This week, DePaul University is moving from merely woke to academic insomnia. The university is teaming up with former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot to create an institute dedicated to journalism and “racial justice.” As trust in the media plunges, DePaul is moving to double down on advocacy journalism with the “Institute for Journalism and Racial Justice.”

DePaul announced that the institute would advance racial justice by challenging “inequitable media practices” and promoting “narrative change by employing asset-framing, solutions journalism and other innovative journalism practices towards more inclusive storytelling.”

“Inequitable media practices” and “solutions journalism” is jargon often used by those demanding that reporters seek social justice in their framing and coverage of stories. Such programs often reject the touchstone of neutrality in journalism.

The “Institute for Journalism and Racial Justice” will reportedly focus on Lightfoot’s “I.C.E. Accountability Project,” an initiative targeting ICE enforcement policies. Lightfoot declared that she and the university “intend to unmask those agents who have been alleged to have committed crimes or to have engaged in other unlawful conduct.”

Lightfoot was tossed out of her position as mayor in 2023 after a disastrous run during which she regularly used racial attacks and claims during her career. When she was called out for her horrendously poor performance as mayor, she accused her critics of being racist or anti-lesbian.

The Institute is the perfect embodiment of how journalism has become a ship of fools, blithely staying the course as the industry flounders.

It is important for journalism schools to teach about race and other issues that have long divided the nation. It is also important for students to understand the history of racial issues in journalism and the need to combat all forms of racial, gender, and ideological bias. However, this Institute is clearly part of the advocacy wing of journalism, headed by a polarizing political figure.

Other universities like Howard University are also doubling down on advocacy journalism, inspiring students with questions like “what am I willing to burn?”

We previously discussed the release of the results of interviews with over 75 media leaders by former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward. They concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle, said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”

Downie recounted how news leaders today.

“believe that pursuing objectivity can lead to false balance or misleading “bothsidesism” in covering stories about race, the treatment of women, LGBTQ+ rights, income inequality, climate change and many other subjects. And, in today’s diversifying newsrooms, they feel it negates many of their own identities, life experiences and cultural contexts, keeping them from pursuing truth in their work.”

Now, objectivity is virtually synonymous with prejudice. Kathleen Carroll, former executive editor at the Associated Press, declared, “It’s objective by whose standard? … That standard seems to be White, educated, and fairly wealthy.”

Stanford journalism professor Ted Glasser insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He declared that “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”

Lauren Wolfe, the fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.” 

Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for advocacy journalism.

Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared, “all journalism is activism.” Her 1619 Project has been challenged as deeply flawed and she has a long record as a journalist of intolerance, controversial positions on rioting, and fostering conspiracy theories. Hannah-Jones would later help lead the effort at the Times to get rid of an editor and apologize for publishing a column from Sen. Tom Cotton as inaccurate and inflammatory.

As “J Schools” teach advocacy journalism, trust in the media has fallen to an all-time low.  Media outlets are struggling to survive. Yet it remains personally beneficial for academics and reporters to continue engaging in advocacy journalism, even (in the case of NPR) at the cost of federal funding.

In the case of DePaul, it is willing not only to join this movement but to do so at considerable cost to its own academic integrity. Like the media, universities (including DePaul) have been criticized for virtually purging their ranks of conservative or libertarian faculty. They have created an ideological echo chamber on their campuses. Indeed, DePaul is viewed as one of the most viewpoint-intolerant universities.

I have written two books addressing the decline of journalism in America — “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” and  “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.” These books discuss the parallels of how advocacy became a substitute for both journalistic and academic values.

In that sense, this is a perfect marriage of activist academia and media — headed by one of the most divisive figures in Chicago’s history.

The new institute reinforces the view that J schools remain unrepentant and unchanged. As they sever ties with much of the public, they continue to replicate the same radical agenda to use academia for activism. That includes schools like UCLA that have actual “resident activists” who proselytize to students.

In the end, the Institute will change little, but that is precisely the problem. DePaul and other academic institutions (as well as the media) must make hard decisions to restore credibility with the public. Instead, they are merrily sawing at the branch upon which they sit.