The future of journalism education is so important that dozens of people were willing to sit on the floor and stand for 90 minutes for a lively discussion on the topic Thursday.

Moderator Wilson Lowrey, an assistant professor in the department of journalism at the University of Alabama, said he hoped to find common ground as he introduced “What’s Next for Newspapers and Journalism Education?” presented by the Newspaper Division and the Community Journalism Interest Group.

“What we are going to do here today is … see where we have overlap,” Lowrey said as he asked the panelists for their thoughts on where the field is going.

“One of the things that I find … is the ongoing challenge is that we really have a full curriculum,” said Andrew DeVigal, assistant professor at San Francisco State University.

“How do we teach multimedia if we really have everything packed up to the gill?” he asked. DeVigal suggested creating classes for niche audiences. This could lead to a course for those interested in automotive Web journalism or interactive graphics, he said.

Jan Schaffer said it is important for journalism education to focus on several key elements, including entrepreneurship, journalism conventions and recruitment. Schaffer is the executive director of The Institute for Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland.

Schaffer argued that an emphasis on skills and not the mind was hurting journalism education.

“We have a whole semester on the history of journalism and nothing on the future of journalism,” Schaffer said.

Other panelists offered their observations on the field that offered clues to some of the problems.

“We need to tear down the walls between sequences,” said Professor Philip Meyer of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill.

“I would like you all to lead the profession – not the other way around,” said Jerry Ceppos, former vice president of news at Knight Ridder and former executive editor at the San Jose Mercury News. He pointed out that in the world of medicine and law, the top schools lead the profession.

Finally, Mary Nesbitt, managing director of the Media Management Center at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, told the room what she was hearing from the industry.

“What they do want is for the students who we graduate to have a better sense of who they’re committing their journalism for, to have a better sense of audience,” she said.

They don’t want the journalism educators to stop teaching the “basics” and be “bedazzled” by new technology and gadgets, Nesbitt added.

DeVigal suggested that students need to be encouraged to think in a non-traditional manner.

“We need to reward innovation,” DeVigal said.

Meyer echoed that thought. “We have to have the courage to do lots of dumb things to get there,” he said.