Dear Coach,
Every week, it seems, another newspaper bites the dust. It’s beyond depressing. My question: Why should I even bother pursuing journalism? All of a sudden, it feels like a dead-end path. — Dreading the End
Dear Dreading,
If your real question is Will you find a great job at a traditional newspaper when you graduate? the answer is, probably not. Newspapers, at least as we’ve known them, will keep biting the dust.
But, should you pursue journalism? That’s a different question. The short answer: Yes.
We need well-trained journalists, and the journalism they do, now more than ever. We need them to separate the news from the noise, the meaning from the muck.
In fact, some folks argue that news literacy should be taught in schools for that very reason –
to help young people better navigate the tumult of the digital age, and thus to better inhabit the globe.
Trained journalists are, by definition, news literate. They know how to “find things out and tell people about it,” as Salon writer Cary Tennis says in a provocative column that should be required reading.
They know how to ask questions, to keep at it when the answers don’t serve, to synthesize, analyze and organize information. They know how to access the world of documents just beneath the surface of what we tend to think of as true. They know how to do all that and to tell the stories in terse, direct ways.
They know the value of FACT – fairness, accuracy, context, truthfulness – and to not hit “send” until those qualities are nailed.
They know as well that new technologies are tools for doing the above, not means to a new-fangled end.
These skills may not land you a reporting job for the print version of The Daily Blather. But they will make you a stronger hire in whatever domain you choose: business, education, government, law, environment, philanthropy, writing, editing and communication of every kind – and let’s not forget news, whatever its future shape.
Related column:
Fearing the Future: (http://www.chipsquinn.org/skills/ask/ask.aspx?id=814 )
Mary Ann Hogan of Boca Raton, Fla., has been a career coach with the Chips Quinn Scholars program for more than a decade.
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sara wiseman
04.15.09
My grandfather was a journalist for the Chicago Tribune—he covered Mafiosa during prohibition—the jazz clubs and such. I’ve been a journalist for 28 years.
But the venue has… shut down?
I don’t believe you can be a journalist working for a company, a corporation. Unless journalism is independent, and unless it is READ, what is the point?
ella mccarver
05.02.09
Journalism must be taught and continued. Objectivity and research of integrity and fearlessness must not be silent.Venues may change but the history and story of any group of people must be preserved by the written word. The information must be able to be accessed. It is the skill of accession that has to be taught to today’s student.
Sean Kinn
07.28.10
All the newspaper industry has to do to save itself is to re-train staff. If individual freelance bloggers are pulling in $15K a month in AdSense advertisements, what would that do for a re-configured newspaper industry? Newspapers already have text gurus in place; it’s just a matter of instructing the writers and reporters on correct Web 2.0 Article Submission techniques, Web 2.0 Comments, SEO — in general, on how to treat their paper like a Web 2.0 Blog — to leverage the position they already have within their local communities. Heck, one person could start a Web 2.0 Newspaper in a town like Chicago and put the remaining mainstream online and paper newspapers out of business. SK