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Monday, December 19, 2005
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UD likes to keep an eye… …on doings at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, where she was a student for awhile, before she transferred into NU’s English department. (Details here.) In an Inside Higher Ed piece noting the shift away from writing and toward marketing at Medill, the incoming dean’s quoted as saying that traditional media’s slowness to embrace new technology and consumer preferences “put(s) at risk having an informed society.” This awkwardly phrased cliché tells us what we need to know about the new dean’s commitment to writing. It also tells us how out of touch with his consumers he is, since he believes they are informed. He also believes that sucking up to them will produce higher degrees of informedness. UD wishes also to respond to this comment, from another NU journalism professor (emeritus) who reminds us that there’s nothing wrong with caring about the consumer. Journalists, after all, “are not Emily Dickinson writing poetry on backs of envelopes, not caring whether anybody reads them.” 1.) Emily Dickinson cared whether anybody read her. 2.) I don’t know whether Dickinson wrote poetry on the backs of envelopes, but people certainly write Dickinson on the front of envelopes. 
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