Journalism: The Land of Opportunity
No, really.
As someone who has graduated with a B.A. in Journalism (News and Advertising), I understand the feeling of “what in the hell am I going to do with this?” that comes over you daily. It’s normal. It actually happens in other majors, too, not just in journalism. But there are a lot of weird stigmas that seem to follow a journalism major around wherever they go.
After talking to my former advisor from Creighton, we both agreed that too often students feel trapped by the department they are currently in.
This shouldn’t happen.
For those currently studying in any journalism program, listen up, and listen to the following unsolicited advice. It might help.
Stop Listening to the “Get out of that major” Types
More often than not, you’ve heard someone you know say “why are you in journalism?” or “wow, that sounds easy. Try something harder” and chances are you’ve thought “maybe they’re right.” They’re wrong. First of all, you’re in journalism to learn about becoming a person that can express news or information in an insightful, intellectual and interesting way. It’s a skill that isn’t always easy to come by and is certainly never done growing inside of you.
Second, being a journalism student isn’t “easy” by any stretch of the imagination. We may not take as many tests as a science or business student, but we have to prove that we’re capable of being a writer, or a designer, or a developer (for those computer science majors out there). Our tests become real world tests, where we’re handed a prompt and told to write something.
For anyone who says that that’s easy, hand them the prompt, tell them to write it, and then see how they fare. Not many will accomplish the task correctly or do a quality job. Therefore, our tests are just as difficult.
Journalism Is Not Dead — OR — Dying
Somewhere you’ve heard that journalism is a dying profession. This is a lie. A dirty, dirty lie.
Journalism will continue to exist as long as people are willing to listen to or read news. News of any type. Additionally, professions that require you to write, no matter the industry, often look at journalism students with a writing background heavily because they won’t have to take more time to train someone how to convey their thoughts through the written word.
Back to journalism, though. It’s true that the newspaper industry is shrinking. No, I don’t have hard numbers to show you or large sets of data to prove this theory. It’s just an obvious fact. Newspapers are shrinking in size (both the pages themselves and the teams behind them). Advertising revenue is in constant decline thanks to the internet and the decreased need in classified ad placements in print. But that doesn’t mean that journalism is a dying industry.
If anything, journalism is in the midst of a complete transition where the need for good writers will only continue to exist. The only real problem is that when it comes to finding a writer, an editor could shake a tree and see 100 writers fall out. It’s a matter of being the one or two who are better than the rest.
Expand Your Horizons
So you’ve chosen to be a journalism major? Congratulations. Now start taking a business class or two. In fewer — and much nicer — words, my uncle told me this. He said that it would be good to take a business course or two to better understand the other side of journalism. Or, in my own case now, to see what other opportunities appealed to me.
For myself, I chose to jump into marketing. I took two marketing classes: intro to marketing and consumer behavior. While these classes may not have made me a marketing wiz, they at least set in motion the idea for what I wanted to do going forward as my short sighted dream of being a writer at ESPN was quickly dwindling.
As I said before, many different industries today are in need of good writers. Great writers are appreciated, but as a 22-year-old graduate with a journalism degree, being a good writer is a solid place to start.
When you do choose to expand your horizons and look at other industries for future employment, you also begin to get a better sense of what you may encounter in these other fields. I can’t say that I’ve ended up taking a test where I’ve needed to define certain terms, but I have had to take relatively new ideas in the digital marketing industry and make sense of them through writing. This takes both an understanding of the industry, as well as the tools gathered in every single one of my journalism classes. Starting with how to tell a good story.
(It should be noted that I heard Creighton is now mixing both journalism and business classes. Heed that opportunity. And business students taking journalism courses, don’t act like you’re above this. If you do, know that we may quickly win the war of words.)
You’re Only As Good As Your Next Post/Story/Think Piece
How many times have you written a great story or blog post? A handful of times? That’s great, but it doesn’t matter anymore. Once you’ve hit publish on something, you can’t continue to tinker with it until you think it’s perfect, because it should have been as close to perfect as you could make it prior to publishing it.
With writing and journalism, you can’t continue to call back to an old post or whatever it may be to try and show people what you’re capable of because if you did it once, you should be able to replicate it. It’s not a simple thing to do either. I can tell you from experience that for every great article I’ve ever written (they’re great in my mind), I’ve written about six that were lack luster. Is that for lack of trying? No, but because I kept trying to compare it to what I did before.
Your great post is a singular event. It didn’t win a Pulitzer and it’s not catching the attention of any big name publishers, so stop sitting on it. Start to work on your next piece and follow the process you have laid out in front of you to replicate the same intelligence and insight you had previously. After that, do it again.
Read and Write Constantly
It’s taken me almost three years since graduating — yes, I am still young — to come to the realization that the only way that I can beat writers block and get better at my own job is to just keep writing. Write anything. It doesn’t all have to go online for the world to see, even if we think it does.
The more you write, the better you become at it and the better you become at recognizing your common mistakes. The brand manager/head editor at my office can tell you that I constantly create the same errors or road blocks for myself. My intros are sometimes far too long, with the main point being made in the second paragraph; I write in the passive voice constantly, which I’m doing here but I’m not upset by it; And I usually find myself straying from the main point of the post by about word 350.
But these things can be fixed, or at least reeled in.
On the flip side of writing constantly, you need to read constantly. This is true in any profession, but as a writer you need to see how other people are writing and learn from it. To be a great writer, you don’t need to use big words to sound smart. You sound smart through conveying a point quickly and effectively. In marketing, the quicker you can get someone to see the point of your writing, the quicker you can get them to accomplish a task.
But you don’t learn these things on the fly. You learn these things by reading how others have done it before you. The same goes for any profession where you write constantly. Other writers push you to create something better because if you’re consistently pointing out the same things they’ve said again and again, you’ll just be lost in the shuffle.
I wouldn’t say that these few pieces of advice are “sage” or will bring you the best job in the world, but they’re all points that teachers, advisors, my parents and people around me have said at one point in my education and beyond. Once you graduate, your learning doesn’t stop, it just changes. If you’re unwilling to realize that you’re more than what it says on your diploma, well, then we have a whole different Medium post to consider.
