Awan Ismail

Knowledge versus Experience: Indicator to Good Journalism Practices

Globally, journalism education is undergoing significant changes in view of the ongoing technological evolution. Hence, it is important to have a good journalism education that can shape good journalism practices and professionalism. In recognition of this, the Council for Heads of Communication Studies (COHEC) in Malaysia has mapped out a framework for journalism education to be offered by Malaysian universities (COHEC, 2010). However, COHEC study was very brief and did not underline what makes good journalism practice. Therefore, this study seeks to identify the knowledge, experience, and skills needed in Malaysian journalism education. To this end, this study conducted in-depth interviews with senior practitioners – senior editors and chief editors - from media organizations in Malaysia. Findings show the importance of knowledge, experience, skills, and attitude needed for good journalism practices. The findings also acknowledged that journalism knowledge is as important as experience and debunked the old testimony that knowledge can be practiced on the job and no formal journalism education is needed. The understanding of journalism is not as a skill but as social, cultural, and philosophical expression, and general education is needed to cover the journalistic aspect of life. There is a need to redefine journalism as a field of study. Keywords : Journalism education, knowledge, experience, skills, attitude, Malaysia.

Shaping the journalism education studies in Malaysia: the effects from the study on ethnicity

Journalism education is a unique field of study under a liberty of social science because it works in context. The surrounding society gives a lot of impact on how journalism has been practiced and educated. However, there are not many studies on journalism education that focuses on the elements of its society (i.e. gender, ethnic, religion, class, etc.), what more studies from the students’ perspectives. Therefore, this study attempts to fill the gap by having students of journalism as its samples. This article presents an extract from a huge study on journalism education in Malaysia. It studies the journalism students’ perceptions and expectations of journalism education in Malaysia and identifies whether different ethnics in Malaysia make any differences in their perceptions and expectations. Using quantitative methodology, 187 sets of survey questionnaires were collected from Malaysian journalism students who are studying at public universities in Malaysia. The result shows significant differences in terms of good journalism practice, news gathering skills and news production skills between three main ethnics of Malaysian journalism students.