NOTE: This is my entry – late entry – to the Carnival of Journalism, a collection of blogs writing on a single topic, organized by Spot.us creator David Cohn. This is a revival of the Carnival and in this first, returning edition, the topic is “The changing role of universities for the information needs of a community.” I decided to approach it from my recent experience in the academic world, following my time in the newsroom. You can read the round-up of other entries here: carnivalofjournalism.com

Newsrooms, meet classrooms. Classrooms, meet newsrooms.

I know you’ve known each other, tolerated each other and even have talked smack about each other for decades. But guess what, you both need each other.

And you both need to change, adapt and evolve fast.

That’s my conclusion as I start my fourth semester in academia, after 10 years in newsrooms. (For the record, I don’t consider myself an “academic.” I prefer the term “hackademic.” Actually, I prefer Web journalist.)

I know in newsrooms we’re busy putting out the daily miracle (every 15 minutes online) and are always short on resources. We are on the leading edge of content evolution online, but we don’t have time, money and, sometimes, the skills we need to experiment and grow. We often don’t have support from the top either.

Let’s be honest, we often dismiss academics (“those who can’t, teach”) and have some issues collaborating with anyone, whether be it another newsroom or a university.

I know in classrooms we put in longer hours (even though people don’t see it) working with aspiring journalists. These students are called the future of journalism on a good day, but are dismissed as clueless dreamers on a bad day – often called both by people in the newsroom.

I know that the “students” who fill our classrooms are no longer students, but journalists. And, while they are surrounded by haters (from parents to working journalists to even professors), this force of young journalists can’t be stopped. Thank God.

I also know that in academia there is some time to think. We have more time to reflect and share those thoughts. We actively are talking about journalism… even though some might have not practiced it in some time. Does that mean their analysis is invalid? No… but some people do dismiss it.

Often, but not always, academia has access to grants and more funding. My jaw has dropped when I’ve heard about the amount of money funding some projects that didn’t deliver. I know in newsrooms many of us would make miracles happen with a fraction of that money.

On the other hand, when funding is given for something innovative, well, some in academia have not innovated in a while. Don’t get me wrong, I think there are more professors who are “getting it” than leaders in the newsroom. But being innovative and risk-taking isn’t something that is always engrained in every tenured professor.

Let’s be honest again, we in academia often dismiss those in the newsroom as being arrogant and unaware that they need help. I know many of us have spent years trying to partner with local newsrooms, only to get frustrated and give up.

Both sides are imperfect. Journalism is imperfect.

Both sides need to evolve in their own way. Journalism needs to evolve through them.

Both sides need each other. Journalism needs truly them.

So, how do we do it?

A classroom, in essence, is a newsroom full of hungry journalists who don’t want to talk about journalism… they want to do it.

Professors need to empower these people to produce work, not just for their class, but for the community. These pieces should not be read solely by the person standing in front of the classroom. They need to be read by the public. And as there are cutbacks in our newsrooms, journalism classrooms need to help fill that void.

Folks in newsrooms need to join forces with the classroom. If we really want to diversify our staff, let’s take an easy step and partner with a class that can work on a project we literally can’t afford.

Academia needs actively to offer training to local newsrooms, especially the smaller ones. Ethnic media need your help.

Hey, editors and publishers, get training for your staff. And by reaching out to your local universities and community colleges, you’ll get it… as well as building a mutually beneficial partnership.

Every semester, a classroom is swarming on a neighborhood, a beat and story theme. While we are publishing them on our student media, others should republish them when appropriate.

Research and develop together. Universities are filled with smart people wanting to work on a good project. Newsrooms are filled with smart people who identify needs, but don’t have time to work on these great potential projects.

Yes, we are seeing these types of partnerships popping up and growing. But, quite honestly, it’s just scratching the surface.

So, what are you doing, Hernandez?

Well, I’ve tried to have my class produce community journalism. This semester I hope to partner with a local news organization to get their pieces published.

In terms of innovation, I’m working with a group of amazing developers who believe in the potential of joining forces for the betterment of journalism. We hope to do R&D for the industry.

We need more. And all it usually takes is a conversation and a commitment.

Imagine how much better our journalism will be if these two vital institutions worked together.

Actually, stop imagining and start doing.

Robert Hernandez is a Web Journalism professor at USC Annenberg and co-creator of #wjchat, a weekly chat for Web Journalists held on Twitter. You can contact him by e-mail (r.hernandez@usc.edu) or through Twitter (@webjournalist). Yes, he’s a tech/journo geek.

