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News & ArtsTuesday, September 22, 2009
Media Kids These Days
Posted by Bethany Jean Clement on Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 1:50 PM
They're going to JOURNALISM SCHOOL. What the hell are they thinking?
...Applications to Columbia University's master-of-science program in journalism rose 44 percent, to 1,181, for the class entering this fall, and an investigative-journalism specialty drew more than twice as many applications this year than last year, up from 54 in 2008 to 121 this year.Elsewhere, applications to [journalism] master's programs were up 30 percent at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 25 percent at the University of Maryland at College Park, and 24 percent at Stanford University.
Enrollment in undergraduate journalism programs nationwide has grown 35 percent over the past 10 years, to 201,477, and was up slightly in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available.
When the kids get to journalism school these days, they take "a new generation of courses retooled for new media" (or maybe "courses retooled to keep j-schools in business"?).
When they get out—with $30,000 or $50,000 or $70,000 in debt to prove it—there still aren't any jobs. (And the ones that do exist pay very poorly.*)
Only six in 10 graduates had full-time employment six to eight months after earning their degrees... Graduates of newspaper and telecommunications programs fared worse than those pursuing careers in advertising and public relations, whose programs are often housed in the same colleges.
*SO not true! A. Birch Steen drives an 22-karat gold Bentley. Though it's worth noting that he recommends that anyone going back to school not read The Stranger. (Also possibly noteworthy: No one on the staff of The Stranger went to journalism school.)
1
Also possibly noteworthy?
No.
just painfully obvious,
that no one on the staff of The Stranger went to journalism school.
or passed middle school English...
No.
just painfully obvious,
that no one on the staff of The Stranger went to journalism school.
or passed middle school English...
2
Journalism majors do not work only in news gathering; they can also use those degrees to work as communications directors for politicians and corporations, they can use those skills in sales/marketing/advertising, they can use them as a precursor for a law degree, etc. I mean, how many people do you know actually work in the specific field of their college major?
3
No-one there went to J-school. Hmph. I guess you got your education by partying all night, having lots of sex, and doing drugs. Hey, wait a minute - I did go to journalism school, and that sounds an awful lot like what I did too.
4
there should be no such thing as "journalism school" or "journalism major." people should go to school to learn about a subject and supplement that with writing/journalism classes if they want to be journalists, and then go on to write about the subject they have majored in. this way, journalists might have a fucking clue what they are writing about. just an idea.
5
@1: I passed middle school English, and high school English, too. That is why I am the book editor.
However, I dropped out of college, which is why I am not in charge of the Genius Awards.
However, I dropped out of college, which is why I am not in charge of the Genius Awards.
7
Personally, I think everyone should be required to take a journalism course. Considering that a massive amount of information today is distributed by partisan ideologues and then strewn haphazardly into public view -- often without context, balance or any of the other filters now-unemployed "journalists" were designed to provide -- the average reader has no idea what's factual and what's merely distributed to bait people. Take the Sotomayor "latina woman" quotes from a few months ago, for example.
Maybe we should rename "Journalism School" the "School of Common Sense?"
Maybe we should rename "Journalism School" the "School of Common Sense?"
8
@4,
Amen.
Incidentally, that's pretty much the reason why I'm going back to school, although I'm not planning on going into journalism.
Amen.
Incidentally, that's pretty much the reason why I'm going back to school, although I'm not planning on going into journalism.
9
How many of these are people from India who came to get J-degrees to then go back and write news there, rather than here.
Yeah, like for Reuters.
Hmmm.
Yeah, like for Reuters.
Hmmm.
10
I am currently pursing a journalism degree and have absolutely no desire to be a journalist. It is about learning how to gather information and present that information in a logical and precise way - a skill that applies to a wide variety of jobs. A journalism degree is a great way to learn the kind of "new media" skills that are reshaping many aspects of our lives. It is one of the few degrees where you can learn audio/video, radio, writing and web-based skills.
12
or was it UTA, maybe it was Univerity of Texas at Austin, never could keep those cracker places straight.
13
Two of the best editors I've ever worked with in educational publishing were biologists with journalism degrees. Editing textbooks was not what they thought they'd be doing, but that degree prepared them well for writing about a technical subject to a layman reader. What if Charles had a journalism degree? Maybe he would have learned how to research the topics of his posts, and his sometimes interesting ideas would have a better shot at getting through to his mostly disgusted readers.
14
@4:
If "knowing what the fuck you're writing about" was actually any sort of objective criteria, most of us (myself included, occasionally) would have to STFU about 80% of the time. Just sayin'
@7:
I think something along the lines of a "media criticism" course might be more appropriate, but in any case I agree that anything providing some tools for decoding, deconstructing and analyzing media content would be helpful.
And Bethany, this is not just a problem endemic to journalism; colleges and universities grind tens if not hundreds of thousands of students through the academic sausage-mill every year and send them out with degrees in things that, if truth be told, really have little practical application in "the real world" - at least given how those particular programs are structured and the people teaching them (who often don't have any real world experience in the field themselves, having only worked exclusively in academia). But, cash-strapped departments aren't about to turn away students, let alone their tuition money, and if they choose to get degrees in impractical majors, or in fields where the workforce is already glutted beyond the point where any reasonable person should expect to be able to secure at least an entry-level position and start paying off those student loans, well, they don't see that as being the institution's problem.
Of course, they also would never think to tell all those undergrads that the likelihood of them earning a living wage in their chosen field is zilch, for fear they might either transfer out to another school, or figure they probably don't need the degree in the first place.
If "knowing what the fuck you're writing about" was actually any sort of objective criteria, most of us (myself included, occasionally) would have to STFU about 80% of the time. Just sayin'
@7:
I think something along the lines of a "media criticism" course might be more appropriate, but in any case I agree that anything providing some tools for decoding, deconstructing and analyzing media content would be helpful.
And Bethany, this is not just a problem endemic to journalism; colleges and universities grind tens if not hundreds of thousands of students through the academic sausage-mill every year and send them out with degrees in things that, if truth be told, really have little practical application in "the real world" - at least given how those particular programs are structured and the people teaching them (who often don't have any real world experience in the field themselves, having only worked exclusively in academia). But, cash-strapped departments aren't about to turn away students, let alone their tuition money, and if they choose to get degrees in impractical majors, or in fields where the workforce is already glutted beyond the point where any reasonable person should expect to be able to secure at least an entry-level position and start paying off those student loans, well, they don't see that as being the institution's problem.
Of course, they also would never think to tell all those undergrads that the likelihood of them earning a living wage in their chosen field is zilch, for fear they might either transfer out to another school, or figure they probably don't need the degree in the first place.
16
@14 i'm talking really basic, common-knowledge-to-people-in-the-field type stuff. for example, a science reporter should know the difference between a virus and bacteria (this is a really common one that drives me batshit), or be able to put the results of a study into proper context, rather than reporting outliers as though they are the gospel truth (this happens a lot, too). journalists are in effect educating people en masse everytime they publish something, so they should know *exactly* what the fuck they're writing about 100% of the time is what i'm saying.
17
hm. why is it a MS and not a MA? because you can't (or at least aren't supposed to) make shit up?
18
@17 - if that were true, then we'd publish failures as well as positive results in scientific journals.
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