Confessions of a Journalism Student

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.