Reader: CU regents didn't vote to kill journalism education when they set end date for J-school

Bruce Benson.

But rather than bashing university president Bruce Benson and other closure advocates, a CU insider casts the move in a more positive light.

Steve Outing writes:

The amount of hysteria and misinformation floating around about the Regents' decision is stunning. (I work for the School, directing its Digital Media Test Kitchen program.) Big-university reorganizations are ugly and not always clear to the outside world, and that's the case here. What we're going through, as our (soon to be ex-) dean has said, is the beginning of transforming journalism education at CU to a higher level more in tune with the digitally transformed world we live in. The process also builds toward a much more interdisciplinary future for journalism education at CU; that's something I wholeheartedly support.

I wish we could snap our fingers and have that be reality tomorrow, but that's not possible, because bringing the pieces together is no simple task. Nor is it possible for me or anyone else working at the J School to explain exactly what the future program or structure (dubbed "Information, Communication, Media & Technology," though it's unclear if that will be the final name) will turn out to be. But all the parties involved are working on bettering journalism education at Boulder, not undermining it or planning to kill it.

If you just read the headlines, you'll probably think that the Regents have decided to kill journalism education at CU-Boulder. That's simply not the case.

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