Last week, news reports hit that the University of Colorado at Boulder would close its journalism school. By the end of the afternoon, the story had morphed a bit – CU wouldn’t be getting out of journalism education, but instead convening a commission to look at restructuring the school, putting its future as a separate entity in question.

(By the way, does anyone have an explanation why several of the former Big Eight schools transpose their initials? How does the “University of Colorado” become CU? I digress….)

Colorado’s earned harsh criticism for the way it handled this announcement. Students, alumni and community members can’t rally around uncertainty. Yes, journalism education needs to evolve as the industry also must, in response to the economic disruption the Internet has brought to the field. But if Colorado administrators couldn’t have offered a specific plan for the future of journalism education at their institution, I’d argue they’d have served their community better by opening up their decision-making process, instead of putting forth closing the school as their primary option. Why leave your students and faculty hanging like this, especially when none of them will be on the commission deciding the school’s fate?

Still, every college and university that teaches journalism must be prepared to address some tough questions about the future of journalism education. For that, Colorado’s not alone.

A personal note: I’ve had some experience with university restructuring, having served as one of five student members of a 23-member student/faculty/administration task force charged with revamping Northwestern University’s undergraduate division back in 1988. Done right, this is tough work that stirs up conflict right away, but in the hope of securing long-term stability for an institution.

I see three huge challenges facing higher education today, challenges that aren’t unique to any journalism school.

1. The cost equation

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that we’ve got a generation of graduates who can’t afford to buy homes and start families. The cost of college has exploded past the inflation rate over the past generation, rising 32 percent at public schools and 24 percent at private institutions just between 1999 and 2009. And that’s after adjusting for inflation.

Students are borrowing more to keep up, and starting salaries for journalists aren’t rising at anywhere near the levels of tuition, student indebtedness or the cost of buying a house – which remains far above the traditional “three times your annual salary” limit in many markets, despite the recent slide in prices.

Something’s got to give, and what’s being given up is a quality of life – recent graduates are moving back in with their parents, delaying parenthood and limiting their spending as they try to pay back their loans, save for a home or just get by in a brutal employment market. With so little spending coming from people who should be starting their lives, is it any wonder the nation lingers in an economic slump?

That slump means less tax revenue for public college and universities, too, forcing spending cuts and even more tuition increases. Clearly, the cost equation for higher education is broken. Administrators must find ways to reduce the cost of higher education, so that they aren’t continuing to break their graduates’ and states’ budgets.

2. The lines between fields are blurring

What’s the difference today between a School of Cinema student filming a 10-minute documentary for YouTube and School of Journalism student shooting a 10-minute video story for YouTube? The medium, financing and distribution channel differences that once helped differentiate documentary filmmaking from broadcast journalism are evaporating as everyone moves toward online publishing. That’s just one example why schools, too, ought to be converging.

The most rewarding experience I’ve had to date in journalism education has been my work with the Marshall School of Business at USC, helping teach entrepreneurial skills to mid-career reporters and editors. Entrepreneurial journalism’s a hot subject in many j-schools now, and appropriately so. But many universities with journalism schools also have business schools with entrepreneurship faculty. Given the need to contain costs in the university, do j-schools really need to duplicate resources already available in the business school? If school policies and customs are keeping one school’s students from accessing another’s faculty, doesn’t that point to the need to re-evaluate why those divisions and barriers are permitted to exist?

As the lines between fields disappear, the lines dividing schools must be erased as well.

3. Students are teaching themselves

I raised this issue last month. With more kids exploring online, they’re picking up not only digital skills, but also accessing a wide and deep range of instruction available on the Internet. Some elementary students today have mastered digital production skills that graduate journalism students struggled with just a few years ago.

This ought to be changing the focus of higher education – not just in the classroom but within the admissions department, as well. And it should be prompting university faculty to engage with secondary and elementary teachers, to get a better feel for how the Internet is affecting student learning – for good and for bad – so that all educators can better address and adapt to those changes. Let’s never forget that higher education is merely the continuation of a process that begins in pre-school. College and university faculty who ignore opportunities to participate earlier in the education process only harm their own teaching and understanding of student learning.

Take these three challenges together, and it ought to be clear that we’ve arrived at the time when colleges and universities need to start blowing things up and recreating higher education. We need to find a way to better educate students who need more interdisciplinary instruction, and at a lower cost than we’ve able to do so in the past.

School administrators would do well to handle this process better than their colleagues at the University of Colorado did last week. But for all of Colorado’s clumsiness with its announcement, it should be clear that the more irresponsible thing for a college or university to do at this point would be to plan no changes at all with its line-up of schools and subjects of instruction.