Newspapers, higher education both help shape society | Richmond ...

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By: MICHAEL RAO |
Published: October 12, 2012 Updated: October 12, 2012 - 12:00 AM

Not long ago, I asked my son about how his generation wants to receive its news. His answer surprised me.

He would pay to subscribe, he said, not only to newspapers but to their data sources as well. He said "we need data sources to check facts about different things that interest us like public officials and how they vote, how much money is spent on certain schools, roads, and things like that."

What I took from that conversation was that our nation's emerging leaders want to receive information differently than we did. That is important knowledge for newspapers, but it also applies to everyone in the information business, including those of us in higher education.

As we celebrate National Newspaper Week, I am reminded how much newspapers and higher education have in common. We both play a fundamental role in shaping society. And although we do it in different ways, we have the same purpose: We educate people by helping them understand their world, how they fit into it and how they can embrace their obligation to lead it and change it.

But, as my son pointed out, we cannot do it the same way we used to. We have to understand that we are no longer in the business of transmitting knowledge. We will lose our audience ? our readers and students ? if we simply print facts, or lecture about them.

We have to be in the critical-thinking business. Rather than distributing information to the masses, we have to connect people with what they want to learn and do so in a context that is meaningful to them. Our audiences want not only to receive information but also to review it, analyze it and use it effectively.

My son's generation is influenced by technology and, more importantly, the social shift that has come with technology. This generation, which includes Virginia Commonwealth University students, is sophisticated in its thinking and has decided what matters to them and what doesn't. And that raises the stakes of authenticity for us.

It is not enough simply to move the same old content to a new format. We must innovate our services, products, delivery methods and more. Even though we have more competition than ever before, and in all formats, the way to reach our audience is not by being louder but by being more focused, relevant and useful.

Simply, we must be indispensable.

While the method by which we reach our audience is new, our obligation to society is the same as it has always been, and that is to educate globally engaged citizens who will make a difference in their communities and be leaders in our world.

When we reach our audiences effectively, we can do tremendous, transformative things. Consider, for example, how newspapers and universities can work together to honestly assess the state of education.

For many years, the United States was the world's leader in awarding bachelor's degrees. Now, we rank 16th, with only 41 percent of adults holding a bachelor's degree. This is a problem that affects our economy, national security, foreign policy and so much more about our way of life.

We are certainly addressing that in a variety of ways at VCU. Newspapers can play a significant role, too, by keeping education an important topic in people's minds.

What McCombs and Shaw theorized about the mass media in the 1970s remains true. "Here may be the most important effect of mass communication: its ability to mentally order and organize our world for us," they wrote. "In short, the mass media may not be successful in telling us what to think, but they are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about."

A newspaper's ability to set the agenda for public discourse gives it a great responsibility to guide the national conversation toward what matters most.

Yet, a Brookings Institution survey showed that fewer than 2 percent of news stories focus on education. This is not surprising, given that many newspapers no longer employ a full-time education reporter. (Fortunately, that is not the case with the Richmond Times-Dispatch.)

You also cannot overlook higher education's role in research, economic development, inventions and moving our technologies to market. In VCU's case, that's a $4 billion impact on Virginia.

Newspapers and universities are both critically important to our society. We have so much in common and can learn so much from one another as we pursue our shared mission of educating, creating and enabling globally engaged citizens.

Source: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/oped/2012/oct/12/tdopin02-rao-newspapers-higher-education-both-help-ar-2276310/

vanderbilt evan mathis staff sgt. robert bales