Mizzou J-School’s Brian Brooks Defends Laptop Requirement
A couple weeks ago we published a blog post on all the reasons why it’s a bad idea to make Apple computers “required” at the Missouri School of Journalism.
The blog post got some attention and was picked up by PBS MediaShift, for which we did some more reporting and research, including an email interview with Mizzou J-School Associate Dean Brian “B-Dog” Brooks (no, not the fake one).
We’ve always been in favor of full transparency, if not objectivity, so we want to give Brooks the chance to respond in full to the original JSB post. Below is the email interview we conducted with Brooks, reprinted in full with his permission. Our questions are in bold followed by his responses. You’ve already heard what we think, and we got a bunch of responses from readers already, so leave more of your thoughts in the comments section below.
Why does the J-School require each student purchase a laptop?
For years, students and parents asked us for guidance on buying a computer at the start of college. Almost everyone does it, Our survey eight years ago showed that almost 90 percent of freshmen bought a new computer for college, and by now that number is much higher, even among non-journalism students. Students and parents made clear to us that they were looking for guidance about what to buy. We provided that guidance.
It made sense to the faculty to ask students to purchase a wireless laptop with MS Office installed, and the faculty of 80 or so voted unanimously to impose that requirement after a year of study. Why MS Office? In online course management systems like Blackboard, students submit assignments electronically, and teachers grade them in that form. In that environment, it is essential that a common word-processing platform be used. We would, of course, accept any word processor that produced a Word-compatible file, but college students pay less for the Office suite than they do for a typical textbook. The faculty also envisioned using Excel in some courses, which has happened, and it believes that knowledge of spreadsheets is essential for a journalist today when doing things like analyzing budgets of companies or corporate entities. And, of course, Outlook is part of the MS Office suite. So is PowerPoint, which students in our classes regularly use when making class presentations.
As for the computer itself, the laptop is portable and can be used to take notes and do work while a student is on campus between classes. A desktop provides less mobility and requires the student to go back to the dorm to work. That part has definitely worked well for us. I see droves of students every day who carry their laptops with them and work between classes. Just watch as people assemble outside an auditorium while awaiting the start of class. Laptops are everywhere.
Also, we wanted to start teaching the basics of audio and video editing as part of the curriculum. iLife, while simple, helps students learn the basics. They then easily graduate to more sophisticated programs in their advanced classes. Further, for three years now we have been able to teach some sections of the basic news writing course in labs without computers. If a student doesn’t have a computer, he or she is shut out of those lab sections and will have fewer choices.
Why does the J-School *strongly* recommend Apple computers when the iLife suite of programs is used in only a couple basic journalism classes?
Apple is our preferred solution because it comes with iLife. To add comparable programs to a Windows computer would add several hundred dollars to the cost, and even then the programs would not work seamlessly, as they do on the Apple platform. There is a real advantage to having a company bundle software and hardware, and no one does that better than Apple. Students use iLife to learn the basics. It’s simple, and it works. In the end, though, it’s not about iLife, which costs students nothing extra because it comes with the computer. It’s about having a tool — a laptop computer — that is extremely useful for any college student, regardless of major.
We also encourage our freshmen to participate in the FreshFilms movie competition. Students use iMovie, part of the iLife suite, to do that in most cases, although a few already have familiarity with programs like Final Cut Pro and use that. The movie competition does two things in our view: It engages students in a team-building activity early in the freshman year. That gets them integrated socially and gives them a sense of “place” on campus. And in the process, they teach themselves a bit about video editing, increasingly an important skill for a journalist.
Finally, while some of our programs will require students to use more sophisticated programs, for many of our students iLife is the only video-editing software they will ever own or use.
Does the J-School offer any economic assistance to less economically advantaged journalism students who might not be able to afford an Apple Computer?
Not directly. But by requiring the purchase, students with financial need under FAFSA are able to count it in their total cost calculation, which in turn increases the amount of aid for which they are eligible. The J-School also has a need-based scholarship pool, which it frequently uses to assist students who come to us when they are suffering financial stress.
