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The World Journalism Institute (WJI), created by the publishers of World magazine "to recruit, train, place and encourage journalists who are Christians in the mainstream newsrooms of America," has itself become the focus of media attention recently.

Various weblogs first began drawing attention to WJI in the wake of allegations against USA Today reporter Jack Kelley, who had been scheduled to speak at an institute luncheon around the time the newspaper's investigation of Kelley's fabricated stories concluded. Soon, questions were raised about other institute guest instructors.

A Los Angeles Times article on gay marriage opponents by Roy Rivenburg elicited sharp criticism from New York Press columnist Michelangelo Signorile. Blogs and message boards at the Poynter Institute, LA Observer and elsewhere have also been critical of a perceived WJI attempt to influence news coverage. In response, Rod Dreher, associate editorial page editor for the Dallas Morning News, said he would ask WJI to take his name off the institute's web site.

A large part of the criticism stems from World magazine's directed reporting philosophy, which calls on Christian journalists to "report biblically," not objectively. Directed reporting was part of WJI's original mission "to form a new cadre of tough-minded, warm-hearted, expertly trained Christian journalists for a new generation."

In response to the criticism and new objectives for the institute, WJI is changing its course.

When WJI was founded in 1999, it was intended to teach World magazine's style of reporting to a new generation of World reporters, Joel Belz, CEO of God's World Publications (which owns both World magazine and WJI) told Christianity Today last week. But the program became so popular among Christians hoping to become journalists that World could hardly employ the more than 100 students who signed up for the program's summer sessions. To cope, WJI changed its mission. Instead of teaching future World reporters, it would teach Christians hoping to become mainstream journalists.

WJI realized that it would not work to teach World magazine's journalistic style to mainstream journalists, Belz said, so the school now teaches secular objectivity in addition to directed reporting. "In the debate between creation and evolution, the evolutionist has to learn only one side of the story. A creationist has to learn both sides of the story. I would say that a Christian practicing journalism has something of the same task," he said.

At the same time, WJI instructors are given classroom freedom to teach their own philosophy of journalism. Responding to criticism, Rivenburg said, "The content is straight journalism, and I would teach a secular class the exact same way. Although I disagree with WJI's [directed reporting] philosophies, I see no problem with teaching good journalism methods to aspiring journalists."

"We have shifted from what I would call a kind of crusading mission to more of a down-to-earth, nuts-and-bolts practical mission," Belz said.

The "crusading" mission had caused other problems as well. "On an early World [Journalism Institute] web site," Belz said, "we said something like [our] mission is to send well-equipped young Christian men and women into the pagan newsrooms of America." That may not go over too well with prospective employers of World Journalism Institute grads, Belz notes. "That's not being wise as serpents and harmless as doves."

One of the most prominent critics of the institute is a Christian journalist himself. Terry Mattingly, a journalism professor at Palm Beach Atlantic University who also writes a religion column for Scripps Howard News Service, remains critical despite the philosophy change.

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June (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48