Washington and other professors interviewed for this story say enrollment in journalism courses has remained steady or even increased despite the industry’s problems. “There remains a strong interest in journalism as a career,” Washington says.
That interest may be justified. A study released in August found that the job market for graduates of college journalism and mass communication programs remained largely unchanged in the second half of 2007 and the first half of 2008, compared to a year earlier.
The study by University of Georgia researchers found that nearly the same percentage of graduates in 2007 found full-time jobs within six to eight months of graduation as in the previous year, though salaries remained static.
Still, the job situation has worsened since that study was released. Ann Cooper, a former NPR foreign correspondent now teaching at Columbia, says, "it's a little surprising that the high anxiety in the media business has not translated into lower interest in journalism school."
Cooper maintains that journalism students "instinctively know something that gets forgotten in anxiety-ridden newsrooms: however the next few years shake out, journalism will survive."
Cooper wants her students to understand that the current crisis is economic, not journalistic. "The problem is how journalism will pay for itself in the future - not that no one wants good journalism any more."
"I'm encouraged by the energy and curiosity of our students, and I am guided by them," she adds. "I don't believe they would be here if they didn't think journalism would survive and find new economic models to finance it."
Fred Bayles, director of the Statehouse Program at Boston University, says he tries to be "fairly realistic with my classes, but I'm not that much doom and gloom. Last year almost all of students in my program found jobs in the business."
Bayles says he's seen "lots of opportunity: Websites, multi-media driven reporting for even small newspaper websites, on-line magazines, etc. An example would be a current student who will be hired by the Globe to set up a 'hyperlocal' page for a specific town on boston.com. That was a job that didn't exist before."
Bayles says enrollment numbers "have held steady through this academic year," but adds, "everybody across the university - and all private universities - is holding their collective breath about next fall."
Andy Bechtel, an assistant journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says “our enrollment is still strong. I'm still turning away students from my editing classes because of lack of space.”
Bechtel says his department is updating its curriculum to make sure it meets the needs of the profession. He too tells students the news business is undergoing a sea change.
“No one is sure what the future holds, but it's apparent in the growth of readership at news sites that people still want professionally produced news,” Bechtel says. “The problem is how to make that sustainable economically - and what that means for jobs for our graduates.”
