École supérieure de journalisme de Paris

The École supérieure de journalisme (ESJ Paris) (in English: Superior School of Journalism of Paris) is an institution of higher education, a French Grande École in Paris dedicated to journalism and related studies. Its origin was in the Collège Libre des Sciences Sociales founded in 1895 by Dick May (Jeanne Weill, daughter of the rabbi of Algiers), and other supporters during the Dreyfus Affair. It was made a separate Grande Ecole in 1899 and claims the title of the "world's first school of journalism". Conceived to give students a broad knowledge of politics and economics, it did not award a separate journalism degree by name until 1910.

The University of Missouri School of Journalism also claims the title of "first in the world", but it did not open until 1908 in Columbia, Missouri in the United States.

The origins of this tertiary college were in the Collège Libre des Sciences Sociales, founded in 1895 by the journalist and novelist Dick May; Theophilus Funck-Brentano, a professor at Ecole libre du sciences politiques; and Pierre du Maroussem, who taught at the Law Faculty of Paris (Sorbonne). Especially during the Dreyfus Affair and the rise of the université populaire movement, they wanted to create a place for study of the new field of social sciences and emerging thought in economics. They envisioned it as a place where practitioners would teach so that students would learn from more than textbooks. (May was the pen name used by Jeanne Weill, a daughter of the rabbi of Algiers.) In 1896 May suggested a school of journalism. She and other progressive French citizens were disturbed by the inflammatory press and the discriminatory attitudes that contributed to the initial conviction of Dreyfus; they wanted to improve society by encouraging higher level work in social studies.

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