But I'd really rather you didn't go at all.

• Author: Peters, Charles
• Position: Journalism school memories

BUT I'D REALLY RATHER YOU DIDN'T GO AT ALL

People sometimes ask me what I look for when I hire a journalist. Certainly, intelligence, humor, curiosity, and a feel for the language. But these are things that cannot be acquired through training. Of the learnable, I would say nothing is more important than history and literature, which together should account for roughly half of a would-be reporter's undergraduate education. Far more crucial than anything you could learn in journalism school is getting to know Cervantes, Twain, Shakespeare, and Dickens as well as acquiring a thorough grounding in the American past. It is also desirable to gain enough knowledge of science and economics to avoid being conned by the experts. And if you can find them, courses that taken an anthropological view of modern organizations are definitely worth taking.

As for graduate training, I would recommend one year of law school instead of journalism school. A good law school teaches you how to think, which...