Makers of Ghana’s journalism-training schools

In the past, the training of professionals happened at the place of work.

Student doctors, for example, learned the job by watching and assisting doctors practising at the hospital.

Lawyer apprentices learn law, theory and practice at the law chambers of practising lawyers.

Engineering and architecture apprentices did the same on the job.

Those professionals learned the job by observing and practising until they became perfect.

Journalism, one of the cardinal professions, went through the same process.

Medicine and law were the first professions that started professional training at the university.

For medicine, it is recorded that medicine training began at the university in the 10th Century.

Legal training at the university level started in the Middle Ages.

ournalism is one of the professions that took training out of the mass media houses into the classrooms of universities.

Journalism, as an academic discipline, is about 160 years old.

It was in the United States that the first university journalism training began.

In France, the first school of journalism, Encole Superieuere de Journalisme, started in 1899 in Paris, France.

The history of training journalists at the university level is rooted in two different areas of the subject – the printing trade that printed and published books, pamphlets, journals and newspapers, and the intellectuals of the academic institutions.

It was realised that journalism was valuable in producing and spreading information and education and for national development.

In the 19th century, the debate started as to how journalists could be helped to improve professional practice by enriching news content with academic training – combining practical instructions with academic teaching on the social sciences.

The University of Missouri in the US started training practising journalists for the award of degrees.

Training of journalists, according to Jean Folkerts, should “include balancing theoretical interdisciplinary components, providing practical knowledge with practical approaches, offering a full range of academic degrees to cover beginners to professionals, promoting media literacy to the public, maintaining strong bonds between newsrooms and classrooms, mastering technological tools to produce quality contents and collaborating with global academic institutions for quality education’’.

According to Folkerts, “survival of journalism schools depends on understanding the developments of the industry”.

Whereas in most of the developed countries, journalism training at the school began in the 19th Century, it arrived late in the United Kingdom.

The debate was about how much academic or theoretical training should form part of training in practical and employment skills.

Should a heavy academic theoretical approach take precedence over strong practical training?

In the UK, why did academic training in journalism start late?

The debate about whether journalists should have a university education and acquire academic degrees in the liberal arts settled down in the 1970s when university training started.

Before then, by the middle of the 1970s, 75 per cent of British journalists did not have university-classroom education.

Training of journalists outside the media houses came very late to Ghana.

Ghana was a British colony until 1957 when it attained independence status.

Ghana’s brand of journalism was based on the British tradition.

The first newspaper in the Gold Coast (now Ghana), the Royal Gold Coast Gazette, was started by a British governor, Sir Charles MacCarthy, in 1822.

The Mirror Group of London brought mass circulation newspaper journalism into Ghana in 1950 and dominated the newspaper landscape in the country until 1965 when the Kwame Nkrumah government purchased the Ghana Graphic Publishing Company, then publisher of the Daily Graphic, The Mirror and the Ghana Year Book.

At the time I joined the Daily Graphic as a college-trained journalist along with Lucy Brown, Kweku Nkrumah and Victor Nartey – we were about the second generation of Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ) trained professionals.

Sam Clegg, EA Boateng, Eben Quarcoo and Dan Tetteh were the first GIJ products employed by the Graphic Corporation, now the Graphic Communications Group Ltd.

The GIJ was the first mass media training school in Ghana. It was established in 1959 by the Kwame Nkrumah administration.

Dr Nkrumah was himself a journalist and publisher who was well aware of the advantages of the mass media as tools for national development.

The GIJ was housed, temporarily, at the campus of the Accra Technical Institute (ATI) now the Accra Technical University.

It was not a department of the ATI and was not administered by the board and management of the ATI.

The Ministry of Education was the sector ministry of the ATI, while the GIJ was under the Ministry of Information.

The GIJ moved to the premises of the Ghana Press Club at Osu, Accra, after the 1966 military takeover that removed the Nkrumah regime from office on February 24, 1966.

Soon after the overthrow of Dr Nkrumah, the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute at Winneba was closed down.

