I have rewritten this post three times.
Every time I thought I had an original point about j-schools someone beat me to it, dangit. If you have been scanning your feed reader lately, you probably noticed a flurry of posts directed at students with advice on school, and linking that advice to the future of the industry.
However there is just one problem: none of these posts are written by students.
Most criticisms about journalism schools are all written by the people on the other side of the fence: teachers or professionals. But as someone on the other side, here is what’s really wrong:
The real problem here is “college” not “J-schools“. The problems facing journalism schools are similar to those facing colleges overall: industries moving too quickly, lower barriers of entry into certain job markets, and the cost of education outpacing the reward. For example, two of the best journalism schools in the country (so I hear), Syracuse and Northwestern, have price tags that far exceed most starting salaries. So, if you have to loan out your education why would you go?
I kant spel. Between Google, spell check, and auto correct I can get by without many of the fundamentals. I do everything I can to not work this way, but I would be lying if I said it didn’t affect my writing.
Too often when professors tell me to “learn multimedia” they really mean “learn how to be a broadcaster”. At Temple, that essentially consists of former broadcast news people instructing print students on what a SOT is and how to do a stand up. The problem? The current trend in newspaper video is completely different from tradition broadcasting. This was evident to those who attended the CICM conference. Some students constructed their videos as pieces to be aired on the 10 o’clock news, despite the examples given to us by people leading the charge for a more documentary style of newspaper video.
Journalism is one of the only fields where you are expected to produce the very product you are studying while still in school. This is a biggy. For example, many students have internships that would have their clips appearing in large metropolitan newspapers such as the Philadelphia Inquirer. At the same time, we are receiving assignments for classes that will only be read by a handful of professors at most. Are architects expected to design real buildings while in school? Are business students required to start a business while in school?
So I ask, if a GPA isn’t a concern to most job recruiters, and you have two assignments due: one for you internship and one for class, which one are you going to spend most of your time on?
On top of all this, the internships don’t pay. So essentially, you have students who have to go to school, have a “free” internship, and work part or full time. Some even do all of this and join the student newspaper or magazine (as Mindy McAdams wrote in the best journalism-related post all year).
Any change must come from the students. Change costs money and insulating yourself from it doesn’t. And considering the industry doesn’t know which way is up, does it make financial sense to invest in something you don’t know will be there tomorrow? I am not defending this mindset, as I think it’s the plague of any entrenched institution. But I can understand why a college would be the slowest body to change. Any innovation is going to come from the bottom up, and not the top down.
Many professors know that they have to adjust the curriculum to help the students, but they are several years (sometimes decades) removed from the newsroom and job search. I had a teacher say “You guys should learn this new stuff, I won’t have to, of course, because I’m on my way out.” (Then he may or may not of cackled and ran off).
I would venture that the majority of professors are introduced to new technologies by the students, not the other way around.
Niche Media is king. As much as I may hate to say it, it is easier to build an audience based on your knowledge and observations than with your talents as a writer. We are nearing the day where we don’t study journalism, we study the area we wish to write about. For example, a wannabe movie critic would go to film school.
At Temple, a prominent Philadelphia blogger spoke to a journalism class about how a journalism degree was useless and that the students should major in their topic of interest and write about that. It was met with resistance among many students, but I couldn’t help thinking he had a point.
My GPA doesnt matter. I have been told this by nearly every journalist I have asked. All they want are clips, clips, clips. So what is my incentive to do that absurdly mundane assignment I was just given in class?
They don’t give students free ice cream. Okay, kidding.
16 Comments to “Confessions of a Journalism Student”
Posted: Apr 4th, 2008 at 12:39 am
I know a few people who have actually graduated with degrees in journalism, but are now back in school again getting a degree in another field. Basically, I think the Phawker guy might be on to something (you’re either a Jedi or you’re not), as are you (niche media is the future).
Posted: Apr 4th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Great insights. I spotlighted this post on The Student Newspaper Survival Blog. Keep up the fresh thinking!
Posted: Apr 4th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Great post. In the computer industry I’ve found while internships are paid (or at least all of mine have been), I wasn’t really doing what I wanted to do (with the exception of one I held last summer). I would fix HTML or CSS instead of do some real web development.
Also, I find that even as juniors or seniors, most students cannot write to save their lives. It’s bad when you can’t write a thesis statement or don’t know the difference between ‘then’ and ‘than.’
