We have five broad goals for our students during their tenure in the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications and beyond. We call them the high five. They will learn a multitude of specific skills in their time with us targeted toward their particular majors that fold into these goals, but from an all-encompassing view every JMC graduate will be:
- a CREATOR of compelling and engaging content.
- a theoretical and research-based STRATEGIST.
- a LEGAL and ETHICAL PRACTITIONER.
- a GLOBALLY AWARE CITIZEN committed to diversity, inclusion, equity, representation and belonging in a socially just, multicultural and interconnected world.
- a CAREER-READY INNOVATOR with hands-on and job-world experiences who demonstrates the confidence, skill, adaptability, resourcefulness and passion to be employed in a mass communications field or chart their own path and is motivated to be a positive influence in the community in which they work.
Teenage summers working in the Shinnston, West Virginia coal mines ingrained the value of hard work in the character of William Page Pitt. In 1926, Pitt entered a forty-five year relationship with Marshall College, the now Marshall University, with one journalism class of five students. Today, the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications houses a Bachelor of Arts degree with seven majors and a graduate program accredited by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications. SOJMC alumni can be linked to US News and World Report, CNN, PBS and a Pulitzer Prize newspaper editor.
Although W. Page Pitt was almost blind from the age of five, he never used his blindness as an excuse. He never considered himself handicapped.
It never would have occurred to him to offer excuses for his blindness, and he didn’t expect excuses from his students. He wanted results – his watchword for the 45 years he was a professor of journalism at Marshall University.
A New York native who grew up in West Virginia,Pitt had become infatuated with journalism as a college freshman at Muskingum (Ohio) College. By unloading cars in his fathers’ coalmines in Shinnston, W. Va., area and free-lancing writing for wire services for the newspapers in Columbus, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh during the school year, he had worked his way through college.
By age 25, Pitt was eager, capable and confident. Then Marshall College President Morris P. Shawkey offered him a job as a college instructor and to supervise the student newspaper, The Parthenon.
From 1926 to 1971, Pitt, founder of the journalism program at Marshall, had a profound effect on the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of student and professional journalists.
His former students include a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper editor, a television comedy star, editor of a national news magazine, directors of public relations departments and other journalists in key positions throughout the nation.
The W. Page Pitt School of Journalism has been a part of Marshall University’s history and development since 1926.
