Dear Editors,

Last week, readers of The Daily Eastern News heard our campus’s Council on Academic Affairs chair (“CAA to vote PR major,” Oct. 14, 2015) insinuate that journalism – and thus, our Journalism Department here at EIU – is about a print paper product.

Marita Gronnvoll, a Communication Studies professor who does an excellent job as chair of the CAA committee, told a DEN reporter: “They [Journalism] can focus now on print media, which is sort of their thing anyway.”

As chair for the College of Arts and Humanities curriculum committee, I have had the pleasure of working with Ms. Gronnvoll so I’m certain she did not intend any disrespect.

But, like many other Americans, she apparently does not realize that journalism goes way beyond a print product.

Journalism has never been more vibrant, exciting or comprehensive as it is today when news professionals deliver essential information each day via digital, TV broadcast, print, radio, mobile devices and social media.

That’s why our Journalism Department teaches students to report, write, and produce news across all mediums.

In fact, Eastern’s J-Dept., one of only 119 nationally accredited mass communications programs, was among the first in the nation to require multimedia news courses more than a decade ago.

In addition, our students also take courses in broadcast news, photojournalism, print/web design and advanced reporting in which they learn to report and produce news digitally, visually, interactively and to promote it using numerous social media approaches.

As a result, the student-run newspaper’s online edition has won the Associated Collegiate Press’s Pacemaker, college journalism’s equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize; the TV station has earned multiple Emmys; and the yearbook has earned several national awards, to name a few honors.

Sure, print circulation has declined, but more than 40 million Americans still read a newspaper every single day while online readership continues to soar: More than 90 percent of Americans regularly read news online, in social media and on mobile devices – roughly 180 million viewers each month. Plus, more than 23 million watch local TV news broadcasts each day, along with about 3.5 million viewers for national cable networks.

Clearly, journalism is far more than soy-based ink words on a thin piece of newsprint.

Journalism extends to every facet of news information and to every single technology and medium.

Joe Gisondi

Professor of Journalism