“I think that the decision President Bollinger announced to postpone the decision is quite a shrewd and wise one,” Fallows said. “It’s a good sign of his commitment to the subject.”

Jones expressed a similar sentiment.

“I think that there’s wide consensus that the school needs to evolve,” Jones said. “I think it bodes well that [Bollinger] is so involved in the process.”

Jones also dismissed the notion that the “craft” of journalism would lose significance at the school.

“It’s my sense that the academic approach should be in addition to what they do now, not instead of,” Jones said.

Fallows said the potential implications of the changes are “important and positive,” due largely to the school’s prestige and its location in New York City, considered one of the nation’s journalistic hubs.

“It has unique power of example among journalism schools,” Fallows said. “It could have a useful ripple effect among journalism schools and in journalism.”

Jones said it was unlikely, though, that the changes would prompt Harvard to create a school of journalism.

Harvard administers the prestigious Nieman Fellowship for professional journalists but has not recently explored the possibility of devoting a school to journalism, Jones said.

One of the aims of realigning the Columbia journalism school’s priorities, according to Klatell, is to attract college graduates who would not otherwise have applied for admission.

Klatell observed that collegiate newspaper editors regularly choose not to attend journalism school.

“A real analysis needs to be done on why they don’t go to graduate schools [of journalism],” he said. “Some may have intended to go to law school. An editor for The Crimson may feel he doesn’t need journalism school. But he does.”

Fallows, though, said that journalism benefits from not requiring interested individuals to follow a rigid course of education or earn a certain degree.

“One of the best things about journalism is precisely its openness, and that should never change,” he said. “You would never want journalism to be like law and medicine.”

—Staff writer Alexander J. Blenkinsopp can be reached at blenkins@fas.harvard.edu.