Save Ernie Pyle

For 19 years, Walter Cronkite ended every newscast with “And that’s the way it is,” delivering honest journalism to a trusting audience.

He was, I believe, the cream of the crop of journalists, and as a prospective journalist, I am striving to be Walter Cronkite.

However, it has recently been announced that the proposed plans for emptying the IU journalism school’s home, Ernie Pyle Hall, are approaching reality, and the school and its students will be merged with the departments of telecommunications and communication and culture into the College of Arts and Sciences.

After selecting IU instead of other universities with equally esteemed journalism programs, my opportunity is apparently slipping away. Although I entrusted the administration to provide me every opportunity to become the best journalist possible, the opportunity is being revoked. And I can’t find one good reason why.

In a statement made last year, President Michael McRobbie voiced his opinion about the removal of the independent journalism school by saying, “There’s no point in saving a school that trains people to manage fleets of horses if the motorcar has taken over horse-drawn transportation.”

Unfortunately, President McRobbie has this entirely wrong.

Journalism doesn’t start and stop on the paper it’s printed. For that matter, journalistic integrity and art doesn’t change depending on the way it’s delivered to its audience.

Be it by app or paper, journalism takes more than simple communication.

We are too fortunate to attend a school with such highly qualified journalism professors to relocate them and award their students an unspecific degree for the specific art they’re studying.

Don’t get me wrong, I will be proud to hold a degree from IU when my years here are finished. However, I want to be holding a degree that applies directly to my passion, not a compromise I was forced to make by the people who are the least affected by this radical change.

I will be extremely disappointed with my University and its leaders if I return for my sophomore year and my beloved Ernie Pyle Hall has become another book store or an expansion of Starbucks.

So here’s my plea to you.

Journalism has become more digital, but that doesn’t mean the importance of a journalism school dwindles because of it.

The world won’t see any trusted reporters like Walter Cronkite if we continue to shut down the institutions that develop them. It is vital to this University and to the art of journalism that we fight to keep the IU School of Journalism. The next generation of reporters should be more than just communications experts.

Save the art of good reporting. Save the right for students to become world-class journalists and future Cronkites.

Save the School of Journalism.

And that’s the way it is.

­— cnmcelwa@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Claire McElwain on Twitter @claire_mcelwain.