Teaching old values in this new age

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Updated: November 15, 2011 8:58AM

He dragged a bunch of skeptically kvetching journalists kicking and screaming into the digital age. If that’s the summation of John Lavine’s Northwestern University deanship, it’s a marvelous legacy.

Lavine recently announced he is stepping down after nearly seven years as dean at Medill. “It has been quite an odyssey,” he wrote in his announcement to the school’s faculty and students.

Lavine’s odyssey was no match for Homer’s ancient Greek epic. Odysseus, the mythical sea-sailing warrior hero, wrestled with his fair share of deadly poisons, murderous pirates, and the witch-Goddess Circe (who turned half of his warriors into swine by feeding them cheese and wine).

Still, Lavine, a former publisher and founder of the Northwestern’s Media Management Center, rode a few controversial waves of his own.

Thousands of words have been typed, blogged and tweeted about the controversies that washed up on Lavine’s shore. Faculty, students and alums seethed when he upended Medill’s curriculum and forced its tweedy faculty to learn multimedia journalism. They writhed when Lavine was accused of manufacturing quotes in an article for an alumni magazine (an allegation that remains unproved). They agonized when David Protess, a nationally acclaimed professor, resigned amid charges of ethical lapses by Protess and his students, now subject to litigation.

Some of the angst had merit. Much was petty and misplaced. But oh, so familiar. Critics have been crucifying the deans, administration and curriculum since my undergraduate days in the 1970s.

Running a 21st century journalism school is a monstrous job. For my money (and, as a double Medill graduate, I shelled out tons of it), Lavine survived and Medill has thrived. There is still a strong demand in the industry for Medill grads. In a terrible economy and in the throes of a crisis in journalism, young people are clamoring to enroll at the school, among the tops in the nation. Lavine leaves a first-rate faculty in his wake.

As Medill seeks new leadership, it must be wary of a digital age that has transformed our profession. Yet, as Lavine urged, you can’t stay relevant unless you adopt and conquer the new tools.

Twitter, Facebook, Google, et al are means to an end, not the end. While Medill must train budding reporters in these techniques, ethics, accuracy fairness and good writing must remain paramount. Most important: delivering quality content to news consumers.

Lois Wille, one of the wisest journalists I know, is a Medill alumna, former newspaper editorial page editor and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. The new dean, she told me the other day, must be about “training people in the use of the new tools, while adhering to the old virtues.”

It’s a task Odysseus would relish.