The forerunner of the University of Tampere, the School of Social Sciences, was originally founded in Helsinki in 1925 as the Civic College. The school was transferred to Tampere in 1960. The purpose of the institution was to educate professionals for various roles in society that were not catered for by the degrees offered by universities or other higher education institutions and for which completion of upper-secondary school was not an absolute requirement. One such field was journalism. No wonder then that among the signatories of the petition to establish the School of Social Sciences were such renowned press figures as Tekla Hultin, Juhani Aho, and Santeri Alkio.

After a protracted appointment process, the new institution received its first professor of journalism, Eino Suova, in 1956. Suova had nevertheless already performed the role of professor for almost ten years before his official appointment, as the post had been established in 1947 and was opened to applications in December 1949. At the inspiration of Suova, in addition to the posts of professor and lecturer, the position of instructor, whose role was to give more practical training, was added. Professor Suova invited Salama Hirvonen (then still Simonen) to be the school’s first journalism instructor.

The training in journalism offered by the School of Social Sciences was yet to enjoy any great currency in 1950s press circles. Many old-timers believed that journalism was something a person was born into rather than educated for. It was considered that the practical side of the job could only be learnt through journalistic work as an intern. “Civic College graduates need not apply,” the last line of a job advertisement for the Turku newspaper Uusi Aura, became a kind of dictum. After a few decades, criticism became less caustic, but nevertheless Hirvonen was forced to confront much suspicion when beginning her work as instructor at the School of Social Sciences in 1949.

From the beginning, the education of journalists at the School of Social Sciences had involved some degree of practical reporting, but each teacher had implemented it in their own way. Hirvonen recalled the reply she had received from former journalism teacher Yrjö Soini, after asking him for advice: “teach them to write proper articles on whatever subject at all. And remember that if needs be, use your own follies as cautionary examples.”

Overall, Professor Suova also gave Hirvonen a rather free hand over practical teaching arrangements. According to Hirvonen, she herself was something of a trainee in the early days of her work as an instructor.

The primary task of the journalism instructor was to take responsibility for students learning the practical work of reporting: she sent students out with their pens and notebooks into the city to report on various events and occurrences, for example, meetings, exhibitions, defences of doctoral dissertations and presentations of current topics. Every morning it was the instructor’s task to find events from the daily papers where students could be sent. The reports were then returned to the instructor for her to read and then analysed together in the lecture theatre on Franzéninkatu, where the approach of the articles, their breadth, use of headlines, central points of emphasis and the pitfalls of practical reporting were examined. At that time there was no grading committee to support the work of the instructor, nor was the students’ work given official grades.

During the 1955­–56 academic year, Salama Hirvonen worked as acting lecturer in journalism, which provided a new challenge: printing studies, which was also the responsibility of the lecturer. At that time, ordinary reporters seldom entered the print room, as the editorial secretary took care of the layout of the newspaper. Indeed, Hirvonen remembered having to read textbooks on the field and spending several hours in the print room of Uusi Suomi familiarising herself with the work and the equipment. Eventually, she nevertheless also managed the lectures on printing with distinction.

Sources:
Nordenstreng, Kaarle (ed.). 60 vuotta toimittajakoulutusta (‘60 years of education in journalism’). University of Tampere Publications 7/ 1985
Vesikansa, Jyrki. Simonen (1800). National Biography online publication. Accessed November 19, 2015
Tampereen yliopisto juhlii 90-vuotista taivaltaan (‘University of Tampere celebrates its 90-year journey’). University of Tampere October 23, 2015. Accessed November 19, 2015