Joseph Pulitzer first conceived the idea of a professional school of journalism in the early 1890s, but the trustees of Columbia University rejected his plan. By 1903 the university had accepted his gift of $2 million, but debate within the newspaper profession raged over the wisdom of this approach. Many reporters believed that news talent was born rather than made. Influential educators asserted that a course in liberal arts and experience on a college newspaper would suffice as formal training. Reporters of the hard-knocks school dismissed the idea of journalism education, saying it would create a two-tiered profession. Pulitzer countered that he had never met a born editor and proposed courses in law, ethics, truth and accuracy, the liberal arts, statistics, science, principles of journalism, and news. Conceding that some people had an innate "news instinct," Pulitzer nonetheless believed that education would keep...