I had an unexpectedly interesting conversation today with Larry Lain, a journalism professor at the University of Dayton.

I'd originally called him while checking references for an internship candidate who'd been one of his students, but we soon found ourselves talking about how journalism schools are adapting to the rapid changes in the news biz.

Many of the country's j-schools are remaking themselves to educate kids for the new-media era, and none more prominently than Northwestern's Medill School.

But the more I think about this, the more it seems a red herring. The business that underlies news is changing, and so is the way news is presented. But the way news gets covered is generally not.

Editors today want to hire college graduates who can write well. That hasn't changed in decades, and it's not likely to change anytime soon.