What is the future of journalism in an age when traditional newspapers are financially troubled, or even disappearing altogether? Some have said that newspaper reporters are an endangered species, much like buggy-whip manufacturers and blacksmiths were a century ago during the rise of the automobile. The rise of digital media, as well as the worldwide economic recession, have both hit traditional media outlets — from newspapers and magazines to broadcast media — hard in the pocketbook. Print circulation has dropped, advertising revenue has dried up and an increasing number of media consumers expect to get all their news and media for free on the Internet.

Current employment statistics for journalists, writers and authors are rather sobering, and do not seem to be improving. According to the Wall Street Journal, unemployment for journalists and related professions are up across the board, with unemployment in some media specialties more than doubling since 2007:

Source: Wall Street Journal

Source:
http://www.bls.gov/cps/tables.htm
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos320.htm
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos319.htm

And as sobering as these statistics are, they likely do not account for underemployment among journalists, such as those former staff reporters now working as freelancers without stable employment or benefits.

With the job market for traditional journalists in turmoil, how are American journalism schools preparing their graduates to work in a changing media landscape?

“The thought that journalism may be dead, or dying, is based in a common misperception that journalism and newspapers are the same thing,” says Jack Rosenberry, PhD, Chair of the Communications and Journalism department at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y. “But even as newspapers are in decline, journalism is being reinvented.”

With newspapers in decline and new media on the rise, Dr. Rosenberry and his colleagues have retooled St. John Fisher’s journalism curricula accordingly. “Thirty years ago, a journalist went out into the field to work with a notebook, a pen and maybe a tape recorder,” he says. “Today, a journalist goes out with a digital still camera, a digital video camera, a digital audio recorder and likely some kind of digital mobile device,” like an iPad® or smartphone. “It’s a multimedia world, and journalists have to be prepared to deliver content across all of those media.”

Kristin Gilger, Associate Dean of Arizona State University’s nationally renowned Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, agrees. “The Cronkite School merged all its various specialty tracks a few years ago in response to the multimedia marketplace,” Gilger explains. “Time was, our students used to specialize in maybe one or two things — news writing, or broadcasting, or perhaps photography and videography. Now we require all of our students to study all of these areas, and do them digitally. And we’re finding that new graduates of programs like ours are finding employment, while mid-career journalists who don’t have these skills are often losing jobs.”

Another school which is integrating multimedia skills throughout its curricula is Northwestern University’s prestigious Medill School of Journalism. Its graduate program includes immersion in multimedia news production in its own student-run newsrooms, Medill Reports Chicago and Medill Reports Washington. Medill graduates have gone on to jobs at HuffingtonPost.com, Politico.com, the Associated Press, The New York Times, NBC Universal, and others. “Whether you are most interested in breaking news, crafting magazine stories, or making documentaries, you will learn the basics of creating engaging journalism for print, broadcast and digital formats,” says Janice Castro, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Senior Director of Graduate Education and Teaching Excellence at Medill, as quoted in the current guidebook for Medill’s graduate journalism program.

Not all recent journalism school graduates are finding employment in traditional journalism jobs, though they are finding that the skills learned in journalism school are transferable to other fields. Charlie Heck is a recent graduate of the University of North Texas’s Frank W. and Sue Mayborn School of Journalism program who now works in public relations. When Heck completed her degree, she had trouble finding a traditional journalism job. “My job search was hard,” she says. “I had experience and a decent portfolio of clips, but I was competing for jobs against seasoned reporters who had years of experience at large newspapers.”

After becoming frustrated with the lack of job opportunities for traditional journalists, Heck expanded her job search into other areas, which is how she landed in public relations. “The great thing about my experience as a reporter is I know some things that traditional public-relations people don’t,” she says.

“I know how to approach journalists, how to pitch relevant material, and also how annoying it can get when PR people won’t leave reporters alone."

Maire Simington, MBA, PhD, is teaches a variety of writing and communications courses at University of Phoenix. When she’s not teaching University of Phoenix students, Simington works in corporate communications for a large health care company, and she also has experience working as a journalist and editor for multiple publications. “The great part about a humanities-based education is that it teaches critical and analytical thinking,” Simington says. “The thinking pattern associated with critiquing a work of literature is very similar to writing and developing a marketing plan. It’s the same skillset, different application.”

Simington also points out that University of Phoenix has a very practical approach to teaching these skills. “The beauty of studying writing at University of Phoenix is all the instructors are also currently working in the field,” she says. Simington goes on to say that she sees a lot of former journalists now working in corporate communications. “I work with several former Arizona Republic reporters in my current job,” she says.

Jack Rosenberry believes that journalism school graduates should not discount putting their degrees and skills to work outside of traditional journalism. “Public relations and internal corporate communications jobs are really just special-purpose journalism,” Rosenberry says. “You’re applying all the same skills and training you acquired in journalism school, but just directing it at a different audience than the general public.”

And with an increasing number of new media outlets expecting their contributors to work for free, or compensating them using alternative pay models like clickthrough rates or ad-revenue sharing, journalism school graduates need to be open to considering alternative employment venues. That is not to say that staff journalism jobs in new media don’t exist, however. “We had one graduate hired as an editor at Huffington Post,” Rosenberry says. He also points out that AOL’s Patch.com is hiring journalists to cover local communities, “and those jobs are very similar to the bureau chief job at a local newspaper I got right out of college 30 years ago. And news organizations like Politico.com and Bloomberg.com are on a hiring spree right now, looking for journalists who have specialized expertise in things like finance and policy analysis,” he says.

Kristin Gilger also is quick to point out that Walter Cronkite School graduates are finding employment in a variety of venues, both in and outside of journalism. “We have some graduates working at digital-media startups, and even founding their own startups thanks to grants from organizations like the Knight Foundation,” Gilger says. “We have graduates working in traditional media, in corporate communications, even as media consultants for political candidates, as well as people freelancing in far-flung places like South America and the Middle East. The bottom line is, organizations of all kinds need people who know how to reach audiences, and how to communicate, analyze and synthesize information.”

Graphs by Marina Krylova, MS.

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