University of Wisconsin Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication
http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/
History
Journalism education at the University of Wisconsin began in 1905 with Willard Grosvenor Bleyer and a single course. Bleyer insisted that the professional and the academic go in tandem, their goals and insights supporting and contributing to each other. The School of Journalism & Mass Communication is far more than Bleyer’s lengthened shadow 65 years after his death, yet we feel his influence today in the shape of our program and our twin missions of teaching and research.
Long rooted in the College of Letters and Science, the school embraces a broad liberal arts education as the first professional requirement for future communicators. Our graduates need first to be at home in a complex world, so our training demands social and natural sciences and the humanities as an academic base.
The original focus of the program was news-editorial journalism and began with Bleyer’s seminal, noncredit course in Law of the Press, for which 25 students met in Bascom Hall in 1904. The era of broadcasting and a "wired nation" was far away then. Print media held the field of journalism alone. In the next few years, courses covered reporting, writing, editing and advanced concepts. The UW established journalism as a department in 1912 and as the School of Journalism in 1927.
An education leader
UW was among the first to introduce education in electronic editing and production, the offset press, and the promise of new systems in the future. Radio news had its start here before World War II. It felt its way through the postwar years and into the 1960s, expanding into television news slowly. The Radio-Television News Sequence was established in 1970.
With changes in the media we examined came a broader term: "mass communication," which best described our teaching, research and service. The term was built into the names of our courses and eventually the name of the school in 1970 when we grew from the School of Journalism to the School of Journalism & Mass Communication.
Mass communication embraces more than news media. Public relations and advertising weigh heavily in our curriculum and research. Public relations developed under Professor Scott M. Cutlip. From a single lecture course in the 1940s, the field grew under Cutlip’s care to an established sequence in 1970.
Advertising, relying less heavily on the general journalism curriculum than the other sequences, developed in association with courses offered by the School of Business. Next oldest to news-editorial among our professional sequences, advertising began in our curriculum in the early 1950s and encompassed creative and account management areas.
Left: Nine student await their arrest after a sit-in in front of an induction bus, May 17, 1971. Photo by Mickey Pfleger.
A permanent location
The school moved to its first permanent, dedicated "home" in 1972, with the opening of Vilas Communication Hall. Until then, the school had wandered through numerous remodeled and temporary spaces. Vilas Hall allows maximum faculty and student contact and provides ample laboratory and research space.
Throughout our history, we’ve emphasized professional experience outside the classroom through internships and mentoring. In the 1930s and ‘40s, the school’s second director, Grant Milnor Hyde, strived to put students in the city rooms of local newspapers for live assignments and began awarding class credit for such work. That move grew into a vast array of professional opportunities that continue today for students, who intern in print and broadcast journalism, as well as advertising and public relations.
Beyond our undergraduate curriculum, graduate work draws students to examine mass communication in greater depth, either to earn a professional degree or to prepare for teaching and research in the field. Ralph O. Nafziger’s arrival as director in 1949 began an insistence on new rigor in research. He sought and obtained the establishment of a Ph.D. in mass communication. Among the first such Ph.D. programs in the nation, it granted its first degree in 1953. By 1973, we graduated more Ph.D.s in mass communication than any other school.
The School’s alumni rank among the nation’s finest professionals, teachers and researchers. Our graduates have amassed a distinguished record of such awards and honors as the Pulitzer Prize, demonstrating the value of a Wisconsin academic foundation. In the 1990s, the school established a Board of Visitors, made up largely of alumni, who consult with faculty and staff and offer insights into our curriculum and service.
A powerful legacy anchors nine decades of teaching, research and public service in journalism and mass communication. The School now stands poised for its first major curriculum revision since the last sequences were established in the early 1970s. The blend of practical and conceptual training in communication remains as vibrant as ever. In fact, the new curriculum launched in fall 2000 marries those elements in new ways and allow the school to establish itself as a leader in education in new communication technologies and their impact.
Our 2005 Centennial celebration showed us that while we have accomplished much, there is still so much further to go. We look forward to continously exploring the academic and professional depths and boundaries of the field of journalism and mass communication in the century to come.