Dear J-School: Please Don’t Require Another Useless Apple Product
The inevitable is happening. After the Missouri School of Journalism was able to make its students buy unnecessary MacBooks and extravagant iPhones, there is now talk of requiring iPads too. We can’t let that happen.
The J-School’s Innovation Committee is talking about adding the iPad to the roster of Apple products it already requires each Mizzou journalism student to purchase. As Associate Dean Brian Brooks told The Maneater, “We’re definitely taking a look at the iPad going forward.”
It was just two years ago that the J-School required all incoming journalism students to have an iPhone, even though Brooks admitted the requirement was mostly a way to exploit a financial aid loophole. Everyone from Gawker to Engadget mocked the journalism school for that one, and rightfully so.
The Maneater ran an impassioned and well-reasoned editorial yesterday on all the reasons not to require journalism students buy an iPad. The entire editorial is worth a read, but here is my favorite line: “Considering that the iPod touch requirement was nothing but a bust in the J-School, forcing students to purchase an expensive device that is hardly, if ever, used in courses, it’s troublesome that J-School administrators are already looking into future requirements.”
As Convergence sophomore Robert Partyka told us, “I’ve used my iPod touch once so far: the first day of J1010, so Brooks could take a picture of every one holding up their iPods.”
If this requirement actually passes, journalism students would be required to buy an Apple laptop, an Apple iPhone and an Apple iPad. Should we just make it official and open an Apple Store in the J-School?
The MacBook offers no functionality or software for a student journalist that you cannot find on a Windows PC. That’s the same problem with the iPhone, which accomplishes little from a journalist’s standpoint that you can’t do on another smart phone.
Even the J-School can’t think of a journalistic purpose for an iPad…yet. Mike McKean is the head of the J-School’s Innovation Committee (disclosure: McKean leads the Convergence Capstone, the class for which we are doing J-School Buzz). He told The Maneater that the iPad requirement is not certain at this point. “It depends on whether we’ll have a use for it in classes,” he said. “Are there enough assignments where this would be useful?”
No, there are not. The iPad is great for consuming content, but it’s pretty terrible in my experience at creating or editing videos and photos and even text. It’s certainly not good enough to make it a requirement for journalism students. It’s also worth noting that they cost at minimum $500 each, while the required iPhones now cost as little as $50.
The Director of Digital Development for the Missourian, Rob Weir, pointed out that by the time incoming students actually start using these Apple products in journalism classes, there’s been at least one new version released. “If Apple continues its trend of releasing a version update of the iPad each year, as it’s done with the iPhone and iPod Touch, then students could have a device that’s a couple years out of date by the time they are using it in classes, assuming they even make it to the J-School.”
The Missouri School of Journalism has an uncomfortably extremely close relationship with Apple, but just because Apple releases new product does not mean it should be required for journalism students. It feels like we have reached the point where any new Apple product is open to becoming a J-School requirement.
I have joked ever since the iPad came out it was only a matter of time before the iPad was required in the journalism school. I thought the possibility of that happening was so ridiculous and far-fetched that it would never happen. And yet here we are.
What’s next? Maybe Apple TV? I can actually imagine the J-School justifying an Apple TV requirement by saying it would allow us to consume television and digital news on a new platform to accommodate the hectic J-Schooler schedule. Where does the Apple love end?
Let me finish this off with a melodramatic interpretation of “First They Came.”
First they made us buy MacBooks we don’t need, and I didn’t speak up because I really hate Windows PCs.
Then they made us buy iPhones we don’t need, and I didn’t speak up because I wanted a smartphone (though I went with an Android instead).
And now they are coming to require that we buy iPads we don’t need, and it is time to speak out. Don’t let the school make us buy another unnecessary piece of Apple technology that serves no practical journalistic purpose. We still have time to fight this bad idea.
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I agree. We don’t need an iPad because it doesn’t serve any functions that a computer couldn’t also provide. But… the J school doesn’t require you to have Apple products – they are just the “preferred provider.” You can have an Android and a PC and they cannot say anything to you. They just won’t provide you with instructions, help files, etc… on how to do your assignments with those pieces of equipment.
I agree. We don’t need an iPad because it doesn’t serve any functions that a computer couldn’t also provide. But… the J school doesn’t require you to have Apple products – they are just the “preferred provider.” You can have an Android and a PC and they cannot say anything to you. They just won’t provide you with instructions, help files, etc… on how to do your assignments with those pieces of equipment.
