Journalism Schools booming despite job cuts

An article in the Lansing Journal is rather surprising. Reporter Jeremy Steele finds college journalism schools are seeing massive enrollments even while the journalism industry is seeing massive job cuts.

Here's Newspaper Blues 101: Between 1992 and 2002, the number of full-time editorial employees at U.S. dailies fell by 8,438, almost 13 percent, according to Indiana University professor David Weaver, co-author of "The American Journalist in the 21st Century," due out this summer.

By this year, about 1,200 more newsroom jobs at paid-circulation dailies had been cut, the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported. Last year saw new investment in online reporting at newspapers, but not enough to offset cutbacks in ink-and-paper jobs, said Amy Mitchell, associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Yet, the students keep coming - and paying tuition.

U.S. colleges and universities see strong interest in the field. Total enrollment in more than 450 journalism and mass communication programs climbed nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2004, according to Cox Center for International Mass Communications Training and Research at the University of Georgia.

At Michigan State University, the number of journalism majors has climbed to nearly 700 students, School of Journalism director Jane Briggs-Bunting said. The freshman classes are so big, the school has to add more course sections each year.

That's nuts. But then Ms. Briggs Bunting is identified elsewhere in the story as a media lawyer and former reporter.  If there is anything nuttier than journalism school enrollment it's law school enrollment.

Comments

[Leo Morris]

The numbers make more sense if you don't equate "journalism" with "daily newspapers." Journalism and Communications majors also go into TV, magazines, radio and other reporting careers, not to mention related areas such as advertising and public relations. And Internet jobs will be there, too, though not many through newspapers.

To me, the most interesting part of the article you linked to was the discussion of the relative merits of a journalism degree. J-schools, like teaching programs, have focused too much on the how and not enough on the what. So we have journalists who can write (sort of), but aren't knowledgeable about anything specific, just as we have teachers who know how to teach but aren't especially versed in their subject matter.

In a world increasingly flooded with knowledge -- which results in a public that needs help sorting through it -- I think we'd be much better served by finding experts in specific subjects such as economics, government and the sciences, then choosing the ones with a flair for writing. By looking for people who know how to "commit journalism," then turning them loose to just skim the surface of subjects they know little about, we're doomed to fail in our core mission.

[alex]

"If there is anything nuttier than journalism school enrollment it's law school enrollment."

Amen hallelujah! The world has too many of both and too few who are genuinely good at writing (or for that matter analytical thinking). Having known quite a few Northwestern J-school and law school grads during my lengthy life in Chicago, it was my observation that students pursuing J degrees were often rich kids who didn't really have to achieve much of anything if they didn't want to and the students pursuing law degrees were from the low-rent side of the tracks and desperately seeking the country club life they'd always envied. The former tend to be ultra-liberal and resent privilege despite living it and the latter tend toward archconservatism as if it were a fashion brand like Cadillac or Gucci.

The schools are big bucks diploma mills and the ever-diminishing slices of the respective career pies seems to concern no one. (PR and advertising have also been cutting back in these poor economic times and their hiring is skewing increasingly younger so they can pay less although the official line is that they need younger, hipper people.)

[Jeff Fraser]

In contrast to Leo's argument, I believe his statement that journalism majors do not know about the material they're writing about is not the case

I was just reading the requirements for a journalism degree at IU, and they are insane. Out of the 124 credits needed to graduate, only less than 20 or so are actually journalism classes.

The time is spent doing the opposite of what Morris claimed, a concentration in one area, and many general eds/electives. Though, personally, I am not majoring in journalism for a few reasons.

Is one of them that you're expected to tell the truth?

[Jeff Fraser]

I don't understand what you are implying there, however, this person obviously didn't feel like he/she was being logical, as they could not identify themselves.

Which leaves me guessing. Maybe it implies a lie, of which I cannot recall lying. If he/she is referring to "the" book, well, that is a lie by definition, because it is a satire, and thus never presented as fact.

Oh, and to answer your question; yes, that is exactly why.