Reflections from the classroom: Teaching the history of journalism in the digital age

This essay argues, provocatively perhaps, that journalism history should be at the core of journalism education in the digital age. In so doing, it proposes a fundamental role for historical awareness in the formative process of journalists and other media professionals that undertake this field of study. In this way, one of the key objectives of a discrete journalism degree can be to ensure a rational and critical knowledge of the present, as well as the assessment and understanding of its basic professional boundaries (political, social, economic and cultural) and how they have been shaped historically. The main purpose of this historical emphasis is to ensure that the next generations of journalists might be able to understand today’s society and make it comprehensible to others. Through this project, it is argued here that students in particular and the academy in general can become aware of the significant synthesis of accumulated knowledge that journalism represents as an organic and quasi-coherent social phenomena.