“…the iPhone accomplishes little from a journalist’s standpoint that you can’t do on a four-year-old flip phone.” This is completely untrue. Smartphones, including Android devices, will be imperative for journalists in the future for breaking news or to at least add supplementary pieces of information (photos, audio, video etc.) to stories without lugging more equipment out. Four-year-old flip phones cannot do this. Just because professors haven’t been able to work the iPhone and iTouch into the curriculum yet, doesn’t mean they are useless devices. Professors may need to start utilizing them more, but that is a completely different argument.
The new toys should not be required for freshman year – when people really need them is sophomore/junior/senior year.
David, your commentary is so misleading that I hardly know where to begin. The Innovation Committee is NOT “looking to add the iPad” to student requirements. We’re considering WHETHER to change the technology requirements based, in part, on what we’ve heard from faculty and students who responded to our surveys. Read the Maneater news article. Come to the presentation tomorrow.
The J-School does NOT require “all incoming journalism students to have an iPhone.” Yes, iPads are definitely expensive. At least $500, as you point out. But if you can find an iPhone that costs as little as $50 INCLUDING the two-year plan, send me to that store. Otherwise, you own a brick.
Smartphones such as the iPhone can accomplish MUCH more for journalists than a four-year-old flip phone. You should know that from attending your own capstone class. A team of students is testing smartphones and tablets as reporting devices right now under the direction of RJI Fellow Will Sullivan. Amanda Heisey and Jen Elston (see their comments below) were on the capstone team last semester that started this testing.
The J-School CAN “think of a journalistic purpose for an iPad.” We can think of several, in fact. Witness the aforementioned capstone teams. Or the recent symposium RJI sponsored on tablets. Or the proposal by magazine students to develop iPad apps in one of their classes.
These examples and others I’ve heard may or may not be enough to justify a different technology requirement. We’ve only begun debating the question. I certainly haven’t made up my mind. But I won’t be swayed by hyped headlines or inaccurate reporting.
About the only content I can recommend from this piece of yours is Rob Weir’s observation that the faculty should weigh not just whether but WHEN to require new technology of students. That’s definitely something the Innovation Committee will consider. Meanwhile, you might consider how hard it is to justify a future for JSB when its current lead writer ignores the dictum that you’re entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts.
AT&T advertises a $49 iPhone3G on its website: http://www.att.com/wireless/iphone/
As for the “looking to add the iPad” language, I am one of many students concerned with how close this journalism school has become with Apple. The MacBook offers no advantage to Windows PCs when it comes to journalistic work. We don’t use iMovie to edit video or Garage Bank to edit audio. Indeed, it might actually be a disadvantage to have us learn to work on Apple computers when most newsrooms depend on Windows.
The iPhone requirement was irksome because we weren’t told to buy a smart phone, but we had to buy an iPhone specifically. We might be less upset if we were asked to buy iPhones or Androids or if we EVER used them in class. But we don’t. This J-School did not take the time to find a place for the iPhone in our curriculum before it was required, so far as any of us can see.
I still haven’t heard the journalistic purpose of an iPad. What can you do on an iPad you can’t do on a MacBook or an iPhone. Why do we need a THIRD shiny Apple product? Why should we shell out another $500 for a required iPad?
I will agree with you that iPhones can do a lot of important journalistic work, and I should have compared it to another smart phone. Why does the J-School support the iPhone over Android phones?
The frustration you see in my blog post and you will hear from many other students is that we are confused by the J-School’s relationship with Apple.
I don’t even know where to begin. As Mike stated, Amanda, Drew, Will and myself spent the whole semester testing out various mobile technologies and this article basically discredited our work. My personal observation was that the iPhone was the best mobile phone for a journalist (as Karen stated) at the time because of the advanced applications (such as editing). Once Android can surpass the iPhone as a journalistic tool, maybe the school will support them both. There are uses for the iPad and I do think that the journalism school should make them available to the students. With the iPad 2, journalists can accomplish many things.
The journalism school doesn’t require anything – I think you should change your wording. I have a MacBook Pro and I still did all of my work in the Futures Lab. It is not enforced, just a common misconception. It is true that the iPhone/iTouch is required but not used, and that is a shame. Maybe more teachers will incorporate this into their classrooms – especially as a new version of Blackboard comes out (with mobile features).
