Journalism: Budget Cuts, Layoffs, and Bankruptcy
By Maya Pope-Chappell
Photo by Maya Pope-Chappell
With budget cuts, ad losses, layoffs and newspapers going bankrupt, it’s hard to be optimistic about the state of the journalism profession. Speaker Bill McCandless, Executive Editor of Multimedia for TheSreet.com, spoke a couple weeks ago and said that most of the mainstream newspapers will go bankrupt in 14 months.
Wow, what a future to look forward to.
With the second class of CUNY J-School students graduating next week, the prospect for them is even more sour. They are walking away with a degree in hand but with very limited job options. Not to mention the dire economy.
I’ve talked with a few of my fellow students, both in the graduating class and the December 2009 class, and many are worried. Some of the conversations I’ve had have ranged from, there are really no options, to complete pessimism and questions over their decision to enter into the field of journalism.
Many news outlets and publications are coming up with innovative ways to bring the news to their audience, from including more video and multimedia content on their sites, to producing original content only found online. This is where I think I fit in and where I believe the most opportunities lie. So I myself, while nervous about my options in journalism, remain optimistic about the future.
This industry lull is simply in a period of transition. Transition after all is the best time to come up with new ideas and be on the frontlines of changing and shaping the industry into what it will become in the future.
What are your feelings about the journalism industry?
December 11th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
I’m actually pretty optimistic about our prospects.
I thought Mr. McCandless tried to seem candid, but really came off as somewhat presumptuous and flippant. His whole lecture was about how print media is dead… the only valuable bit, in my opinion, was his anecdote about the college kid who parlayed an internship into steady, well-paying, video-editing.
It also seems to me too early to be getting worried about getting a full-time job. Now is the time of part-time work, freelancing and interning… all with the goal of getting an in to a steady position.
Writing jobs don’t really seem that hard to come by if you’re able to get your name out through freelancing beforehand. Making the rounds, getting work experience, becoming fluent at various transferable skills like those we’re learning here at J-School and from one another… that is how we will be able to get jobs in the journalism field. It may not start out exactly as we’ve dreamed, but it still does have a lot of potential.