Finally, David, I would offer this: Not one student has EVER complained about this requirement in the past seven years.
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Although I don’t disagree with the Apple requirement, I feel like Brian’s defense about the inclusion of iLife isn’t really relevant. I have never used iMovie in a journalism class (maybe once in News 2100?). I was required to make a move as a part of the Fresh Films competition for my FIG — but that’s not something not all J-students are involved in.
I love my Mac and am glad the university required me to have it, as it’s made my life easier with my Adobe purchases. Also, all the newspapers that I’ve interned with in my college career used Macs, which I now know how to use. But to say that we need Macs for iLife is silly. We don’t use iLife in the J-School and the programs are laughable.
I always felt the Mac requirement made sense — the programs needed for photographers, video editors and designers to do their job is not as easy on a PC, plain and simple. It’s really the only system that can handle our workload and is very friendly with Adobe products, not to mention that FCP is an Apple product. But it’s safe to say that I”m not using iMovie or iPhoto to do my work.
Brian Brooks said: “Finally, David, I would offer this: Not one student has EVER complained about this requirement in the past seven years.”
I wish it weren’t so, but this is a typical elitist, amnesiac defense. Not only does it dismiss the complaints about this requirement included in your original post, but it also suggests that the brass is omniscient of all j-schoolers’ conversations. It would likely be more accurate (and less dismissive) to claim that no “formal” complaints on this issue have been made, to his knowledge.
Considering also the knee-jerk defense of institutional interests, I would say the response is about as typical as they come.
The logic towards Apple is amazingly bad. Here is a little price comparison for you:
Apple Macbook Pro – 13″ (2.3 ghz dual core, 4gb ram) – $1200 (the cheapeast mac laptop option now that isn’t a Macbook Air).
Comparable Windows laptops run from $350-450 usually.
The Adobe Creative Suite Master Collection runs for $900 for students. So say you get a $450 windows laptop + the Adobe Creative Suite, that’s $1350, only $150 more than the Mac laptop, and cheaper than the 15″ and 17″ Macbook Pro laptops.
Wouldn’t it make a hell of a lot more sense for students to be getting Windows laptops filled with Photoshop and Bridge for photo editing, Audition for audio editing, Fireworks and Dreamweaver for web development, Flash Professional for application and interactive graphic development, and Premier and After Effects for video editing than a Mac with iMovie and Garage Band?
I’d like to hear the faculties reasoning for why a Mac with iMovie and Garageband is preferable to a similar Windows laptop with the entire Adobe Creative Suite for roughly the same price.
And I’ll say that I am a journalism student who uses a Windows Laptop with the entire Adobe Creative Suite 5.5. I used to use a Macbook Pro, but the thing died (and that was after I put a few hundred in repairs prior to that for a blown battery, and a dead airport card). I ended up just buying a Windows laptop because it was cheaper than getting my Macbook repaired.
If I could do it all over again, I wish I would have bought a Windows laptop when I started college rather than my Macbook Pro. It’s much much cheaper and equally effective.
I have always felt the Mac laptop requirement made sense. And, I’m glad I was forced into buying one freshman year because I love my mac. What didn’t make sense was the “strong suggestion” of having an iphone or itouch for “lectures”. I bought an itouch and have not used it once for journalism purposes. Oh well, I’ve learned.
I agree 100% with Katie’s comment.
I would really like to know how many students actually participated in FreshFilms last year. As the Freshman Interest Groups student coordinator for the 2010-2011 school year, I was assigned the task of liaising between FIGs and FreshFilms. First off, FreshFilms was not required for journalism FIGs. In fact, the participation in FreshFilms by journalism FIGs was VERY low. If the participation in FIGs was low, I can only imagine that it would be even lower for non-FIG students. Since my freshman year in 2007 I have seen participation and organization with iLife, now known as FreshFilms, decrease dramatically. On top of that, FreshFilms isn’t even associated with Apple. All editing programs are now allowed in the competition. In fact, I believe students who edit on a program besides iMovie usually win.