I don’t appreciate the tone of your piece. I was speechless after I read it. I feel that your opinion is clouding your judgment on writing a journalistic piece. This is in no way objective. I know it is a blog post, but it is in no way journalistic.
I keep hearing the iPad can accomplish many great journalistic things, but what exactly? What are some functions the iPad can perform that you can not do on a laptop or iPhone?
I use the word “requirement” to describe the iPhone and MacBook requirements because that is the word the J-School uses: http://journalism.missouri.edu/undergraduate/computer-requirements.html
JSB posts always have opinion and voice, that’s nothing new. And from the beginning JSB hasn’t been objective but that’s old news too.
iPad possibilities? Look at our capstone project information. It is on the Internet. Do some research. Interview some people. Do some journalism.
It never says “you need an Apple.” Is it worded poorly and with an Apple slant? Yes. Do you have to have a Mac? No.
Okay. Maybe I worded things poorly. It didn’t seem journalistic at all – not in the slightest- just a rant from another blogger.
Hi Mike, thanks for the response. For the record, I’ll past below the whole text of the email I sent to David yesterday morning, in response to his call for comments on Twitter. I don’t feel as though the post above completely covered my thoughts on the matter (which of course is David’s prerogative as a gatekeeper).
I do have some concerns that students entering college may be making a technology purchase decision based on their intended major, rather than what they might end up with. I’m assuming, but don’t know for sure, that more pre-journalism students than students in other majors wind up switching, just based on the volume of pre-J majors we have. I don’t know how we can help with that, as a school, but I do have contacts at TigerTech since we buy items from them pretty regularly.
The complicating factor with an iPad or other tablet is that, unlike a laptop, there are very specific uses for the device that don’t apply to all students. As I mention below, I’d love for every student in the Magazines Across Platforms and the Magazine Publishing classes have access to an iPad, but I’m unsure that requiring them to buy one is the best way to do that. I know for a fact that magazine design students are specifically being asked if they have experience designing for the iPad when they’re interviewing for jobs.
Email:
Hi David, sorry, we got pretty busy last night and I didn’t get around to this until right now. However, some thoughts:
I’m not sure that requiring an iPad would be the best move for the school, for a couple of reasons. First, a lot of the required computer purchases are made when students are freshmen. If Apple continues its trend of releasing a version update of the iPad each year, as it’s done with the iPhone and iPod Touch, then students could have a device that’s a couple years out of date by the time they are using it in classes, assuming they even make it to the J-school. (Related to this, I really wish we would encourage students to delay laptop purchases until they know their major and emphasis area; I’d tell a son or daughter of mine to get by on an older laptop for a couple years until they can decide what’s right for them.)
Second, I don’t see there being a lot of classes that are likely to use the iPad as a teaching device, though I do think that we need to make some sort of provision for those that are.
The argument for making a tablet device a “required” technology item is similar to the iPhone/iPod Touch argument: if it’s listed as a school requirement, students using specific forms of financial aid can use that to buy the device. On the other hand, I think that making this technology a requirement is onerous to students who may not have an extra $499 to spend — that’s at least a couple hours of course credit.
That said, I do think we need to work on a solution for providing iPads to students for class purposes. I’m working with two classes this semester, Magazine Publishing and Magazines Across Platforms, that are involved in creating content for the iPad. The roadblock that we’re running into is that few students have access to tablets, and so we’re asking them to rethink presentation for a device they may not be familiar with. They can test their prototypes on the iPad emulator that comes with the Apple SDK, but that’s not the same as being able to see it on an actual device. We’ve been loaning out faculty iPads when we can, but that’s not really a longterm solution.
Hope that helps, and, again, sorry for the delay. Let me know if there’s anything else you need.
Thanks, Rob
Just fyi, increasingly studies are showing that iPhone has the advantage over other smart phones.
From Media Bistro, dated April 15, 2011:
“After teaching a class on mobile reporting, (Jeremy Rue of UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism) and his students concluded iPhones are where it’s at for journalism.
“We found that–at this time–iPhones were far superior than Androids for use in reporting; namely because there is so much more third-party support in terms of accessories and apps that support video/photo/audio capture,” Rue said. “This may change in the future since Androids are gaining traction in market share.”
