Journalism educators unite

In 2025, journalism education will face another challenging year. With declining student enrollment in journalism and mass communication programs, increasing workloads on educators, and curriculum challenges with depth and breadth of covering the basics of newsgathering while providing the latest skillsets, journalism education has its work cut out for itself.

As the news industry continues to face more cuts and the less-is-more strategy in 2025, journalism educators will need to continue to be realistic about how to best prepare students for the future profession. The journalists of tomorrow need to be resourceful, innovative, critical, creative, as well as one step ahead of the rest. Journalism educators will be inspired to seek out united efforts with others to navigate this challenging year.

Groups like ONA, NICAR/IRE, as well as the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication will continue to provide important resources, workshops and events for educators to gather in the coming year. However, more is needed.

Journalism educators and programs will be inspired to see how educational collaborations can evolve with groups like Trusting News, SRCCON, and the News Product Alliance among others in 2025. Journalism educators will also be empowered to collaborate with each other to navigate curriculum and enrollment challenges in the coming year. It’s through these efforts that journalism education will be transformed in 2025.