O PAPEL DA LITERATURA NO ENSINO DO JORNALISMO: ALGUMAS REFLEXÕES

Abstract

For decades, journalism was a profession for which there was no specific training and no academic degree. It depended mostly on certain abilities, and a taste and curiosity for writing or, even more common, it was a job for promotion and self-promotion.

Currently, a considerable part of the discussion about the teaching of Journalism focuses on aspects that concern, on the one hand, the eternal quarrel between theory and practice and, on the other, the need for technological adaptation of curricula to respond to the dizzying pace of change in communication technologies.

Taking the curricula of university programs in Journalism as a study case, this article discusses the importance of humanities in the training of journalists, especially at a time of uncertainties and technological imperialism, in which certain social groups, sometimes with great responsibilities, try to get their perverse message across that the technical content of curricula and technological proficiency of the individual are the indispensable requirements for a global and updated education in Journalism.

Inspired by Stephens (2010), I argue that learning literature, reading the great classic and contemporary authors, knowing the specifics of lite rary language as a particular kind of writing, questioning the visions of the world imagined by novelists, playwrights and poets, and experiencing the cultural and symbolic dimension of the literary work of art should be required skills in a university education in journalism.

My argument is based on three fundamental reasons: a historical reason, which allows us to problematize the relationship between journalism and literature adopting a historical point of view; a discursive reason, which will lead us to reflect on the discursive specificity of journalism and literature; and a cultural reason, which claims that cultural journalism, more than a specific professional practice, is an important dimension of contemporary societies.