Ventura (California) Star: Colleges keep turning out optimistic print journalists despite the newspaper industry crunch. While students focusing on public relations, advertising and broadcasting account for much of the increased journalism enrollment on most campuses, sizeable numbers still want print media careers and are determined to find newspaper jobs despite increasingly bleak employment prospects.
This is strange, to say the least, because the prospects for traditional newspaper jobs are getting slimmer all the time.
I’ve been telling students who wonder about their futures to understand the changes in media, but not to get depressed about them. There’s never been a worse time to jump on the semi-standard career track of the past, where you worked for a succession of papers, each one bigger than the last, and hoped to end up at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post or other major daily. Maybe one of the students I’ve taught this year — all of whom were immensely talented — will go that route.
But I also tell them the bright side: There’s never been a better time to be a journalistic entrepreneur — to invent your own job, to become part of the generation that figures out how produce and, yes, sell the journalism we desperately need as a society and as citizens of a shrinking planet. The young journalists who are striking out on their own today, experimenting with techniques and business models, will invent what’s coming.
Most experiments will fail. That’s not a bug in the system, but a feature. It’s how we get better.
I can assure students of this. If I am in a position to hire someone, all other things equal, I will absolutely favor someone who’s failed at something interesting — and learned from his or her mistakes — over someone who’s taken the seemingly safe route.
on May 29th, 2007 at 8:39 pm
Well, one can dream.
I’m curious, Dan, if you had a chance to ask your students whom they look up to, career-wise. Jason Calacanis or Nick Kristof? Mark Cuban or Michael Lewis? Adrian Holovaty or Dana Priest? Josh Marshall or Charle Savage?
Sure Marshall likely has the edge over Savagem who’s is figuring out how to go up from getting a Pulitzer at age 31. And Adrian’s done teriffic work on presenting data, but Dana Priest grabs the headlines . As for Calacanis and Cubans, the only time most people hear from them is when they shoot their mouth off.
You have to consider that the career path these days also includes going from a blogging gig to a paying gig.
on May 30th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Good question, and one I’ll ask in the future. I actually admire what all of those folks have done. Some are more, uh, demonstrative than others, but all you have to do is watch those idiotic shout-shows on cable news networks to know that the traditional folks are not exactly unwilling to get noisy when given the opportunity.
on May 30th, 2007 at 2:08 pm
Dan, I’m wondering if J-schools should have some sort of “disclaimers” (just to make sure students know what the realistic expectations are — they generally spend good money on tuition etc.) D.
on May 31st, 2007 at 3:15 pm
[…] Dan Gillmor: “If I am in a position to hire someone, all other things equal, I will absolutely favor someone who’s failed at something interesting — and learned from his or her mistakes — over someone who’s taken the seemingly safe route.” Dan’s comment, typical to the point of banality in the Bay Area, marks one of the clearest cultural differences between the open, risk-taking, entrepreneurial environments of the US and the closed, hidebound business cultures that prevail almost everywhere else. […]
on Jun 1st, 2007 at 5:24 pm
“It’s always a great opportunity for young people when their elders are confused.”
– J. Rosen