Journalism Grads Face Crisis and Opportunity in Trib Announcement
Opportunity in crisis. This mantra of globalizing free-marketeers has apparently not lost all of its power, even as the architects of a deregulatory system are chastened to admit the reckless deregulation of their heyday has led to a global financial catastrophe. (For the likes of former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, the flaw in the system of market self-regulation has led to a sort of cognitive dissonance.) 
So even as the grim news of the Chicago Tribune’s filing for Chapter 11 came in on Monday, while more than 15,000 newspaper jobs were cut in 2008 according to the web site Papercuts, members of a new generation were not as entirely shaken as their professional elders.
Here at the journalism school, among next week’s graduates, the mood is far from uniform. The crisis of the old guard and the industry more generally is seen as an opportunity for the digitally armed, who might just find themselves in the right place at the right time. The death of the newspaper merely clears the way for the bright digital future. Carl Winfield of the class of 08 was was ready to embrace the promise of that future.
Hear an interview with Carl.
But not so for all his cohort. For some the crisis in newspapers is just that–a crisis. So while Damian Ghigliotty doesn’t fear that he will not find work, he sees the crisis largely as limiting rather than expanding his options. For him, a failing company’s preference for new recruits to replace senior staffer is hardly a draw, he said.
Hear an interview with Damian.