
The journalism education always plays a role of backbone in the media industry which is considered as fourth estate of any society. In Pakistan, unfortunately, this education is now a days facing massive decline despite the fact that the number of institutions, students as well as number of faculty members had been increased in last decade.
There is massive gap between the professional journalism and journalistic education being given in our journalism schools. Teachers’ focus most of the time remained the course outline and course books.
Of course books can help students in learning the history and techniques of news reporting, news editing, interviewing skills and others journalistic requirements but these cannot teach journalism students how to work in the field.
As a matter of fact, neither teachers nor students seem interested in practical work.
However, if we look at the best journalism schools across the globe, we will be able to know these school focus more on practical work rather than using the traditional old techniques and pedagogy.
Need of the hour is to strengthen the future of journalism in Pakistan and media industry. Our journalism schools must provide professional human resource to the media industry. For it there is need to focus more on practice instead of theory. Also media ethics is a much required element to focus at.
(The writer is a professional journalist. He works at Daily Times as Education Reporter and can be reached at: [email protected])