Teaching journalism may be closer to teaching medicine than some think, the University’s journalism dean would say.

This vision may be plausible through the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication’s recent acquisition of television station WNEG-TV from Media General, Inc.

“I want to revive the ‘medicine with teaching’ idea found at hospitals such as John Hopkins where they marry the clinical and research,” Grady College Dean E. Culpepper Clark said. “We want to produce the best media through teaching just as they produce the best medicine.”

Along the same idea as a medical residency, Clark wants students to shadow professionals and then work full-time through graduate assistantships to produce “market-quality” news. Until that goal is reached, Grady College professors will begin incorporating the station this fall before all production moves to the college in fall 2009. Students will serve an area that covers Toccoa, Elberton, Watkinsville, Winder and Gainesville.

Clark said he explored the idea after incorporating a station when he served as dean at the University of Alabama’s College of Communication and Information Sciences before coming to the University of Georgia in 2006.

The license will be transferred in October, and Clark said the next steps have become concrete and unclear at the same time.

“It’s been hard to plan because we could have walked away from the table at any time,” he said. “There was a limited opportunity to plan before, but now we can elaborate on the basic blueprint. The first dollar to the last earned by the station will go toward research and development.”

Clark said the idea is to determine whether hyperlocal programming can succeed in a commercially viable way through user-generated content. Research developed in Grady College can actually be tested in the market, said Ann Hollifield, associate professor of telecommunications.

“The media industry is in a tremendous period of change, and executives are trying hard to figure out what the future holds,” she said. “We can push to understand how branding works, and I’m in the middle of researching the effects of hypercompetition on journalism quality. It’s also a channel through which research results, such as in the health field, can be disseminated.”

Moving the station will give students and faculty a chance to conduct pre- and post-test experiments on media audiences, which is rare for mass communication scholars, she said.

The ultimate goal is to distribute the programming statewide in a commercially viable way.

“It could be the UGA Super Station,” Clark said. “Think of how popular women’s softball would be with all of the church leagues around the state . or the business school putting out financial and market reports about economic implications in Georgia . or the School of Music auditioning sopranos for a role, creating a Georgia Idol with a sense of quality and competition . or band students across the state who would want to know what qualities make the best first chair violinist.”

But first steps first.

Michael Castengera, telecommunications lecturer, has been designated project manager in light of his background in several newspaper and television editing and managing roles.

“As such my job will be to see that all the pieces of this very fascinating jigsaw puzzle come together to make the beautiful picture we think it can be,” he said. “There are legal issues, technical issues, issues about programming and news content that will all have to come together. . And I have to say I can’t think of any project that has been more exciting than this one.”

WNEG will be part of a larger Center for Advanced Media that Grady College will host to distribute information on multiple platforms, also giving journalism students the opportunity to produce in multiple ways. The station, boasting a medium-sized market between Atlanta and Spartanburg, S.C., is not expected to have much competition, which appealed to Clark.

“Local businesses who can’t advertise on WSB can come here,” he said. “We want to work on making the media a force for good, an opportunity for truth-telling. We don’t have to maximize profits.”

Clark plans to hire Toccoa’s 29-member staff for advertising and production and hopes to find room for everyone in the college.

“People bumping up against each other in the newsroom is good,” he said.