Enrolment of first year students in journalism leaps up by 30% in 1979. Why?
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"Possibly because the Information scandal has made journalism seem like a glamorous profession." At least this is the opinion of Journalism staff who compare the jump in numbers with a similar phenomenon at journalism schools in the United States after Watergate.
Of course, the increase may also be linked to the growing reputation of the Rhodes department, the only one of its kind at an English-language university in South Africa.
Bulletin, 1979 (2): 3
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Wasserman, H., 2004. Reflecting on journalism research: A quarter century of Ecquid Novi. Ecquid
Novi, 25(2), pp. 179 - 183.
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​Du Toit, J. E. 2013. Journalism Education in Universities: The Global and Local Migration of Concepts between Practice and Discipline. Doctoral dissertation at University of Stellenbosch. Retrieved on 6 Feburary 2016 from http://scholar.sun.ac.za
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Journalism education from the mid-1990s onwards is described by commentators as an era in which renewed emphasis was placed on the development of practical skills (Du Toit, 2013: 217 Wasserman, 2004: 181).
... Old course outlines and historic slides. It is, thankfully, a very different world to what it was. There is a lot more now for each generation of students to learn, and yet their work seems to improve year after year. The opportunities for integrating hard theory and hard practice follow a similar upward track. Often, I wish I were a first year again!
Guy Berger (Grocott's Mail, 2004: 1)
If an academic department of journalism is to be worth anything to the profession it serves it should achieve two things. On one hand it has to provide vocational training for the rising number of young men and women who plan to follow careers in the media. On the other hand its task is to research and report on developments in the media, evaluating these in terms of broader social and political needs.
1979 marks the tenth anniversary of the decision to set up a Journalism Department at Rhodes University. As we record in this issue of the Bulletin, the department has grown tremendously under its first head, Professor Tony Giffard, who has now left for America. The staff and students are indebted to him for his leadership, initiative, and professional commitment in difficult times.
Our facilities are unmatched at technical colleges or Afrikaans universities in South Africa, and student numbers are gratifyingly high...
Media studies in this country are in their infancy but everything that exists has been collected at Rhodes and we stand now on the brink of significant advances. Trends in the black press, readership and circulation patterns of newspapers facing the challenge of television, political and racial bias in the print and broadcast media, news censorship, South African press history and attitudes - are all reflected in the work of graduates and undergraduates at Rhodes.
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