Realising that the GIJ could be closed down as well, we, the 1965-1967 batch of 52 students of GIJ demonstrated in the streets of Accra in support of the coup.

Our demonstration published in the newspapers, radio and television, probably saved the school from being closed down.

However, the programme of studies saw minimal changes because they were academic disciplines comprising some social sciences and theoretical and practical journalism.  Two senior military officers were brought in as lecturers, probably to debrief us.

The founder Principal of the GIJ was Richard McMillan, a retired Director of the British Information Services in Accra, from 1959-1962.

He was replaced by Sam Arthur, an experienced journalist, who was, for many years, Editor of the Ashanti Pioneer, a strong opposition newspaper, from 1962 to 1963.

Cecil Forde, a journalist and later Minister of Information, took over from Sam Arthur from 1963-1965.

He was replaced by WG Smith, an experienced Black American senior news agency journalist, from 1965 to 1966.

 Sam Arthur returned to the institute as Director from 1966 to 1968.

Now, the GIJ is a campus of the University of Media, Arts and Communication (UNIMAC).

In 2006, under the GIJ Act 2006 (Act 717), the institute was detached from its sector ministry, the Ministry of Information and placed under the Ministry of Education and became an affiliate of the University of Ghana.

The GIJ began to award its owned university degrees in 2009 when it received its presidential charter.

It became one of the three campuses of the UNIMAC under the UNIMAC ACT, 2020 (Act 1059). The other campuses are the National Film and Television

Institute and the Ghana Institute of Languages, all based in Accra.

A diploma course in journalism run by the University of Ghana Institute of Public Education’s Accra Workers’ College (now Accra Campus) of the university, made that college, the second to offer journalism studies in Ghana in 1964.

That college offered studies in journalism, accountancy, secretarial courses, nutrition, home economics, international affairs, trade unionism and agriculture.

The courses started in 1964 with workers as the target and its goal was to “provide the educational opportunities which will help our working population to develop their potentialities and thus made them appreciate their civil responsibilities…”

The college drew lectures from the University of Ghana and, for journalism, Joe Panford, former editor of The Ghanaian and experienced public relations practitioner, was a lecturer in journalism, public relations and the African press.

The courses were suspended after the 1966 military takeover.

The School of Journalism and Mass Communication (now the School of Communication Studies of the University of Ghana) was established in 1973 with US funds and American expertise and supervision.

Professor William Hachten, an experienced journalist, writer, author of books on the mass media, and academic, was the founding Director.

The objective was “to improve the practice and understanding of journalism and mass communication in Ghana, adding to knowledge through research and to serve both practitioners in mass communication and the public”.

The school offered postgraduate diploma and masters courses in journalism and mass communication.

About four years later, the governing body of the University of Ghana decided to “Ghanaianise” the school in 1976.

Professor Ralph Kliesch, a journalist with eighteen years of practice and an academic, who was to replace Prof. Joe Rippley, as Director, was withdrawn and returned to the US.

Dr Paul V Ansah, lecturer in mass communication and a former senior lecturer in French at the Department of Languages of the university, was appointed acting Director in 1976.

In 1985, the name of the school was changed to the School of Communication Studies, with a strong emphasis on academic studies and less on practical journalism.

The School of Communication Studies has an affiliation with several tertiary institutions that offer journalism as a discipline.

The problem of our time, as noted by Jean Folkerts that I have quoted earlier, is the deviation, away from the principle that it is experienced professionals who should engage and train ‘’apprentices’’ to become professionals like themselves.  

Presently, in the journalism profession, like the others, we are ‘’back at square one’’.  

The age-old debate has resumed as to how much academic and practical learning a person should have to become a good professional. 

The emphasis today is on creative and productive skills.

Employers are looking for men and women with practical abilities before academic qualifications consideration.

I have been a student of journalism at three Ghanaian public higher institutions I have mentioned in this article.

I bear witness that I have benefitted immensely from the good academic and practical training I have had.

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