journalism education that may reclaim the profession’s credibility.