Posted: Apr 4th, 2008 at 10:01 am
It’s the cruel irony of a journalism degree — no editor will ever give a s*** about your GPA, but don’t even apply if you don’t have a degree (journalism or otherwise). I waffle constantly about the value of my journalism degree — it’s worthless, I’d be lost without it, I wish I’d gone computer science, I wouldn’t be where I am without the journalism degree, etc. etc. But I have it — and a really crappy GPA reflective of me choosing to cover legislative hearings and murders instead of going to class — and that’s all that matters. I think a good course — maybe not the best, but a good one — is if you want to do journalism and you’re in j-school already, get the degree, but major and minor in the things that interest you. Don’t do what I did and get the journalism degree with a major in English and a minor in sociology. That’s like getting a journalism degree with a major in journalism and a minor in journalism. I should have majored in computer science and minored in business. Or geography. Or math. Or something very much not journalism. In short, don’t waste your undergrad like I did. Journalism degrees have value if for nothing else they get you in the door faster with newspaper recruiters. But what you do outside your journalism coursework really matters.
Posted: Apr 4th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Gosh! You just said everything I’ve ever wanted to say about j-school! I blog about your blog post on my journalism blog, Ten95. Check it out! And I’m serious about that beer and that shot!
Posted: Apr 4th, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Your comments are right on the head, but not all of us old timers are totally lost. I’m not a working journalist, but as a teacher of high school journalism I figure I have to learn one or two new applications, one or two new pieces of equipment and one or two new techniques each year just to keep up with the tech.
But I love it. Too many journalists hate the gear and the wires. In this new age of journalism you can’t be a Luddite and you have to keep learning. I have said this before many times, the best thing a journalism degree should teach you is how to research and how to teach YOURSELF something new. Those two skills will do more for you than anything else.
Posted: Apr 5th, 2008 at 3:00 am
Aw man, that doesn’t sound good. But I would like to think most students know what they are getting into.
@Rachele Kanigel Thanks!
This cracked me up. I once considered doing something like this.
@TeachJ I don’t mean to take the stereotypical “dont trust anyone over 30″ stance, I was just pointing to the irony that the teacher sometimes learns more from the class than the students.
And I’ll be honest, I dont think I have learned a new app/language in quite a while.
Posted: Apr 5th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
This will fall in a Cal Newport “Dangerous Ideas” post:
It seems like fewer and fewer people are being hired to do exactly what their major specifies. This is true with the liberal arts, and it’s becoming more so the case with sciences every day.
Warning: ego approaching. To quote one of my professors, CS is still one of the few non-transitive sciences. It’s extremely difficult to get a degree in journalism then start learning CS. It is significantly less difficult–on the other hand–for a CS major to learn how to write well. I am not a good writer by any means, but reptition has taught me the difference between “than” and “then.”
A rule of thumb I have kind of developed: If your major overlaps with core classes a little too much (journalism/English) or if you can teach yourself what your professor taught during a lecture within an afternoon, your major falls into the “easy” category. While certain programs may be more intensive than others (Northwestern), any dumb dude can get lucky and start writing for magazines. Like me.
Maybe I’ll write a post about this…
Posted: Apr 6th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
[…] Confessions of a Journalism Student. Journalism education is much on my mind (as it usually is) and I found this post by Sean Blanda one of the better recent pieces of writing on the subject, perhaps because it’s one of he few that’s actually come from a student. Some great stuff in the post and in the comments. […]
Posted: Apr 6th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Great post with a lot of dead-on points.
I did something similar in February:
Wanted: Resident Butt-Kicker (Thoughts on journalism education)
Posted: Apr 6th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Great post, Sean. I’m sure it seems like a strange time to be a journalism student, but there have been strange times before (like during the Reagan recession).
Matt Waite’s advice is spot-on, for certain, but I’d like to argue with all these folks saying “computer science.” It depends on your school, of course, but in many four-year universities, you can’t find a cutting-end how-to course for Web and database programming. Why not? Same thing you’re saying here about j-schools. The people with a Ph.D. in computer science were not in a production environment last year building new Web apps, and many of them might not have a clue about Ajax or Django or Ruby on Rails.
Posted: Apr 7th, 2008 at 11:58 am
[…] get good (multimedia and online) clips, but journalism students need a balance. Journalism student Sean Blanda wrote: My GPA doesn’t matter. I have been told this by nearly every journalist I have asked. […]
Posted: Apr 11th, 2008 at 12:40 am
I’m sure it’s not true! If it was, nothing lake that would have been posted! It sounds so weird! I doubt that anyone would ever believe it!
Posted: Apr 11th, 2008 at 8:29 am
[…] Wordpress MU inside and out. Neither of those things were encouraged by his journalism school. He points out that “two of the best journalism schools in the country (so I hear), Syracuse and Northwestern, […]
Posted: Apr 16th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
[…] would help combat reason #4 in my “Confessions of a Journalism Student” post, where students are often forced to choose between doing work for an internship/school […]
Posted: May 6th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
[…] Sean Blanda made a great point in that journalism students are among the few who have to produce the exact product that they are studying long before they ever get their degree. This is bizarre when you think about it. Would you want the doc going down to surgery before he’s certified? No? Well journalism is just as important to society as a doctorate and scalpel can be to healthy surgery. Journalism interns are not eased into situations. It is sink or swim. […]
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