Lack of Academic Opportunity

Traditionally, journalism departments and even professional schools of journalism have existed within colleges and universities steeped in the liberal arts tradition. Journalism students were encouraged to sample broadly from the academic courses available. Want to learn about business? Take some courses from the business department. Interested in political science, law, art, geography? Sample them all. Even the briefest exposure could be of help to a future journalist. Few subjects in the liberal arts menu provide a base for understanding the rationale for and role of not-for-profit organizations in a free society. Recently, though, a direct link is developing on campuses. Schools like Seattle University and the University of Washington are offering post-graduate and certificate programs in not-for-profit leadership and fund raising, respectively. It may not be long before future journalists can sample course work that applies directly to covering the community sector. Until then, the process of "getting to know" not-for-profits will continue to occur through "general knowledge... living," as the focus group respondent commented.

Often ethics codes prohibit reporters at media outlets from sitting on boards of not-for-profits they may cover. In 1985, when Stanford University nominated Seattle TV news anchor and Stanford alumna Jean Enersen to its board of regents, her employer's existing policy might have required a swift "no." Enersen said she would, of course, remove herself from any Stanford-related news coverage, and additional assurance was provided by sheer distance that the University was unlikely to come up in local coverage, so the station agreed. The sense of journalistic ethics of the time was that any direct linking of a news presenter or decision maker with a potential news source was suspect and could provide the perception of bias.