(http://www.mediabistro.com/10000words/how-to-get-the-most-out-of-your-iphone-as-a-reporting-tool_b3226)
I don’t understand why everyone is freaking out about this. These “requirements” have never been checked up on. No one came knocking on the doors of Mark Twain making sure everyone had their MacBook Pro freshman year. Similarly, it does not seem that anyone has checked on who actually ended up with an iPhone or iPod Touch. I fairly sure it will be the same with the iPad. The J-School made the iPhone “required” so students could pay for it with financial aid, but that’s the only sense in which is is “required.” If students want to use their financial aid to purchase a “required” iPad, more power to them! But for those who don’t feel the need to purchase one, no one’s going to hunt them down and force them to buy one.
I don’t see a problem with the “requirements”. If there was an iPhone/iPad requirement when I came into the school, I would have just ignored it. If someone can’t exercise their free will to ignore stupid requirements, than that’s their problem.
I also don’t see how you can say that the j-school is completely for iPhone when RJI is hosting an Android contest right now.
I would try avoiding a smart phone for producing journalistic content. At the end of the day, the quality that I can get in producing content on a smart phone is going to be nowhere close to the quality that I can produce with my audio recorder and dslr. The real value in the smart phone with journalism is the easy access to information while you’re out in the field. I would only use a smart phone to produce content if I was in a situation where some spot news I wasn’t anticipating, but was important to capture, happened, and all I had was my phone on me.
Other than that, the whole apple vs. windows/android thing is a pretty moot debate for me. I don’t see how the journalism school can be expected to really teach these platforms, they only have finite resources. If you want to really learn this stuff as a journalism major in a classroom setting, then you should be double majoring in computer science.
If you are really interested in these platforms, there isn’t really much use in complaining about the journalism school’s preference for Apple. What you need to do is plan for many long nights with your laptop and some books, so you can learn the code needed to actually do something with these platforms. It’s a combination of having the creative juices to come up with a great idea, and then having the skillset necessary to execute on these ideas.
That’s really all there is too it. Unless you have money to pay them, programmers and engineers aren’t going to want to work on your project because you think you have a good idea. They have their own ideas that they want to work on, and they surely will have people that will pay them for other projects. And if you do find one to work on your project, prepared to be owned by them. They know that your idea is worthless without them.
It’s a disturbing thought in the journalism school that they are entitled to great pay, etc. If you look at the market forces and the surplus of journalists, it makes sense why journalists are paid what they are. There are more people with basic journalism skills than their are people with the skills to become a doctor, so the market dictates that the doctor would be paid more.
No one is forcing you to take a low paying job or an unpaid internship. I know that there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that I would take an unpaid internship. It’s a complete lack of respect by an employer to not pay someone for their work, and I refuse to degrade myself to that. And if I ever were to take an unpaid internship, it would be for something I love, such as doing photography for the Chicago Bulls/Green Bay Packers, at which point money doesn’t matter so much because you’re doing something you love. Money isn’t the end all be all, happiness is.
And the reality is that while many journalists don’t make a lot of money, there are plenty of journalists who do make a lot of money. Instead of spending your time complaining about how you’re not being paid enough, your time would be better spent becoming a better reporter, or learning action script or cocoa, so that you can do something that would make someone want to pay you a lot of money to work for them. There are plenty of journalists with good reporting skills and good writing skills. If you can go out and do something that others can’t do, I don’t think you will have much of a hard time finding a well paying job. It’s a shame so many in the journalism school don’t understand this.
You can still be a journalism student if you don’t have an Apple laptop and/or an iPhone. Another thing is that I’ve used my iPhone extensively during reporting! There’s no way an old flip phone would be able to help me out like the phone I have now. Smart phones are seriously useful for journalism students (from my personal experience). As for the J-School making iPad’s required? I feel like it’s kind of overkill to buy a laptop, iPhone/iTouch AND an iPad, so I wouldn’t do it. Again, “required” doesn’t actually mean “If you don’t have your iPad we’re going to throw you out of the j-school”. I’ve never owned one so I can’t attest to its merit, but I don’t think we need to be attacking the j-school about this. Incoming j-school students still have the option not to purchase any of the apple products.
If they said it was an iPhone “suggestion,” I wouldn’t mind. My problem is that the J-School calls it a technology “requirement” on its website and when prospective students speak to J-School representatives.
http://journalism.missouri.edu/undergraduate/computer-requirements.html