This is my second attempt at posting this so here's hoping it goes through...
Problems:
Only two of the three journalism minor faculty teach journalism. We love our third member (a digital cultures scholar hired as a result of a PhD-only tenure-track journalism faculty search), but we didn't gain anything in skills course coverage. We rely heavily on adjuncts and we've had spotty success. Sometimes the problem is consistency -- some students come out of beginning reporting having never conducted an interview.
Other times the problem is focus, particularly in the audio and video courses. At USF the journalism minor is housed in media studies. Although the department began as a broadcast news production program, over the years Media Studies ate the department and broadcast news atrophied and died. From the ashes rose lots of experimental video production and sound engineering courses. This is great if that's what you want, but not so good if what you want is journalism.
We have solid print reporting classes -- two of us are from print newsrooms -- but we've only recently begun to address holes in audio and video reporting. Last spring we hired a radio producer to teach an audio reporting course. I was surprised to find out that this class had been offered to film students as well and it had morphed into something better serving students interested in sound design than reporting. A couple of weeks ago we met with a radio news director who teaches an amazing audio reporting class at another local private college and we'll be consulting with her to redesign our class.
Even though there are too few of us on staff to cover our needs, because we are part of media studies, sometimes we have too many cooks in the kitchen. Although the cooperation and coordination between the theory and practice sides of the department have improved dramatically, there's still a disconnect between what students want (to make a living in mainstream journalism) and what some of our colleagues think they should want (to toil in the fields of "nonprofit" media).
Finally, since I arrived in 2002, I've seen the direction of USF's journalism program change as often as the direction of the San Francisco Chronicle changed when I was there. Every new idea or format or theory or goal gets a lot talk and attention but little seems to show up in the classroom. We need to be flexible, but we can't afford to waste time flitting around.
