Is journalism a dying industry? (Taking a journalism job)

In My Humble Opinion
1

I hear horror stories that the New York Times going under, newspapers firing writers and newsroom workers, and the advent of newsbloggers working for free and others working for themselves has permanently eroded the industry of professional journalism. Friends working at small newspapers have told me that they never get raises/bonuses and the offices have extremely tight budgets.

I was recently offered a full-time writing job for a small international newsjournal distributed to corporate businesses and government officials involved in overseas investments. I’m not sure whether to take it or whether going into the journalism industry is a bad idea unless it’s in a “new media” direction, ie television or radio.

Does anyone have any insight? Is there anyone involved in the industry who might have some insight as to where it’s headed? Would I be really dumb to start going in this direction career-wise?

2

Take it if you’re interested. Forget where things are headed (and it ain’t pretty, at least not for ‘hard’ journalism. Tabloids on the other hand…).

3

That seems to be consensus, although I feel like I’m getting older (I’m 25) and I eventually need a “real” job…

4

Journalism isn’t dying. Newspapers, as they currently exist, are dying. Radio and TV are too (though not as quickly). But journalism isn’t. It’s an important distinction to make.

Targeting niches is the future for print publications, and it sounds like your job offer has found its niche. “Hyper local” is the popular newspaper term – the niche of a local paper is, surprise surprise, the local community. Far too many papers have forgotten that.

Get whatever experience you can online – writing blog posts, coming up with alternate storyforms that work well online, etc. – that’s what they’re already looking for, and will probably become required in the future. But the foundation is journalism – good, fair, accurate, relevant reporting; deep, thorough, intelligent research; clean, crisp, stylistically accurate writing; and basic fact-checking and copy-editing – and that will never die.

– young, naive journalist, hoping to eke out a living from it

5

I’m coming up on my 34th anniversary of graduating from journalism school. Every technical thing I learned is completely obsolete. However, there will always be opportunities for people who can convey information quickly, accurately and clearly.

Take the job. Get all the experience you can.

6

Your job offer sounds like much better job security than my media dinosaur job. I’ve been in the industry 18 months, and in that time I’ve seen buyouts, a hiring freeze and the newshole cut in half. I’m not sure if I’ll still have my job in a few years, and unfortunately my skills are far more newsprint-oriented than just writing.

But if I were you, I’d take that job and run with it. A small newsmagazine that goes to muckety-mucks in finance, business and government should be specialized enough to last quite a while.

7

I’m 57 and I’ve been out of newspapering for about 10 years; I was in it for 25 years. I left it for reasons other than concern about the future. I’m in radio now, completing my MA in English so I can teach journalism and mass communications at the local community college. I have tremendous faith in the future of journalism.

There will always be journalists. Here’s the problem with bloggers and “free” journalists on the Internet: No gatekeeping. There’s no formal editing process, no oversight of how the information is gathered, put together and distributed to assure that it’s factual and at least somewhat objective. It’s a problem of credibility. Just because a few people believe a blogger is right doesn’t confer credibility. People also believe Elvis is alive and aliens are kidnapping rednecks from the Arizona desert. There are people who believe John F. Kennedy was killed by people involved in a conspiracy, but even after over 40 years, that theory simply has no credibility.

People will eventually realize that it’s important that they make life decisions based on real, documentable facts, and they’ll turn to online journalists who give them that; Slate and Salon come immediately to mind, and they pay their journalists. Credible, reliable news sources always pay their journalists. So that is one future for journalism careers.

Another is small-town newspapering and broadcasting. Small dailies and weeklies, and radio stations like the one I work for, provide a service nothing else can – not the Internet, not satellite or cable TV. We who live in our small town want to know how the city council plans to patch the streets, how the county commissioners are going to control growth, how the state legislature in going to protect the family farms that support our little town. One newspaper and one radio station (not the one I work for, alas!) tell them that, and each employs trained, experienced journalists. More than 70 percent of the newspapers that are members of the Colordo Press Association are weeklies or dailies under 10,000 circulation.

I disagree with Garfield 226’s gloomy assessment of mainstream media’s future – people have been writing the obituary of daily newspapers for over 70 years, but they’re still around, and always will be. We broadcasters will always be here, too, although we’ll someday be able to shut down forever the power-sucking monsters that hold us captive to the FCC (think webstreaming and cellular technology – we sure are!)

Garfield’s right about one thing, though – there will always be mass communications, and it will always need trained journalists. So take job, but be sure to read whatever trade pubs you can get your hands on. Quill, Editor & Publisher, Radio Ink and others will give you a good idea of where the industries are going. Be ready to move into the new niches and embrace the new technology when they come along. You’ll do fine.

8

You might also think about joining the Society of Professional Journalists. They offer a number of things for journalists, including mentoring and other opportunities for professional development. Professional groups are great for networking; you never know where you might find a source or at least someone who can point you to information you’ll need to do your job. And there’s always the next job, which networking can definitely help you with.

I’ll also echo the people who praised the trade press for filling specific niches. The people who read trade publications work in those fields, or at least care a lot about them. There aren’t many mainstream publications that cater to those niches, so you’re all they’ve got, which is great for job security.

That said, TV and radio aren’t exactly new media, and breaking into either one can be difficult. However, there is no reason why you can’t learn podcasting or other Internet-related skills. I subscribe to some work-related podcasts that are extremely beneficial and which I can listen to on my own schedule, something that is difficult to do with real-time radio.

Robin

9

Sunrazor–

People are mostly airheads, who do not and cannot comprehend the idea of “documentable facts”.

So, no.

They won’t get tired of it. Fox News is a monument to this concept.

10

Do you mean the Fox News that continues to lose ratings points to MSNBC and CNN? that’s the only Fox News I know of.