All in all, FreshFilms is a HORRIBLY unorganized event that I have recommended FIGs, journalism-related ones and non, not associate with anymore.
I really wish JSB would stop perpetuating a lie. A Mac is NOT required. You know that. Stop trying to build the hype with this inaccuracy. You know that facts and you know this is not good journalism.
Whoa whoa whoa. We never said Macs were required. We said in our two posts here on JSB (and the MediaShift post) that Macs are strongly encouraged by the J-School, and the encouragement is so strong it borders on a requirement. The Romenesko and MediaShift headlines were misleading, but the headlines on JSB and all the content of the actual blog posts (the things we actually had control over) consistently describe it as a laptop requirement that strongly recommends Macs for questionable reasons. Sometimes we described it as a “requirement,” but we used quotation marks purposefully each time to distinguish it.
Sorry David, but this is your name attached to this article: http://to.pbs.org/pWjY9M
That’s true, Keith, and I take full responsibility for it! I just pointed out that wasn’t my first choice of headline is all.
I will say that as a journalism graduate who went through all this firsthand, buying a Mac really is presented by the J-School at every turn as a requirement rather than a recommendation. I know the official laptop policy doesn’t require any one brand, but that was not the message conveyed to me as an incoming freshman. The loud and clear message was that I *need* a Mac to survive at Mizzou. The J-School might call it a recommendation, but if it quacks like a requirement and looks like a requirement, it’s a requirement.
Jim Romenesko published another story today saying, “Recent Missouri School of Journalism grad David Teeghman advises incoming freshman not to buy a MacBook from the university bookstore even though it’s required.” (http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/romenesko/140717/why-missouri-j-school-should-drop-its-macbook-requirement/) If you were a responsible journalist you would reply to him and ask him to correct this mistake. He is crediting you with incorrect information. That makes both of you look bad.
My whole thing though is that this *is* an Apple requirement for all intents and purposes. I am calling it a requirement based on how it is communicated to incoming freshmen and their parents. To us, the J-School made it sound like it was a requirement and not just a mere recommendation to buy Apple rather than a Windows-based computer.
My goal with these blog posts was to try to get the J-School to tell incoming students that the actual policy doesn’t require any single brand of computer. Failing that, a secondary goal was to reach incoming students directly who are reading JSB and to tell them that they can buy any kind of laptop they want.
Is there another Romenesko link I can’t find? The only one I see about this story is a few days old.
This has to be the worst logic ever. I love my macbook pro but I only got it because I can afford to overpay for a laptop to browse the internet. Macbooks are overpriced. It’s a well known fact and to try and justify this position based on iLife is absolute insanity. There are hundreds of open source, yes I said “OPEN SOURCE” as in free, products available that easily compete with iLife products. The only downside I can see is not having FCP which is pretty damn good (new one is crap).
So here are the options:
Equivalent $500 Windows Laptop vs. equivalent $1300 Macbook vs. $1100 nice Windows laptop that is twice as fast as both
Clearly, the Macbook is the winner here. The shiny apple logo and creative marketing are definitely worth justifying the price.
Oh and I forgot about reliabilty and the cost of repairs. Well, don’t even get me started. If you are on anything close to a budget, get a windows laptop. If you’ve got the money to spend and don’t want something that is insanely fast because you are far too concerned with being “in” then get a mac. Personally, I browse the internet on a MBP, but I do real computing on an i7-2720QM, 16GB DDR3 1866MHz Memory, with a 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 Sandforce SSD, GTX 560M 2,048MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11Graphics Card. Now show me a Mac that can compete with that because I paid $2300 for it. Like I said, Macs are great but by no means should they be considered “better” than a Windows machine especially when you are basing it off of their advertising.