When he was editor of a daily newspaper in 1964, “nearly 90 percent of the households in that town subscribed to the paper, and people would get up in the morning and read it,” Mr. Lavine says. With one radio station and one television station nearby, he says, “there were only three places you could go to find out whether the world had survived overnight. We assumed that what we were doing was right because everyone turned to us.”
But those days are gone. Now journalists must understand what their audiences are interested in, as well as the best way to grab their attention. The dean believes that Medill is uniquely poised to straddle the line between journalism and marketing since it consists of both a school of journalism and a program in integrated marketing communications. —Katherine Mangan —Journalism Dean at Northwestern U. Develops Curriculum With Increased Emphasis on Multimedia and Marketing (Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription))