Scuttling Journalism at Harvard

In a very quiet and unpublicized move last winter, Donald Byker, assistant director of Expository Writing, cropped from Harvard's only required course an option which some believe to have been one of the finest and most rigorous basic writing programs in the University. Student course evaluations had been good and Byker had never expressed any dissatisfaction with the course. So when he handed the three teachers of Expos 14, "Editorial, Feature, and News Writing," letters notifying them that the journalism course was being eliminated from the curriculum, it came as a surprise.

Byker told The Crimson last July that the course was dropped "because of the absence of a full-time teacher, lack of office space, and the opinion that the course does not conform to the Expos 'mold.'" But facts incompatible with these three explanations and contradictory statements from Byker recently have made it difficult to understand exactly why and how the course was really dropped.

There are two catches in Byker's argument concerning the absence of a full-time teacher. First of all, the journalism option last year was limited to four sections by the decision of Byker and the Faculty Committee on expository writing. They made that decision even though there were 150 freshmen--enough to fill over eight sections--who requested journalism as their first-choice option. Then when the committee decided this year it would only hire full-time teachers for options with eight or more sections, the journalism section was forced to dissolve.

In one more twist of reasoning, Byker said if Expos offered something like the journalism course and some students didn't get in, then those students are bound to be more irritated than if they hadn't been offered it in the first place."

Although he originally said the lack of office space was important in the course's elimination, Byker said last week it was "not a very significant point, only about two points on a scale of 100. We have offices for six courses," he said. "Of course we could have found some office space, but we're slightly crowded, so that was one slight argument."

In July Byker asserted that the journalism option didn't fit the expos mold. He now says that opinion reflected the views of the expos Faculty committee. He says it is a view that he does not share.

"Although I myself believed the journalism expos was just as good a writing course as any other section, one of the committee members felt the course was geared to 'hip' writing rather than developing clear, felicitous prose," he said. "Another member felt the course had no place in the curriculum of a University where courses in applied music and drama were forbidden," he said.

Byker summarized his feelings about dropping the course this way: "The first time the committee spoke about it, I was in favor of keeping the journalism option. But after a while, I saw that if we did keep it, we would gain about six benefits and six debits. So I didn't press the matter. I didn't have any complaints with the standing committee's decision to drop it."

The committee members themselves seem less sure of the facts and much more ambivalent about the decision to drop the course than Byker implies. Max Hall, editor for the social sciences of the Harvard University Press and one of the six faculty members of the expository writing committee, said last week that he wasn't even sure whether the journalism option was being offered this year. "Although as far as I know," he said, "we've been moving in a direction of reducing 'specialized' courses."

Another committee member, Jerome H. Buckley, professor of English, said, "I didn't have any feelings one way or the other. All I can say is that journalism is usually offered in technical and professional schools, not at Harvard." Gwynne B. Evans, professor of English, declined comment on the issue. A fourth committee member, who asked to remain anonymous, said he thought the course had been abandoned "because the instructor was leaving, and there'd be no one to teach the course." If in fact the committee did take a decisive vote on the issue, it was not the best informed of all decisions. "They could have been in closer touch with the courses," Byker said, "but the committee members are very busy with other work in their fields." He noted, in their defense, that the committee did meet with a student expository writing committee several times a year.

Beyond the question of who made the decision, lies the more crucial question: why Harvard has let go of their unique journalism course for which there is still great demand and need. Despite the course's title, its instructors did not teach students how to report or send them out on assignments. Rather, they concentrated on developing writing and editing skills that are essential for every student's undergraduate years and are needed for many professions. Unlike almost any other expos course, there was a four-to-five page paper required every week that, when returned, would be scrutinized by classmates and edited and reworked repeatedly. The class teacher practiced a unique style analysis that forced students to examine classical subjective literature, calculating the number of times each part of speech was used, making students aware of undesirable loose jargon and grandiose tendencies in much specialized work. Style analysis, former head section man for the option, Martin Robbins, said, forced the students to review their grammar and brought them closer to absorbing the gestures of each writer's style.

Another aspect of the journalism option that set it aside from other expos offerings is that students worked closely with part-time and former professional writers and editors. "Professional practicing writers, like professional practicing pianists, probably make better teachers than those who are not working directly in their field," John Bethell '54, editor of Harvard Magazine and creator of the journalism option in 1968, said.

