Does UGA need a new Digital Mass Media Major? Tell us Tuesday (3/24, 8A)

What happened? Why YouTube and not ABC, CBS, or NBC? Why is Google the world’s largest advertising agency (market cap of $137.70B) over 13 times bigger than WPP (market cap $10.47B)? Why with a billion downloads is iTunes killing every other record label? Why with every closure do newspaper publishers seem like the blacksmiths of the information age? And why is Facebook Generation Next’s favorite book -- that they don’t even have to buy?

The short answer is technology. Gutenberg’s new media technology gave birth to mass communication. The medium is the technology. Each new iteration of techno innovation amped the power of our new communication tools. And with new digital technologies, the pace of change went warp speed. Like no other epoch of media history, new technologies fundamentally altered every aspect of mass media.

And some of us believe that mass communication education has not changed enough to address the challenge of digital technology. We hoped the content skills we taught our students would beat the channel savvy technowledge the dot com start-ups offered. Sensible enough. People were still going to read, listen, and watch. The content production skills would be relevant no matter what the medium, right? Unfortunately, technology radically changed the patterns of consumption. Technological capability morphed traditional industry structure into something today’s media professionals barely recognize. The technologist transformed from a bit part to the leading lady/man. And the mass media professional is being edged off the screen.

Some of us want to change that. A group of faculty in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication is exploring possibility of creating a new type of major to educate a new type of communication professional.

With the Digital Mass Media major, we want the Grady College to develop the next generation of media leaders. The DMM major would provide an in-depth technology education that students can’t receive anywhere today at UGA. But at the same time, these students will be able to place their technowledge in the context of traditional media industries. DMM students will have a rich understanding of the role of media in all elements of our society – and they will know the bits and bytes. In short, we want DMM graduates to become the turnaround artists that will rescue mass media from irrelevance and help legacy companies reclaim leadership in the industries they helped create.

We have discussed a possible structure for the Digital Mass Media major. But that is only a start. We will talking about this plan on Tuesday (3/24) at 8A in the NMI (412 Journalism). Join us to share your ideas.