The Future of Journalism
Lucrative will probably never describe your journalism career–but will you at least be able to nab some sort of salary?
Not paying for news is fine when you’re a student subsisting mainly on ramen noodles and cheap watery beer, but what is going to happen when budding journalists enter the workforce and want to actually earn a living off of media-related jobs? Will they be willing to work for free?
Jeff Sonderman, Internet content director at the Scranton Times-Tribune, answers this question with a resounding maybe. “Honestly I don’t think that anyone can say right now what the future of the media is going to look like,” he said in an e-mail interview. “As a journalist myself, I like to think it will remain possible to make a living as a professional journalist. However, you will have to be exceptional at what you do.”
Sonderman describes a not-too-distant-future pyramid model in which raw information and breaking news will circulate in real time, mostly through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Above that will consist of a group of semi-professional bloggers and writers whose work focuses on a specific area of expertise. And at the top of the pyramid will be a small class of professional journalists whose function will be to “help explain and analyze the most important news bubbling up from the lower levels”.
The idea that the number of well-paid journalists is going to shrink seems to be the prevailing common wisdom in most media circles. “There’s no way getting around this,” says Judy Sims, online media professional and blogger, “There are going to be fewer paid journalists.” The reasons for this boil down to simple economics.
Back in the olden days (the dark ages that is known as the mid-1990’s), there were only a few sources of news; newspapers were bound by geography to the cities they were printed in, and even in those cities people generally only had two or—in rare cases—three outlets to choose from. There were exceptions, of course, such as USA Today, which was mostly meant for people on business trips looking to get a light skimming of the news in their hotel rooms, and the New York Times, which had phased itself into a more national paper, but on the whole, papers and by extension news itself, was generally bound by its location. After the Internet exploded in popularity, this was no longer true. Information had no boundaries, and anyone anywhere in the world could access any sort of information they so desired. This dramatically increased the amount of news in any one area, and when the supply of something rises, demand for it falls. As Sims puts it, “News organizations are not only competing with the passionate bloggers and citizen journalists in their own markets, but frankly, with every other content provider in the world. To survive, news organizations will have to focus on what they can do better than anyone else in the world: produce high quality, original, local or national news reporting and analysis.”
One thing we can be sure of is that despite the uncertain future of the media, college students’ interests in taking media jobs have not waned. In fact, the opposite is true. According to Forbes, applications for journalism schools at Columbia, Stanford, and NYU have jumped drastically, and show no signs of slowing. One of those students, Cristina Schreil, a 20-year-old journalism student at New York University, understands that her career path as a journalist will not be an easy one. “I’m well aware that the possibility I’ll be rolling in dough is slim,” she says, “but I’m still pretty hopeful. I am, however, thoroughly mentally prepared to have a second, steady source of income for the first parts of my career, especially if I expect to keep living in New York.”
As the newest crop of journalism students begins to graduate a clearer picture of the new media landscape will form. With a glut of wannabe journalists graduating to an increasingly less amount of jobs, the new media market could resemble, metaphorically, the opening scene from Jackass: The Movie where only the strongest are allowed to stay on the shopping cart, while the rest are strewn about covered in dirt clods and heaps of garbage. Or maybe this can be seen as a positive thing for journalism; newspapers have long been accused of wallowing in their own self-satisfaction, maybe a thinning herd and some economic pressure is exactly what is needed to shock some life back into journalism.
As Judy Sims put it when asked if students will be able to get paid as journalists, “I think in the long-run, yes. But only if you are passionate, dedicated and very good at what you do. And if you are all those things, not only will you get paid, but you will have the privilege of being one of the pioneers of the new journalism. That doesn’t sound so bad does it?”
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