Robbins, now teaching at the Radcliffe Institute, is a professional editor who is currently writing a textbook called "Finding Your Style," affirmed Bethell's view.

But Byker challenged this opinion. "I doubt that professional writers teaching a writing course has much to do with the quality of student work and how much they learn. Consistent one-to-one discussion is what is most important," he said. "Writing is a matter of creation as well as revision, so I doubt that what happens in the journalism section is any different from what happens in the natural science course." Byker was preceptor of the natural science option last year.

Few are as well-equipped to measure growth in writing skills from the course as the students who have taken it, many of whom have gone on to become writers and editors at prominent newspapers in the country. Ronald Wade '75, who is currently writing and editing for the Chicago Tribune, was placed in a lower group expos course his freshman year, and then voluntarily enrolled in the upper-level journalism option his sophomore year. "If I could have taken the course three times, I would have," Wade said. "I think the course improved my writing skills 100 per cent. We learned to recognize jargon, get rid of cliches and verbosity, to make writing tighter, and to write under pressure. Even my letter writing to friends improved. All of a sudden the English language made sense."

Former Crimson President Richard J. Meislin '75, who is now a reporter trainee who writes almost every day for The New York Times, called the elimination of the journalism option "regrettable. Harvard has always considered journalism a second class non-profession, an attitude which is far off-course."

No one is exactly certain at this time why the course was dropped, but several of the former teachers of the journalism section surmise that at the root of the problem is the misleading title of the course and the attitude towards it which Meislin expressed. Some of the committee members unfamiliarity with the course content and confusion about its title--journalism--bears out this assumption. Harvard has always frowned upon offering courses in applied arts, and Robbins says he feels that this attitude may be at the root of the decision to eliminate what appears to some to be a training ground for special journalistic skills.

"Editing principles are essential for every student who writes, but the label "journalism' here is like a red flag." Robbins said. "There's no course at Harvard where they can get the basic writing skills they'll need for any field they pursue. Political scientists spend four years writing the jargon, lingo and cliches they read in textbooks. A semester is all any good writer needs to learn to clear up ambiguity and imprecision."

Bethell said the unique characteristic of journalism in teaching expository writing is its premium on clarity. "People must think out structure in advance, and then look hard at it. Journalism is a highly legitimate area of study, one that unquestionably has a place in expository writing."

"The journalism sections were popular and coming as close as any to what I took to be the concern of the expository writing program," Jean Slingerland, assistant director of expository writing before Byker, said. "The sections were not designed to turn out newspapermen. Their goal was to teach people how to put words on paper in concise, lucid prose, with generalizations backed up with proof, and to meet a deadline. These happen to be the same as the values in journalism. Unfortunately, to list the course as journalism, you're apt to give the impression you're teaching about fillers and the number of words to the column inch."

Bethell said he taught the same course as Robbins four years ago "in a quiet way" and under the less disturbing rubric "Exposition and Journalism." Byker said he considered Editorial, Feature and News Writing" to be a "happy entitlement" for the course.

One bone of contention among people who defend holding onto the journalism option is that the committee decided to offer again this year an option called "Fiction"--one which many feel has nothing to do with developing expository writing skills. "We had a fight at a faculty meeting about teaching this creative writing course--one which I don't think is valid," Robbins said. Byker responded with three reasons why he thought "of the two anomalies" in the expository writing curriculum, the fiction course is a more suitable offering: it had a longer history, more demand, and a full-time teacher.

Criticism of Harvard's laissez-faire attitude toward journalism has come from both inside and outside the University. Mort Stern, editorial writer for the Denver Post, dean of the University of Colorado School of Journalism, and a former Nieman Fellow, said he has drawn the conclusion "that there is nothing wrong with a Harvard man or woman becoming a skilled journalist, so long as Harvard has done nothing overt to cause it. That would explain," he said, "why no such stigma applies to the Nieman Fellows, who acquired their journalistic skills elsewhere and merely use them to draw the best out of Harvard."

Whether the journalism option should be offered under a different name or different program are moot points. At this point, however, it seems that the quiet decision to scuttle a popular option in Harvard's curriculum merits more of a hearing than its opponents gave it last spring.