{"id":42,"date":"2010-05-13T14:30:22","date_gmt":"2010-05-13T18:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/?p=42"},"modified":"2011-02-16T19:19:30","modified_gmt":"2011-02-16T23:19:30","slug":"why-journalism-has-a-bright-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/2010\/05\/13\/why-journalism-has-a-bright-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Why journalism has a bright future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Fiedler, College of Communication dean, gives keynote speech<\/em><\/p>\n

By Katie Dupere<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shrinking newspaper circulation could make a career in journalism seem like a gamble.<\/p>\n

But with new technology revolutionizing the field and a growing demand for trustworthy news, journalism will flourish, said Tom Fiedler, dean of Boston University\u2019s College of Communication.<\/p>\n

\u201cJournalism\u2014the disciplined process of gathering, verifying and conveying news and information\u2014is neither dead nor dying, and the numbers are here to prove it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you combine the readership of any major newspaper with the audience for its website, you\u2019ll find that more readers than ever in that newspaper\u2019s history are consuming its journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a packed Morse Auditorium<\/strong>, Fiedler talked about the future of journalism to people depending on its success\u2014high school journalists attending the 62nd<\/sup> annual New England Scholastic Press Association\u00a0 conference Friday, April 30.<\/p>\n

Although he focused on the positives of the growing field and emphasized the transition journalism is going through, he said that when he was invited to give the keynote speech, he thought the title should be \u201cIs journalism a dead-end job?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world\u2019s greatest newspaper, The New York Times, staggers under crushing debt,\u201d he said. \u201cLast week the newspaper circulation bureau issued its latest numbers: The Globe was down 23 percent. The New York Times was down 8 percent.<\/p>\n

\u201cNewspapers are in what may be a death struggle. But don\u2019t conflate turmoil in the newspaper business with turmoil in journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n

One question is whether majoring in journalism<\/strong> is a smart thing to do, Fiedler said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople want the news,\u201d he said. \u201cThey just don\u2019t see the need to pay for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cFree is good for the consumer, not the journalist. You don’t lack information because you didn’t go out and buy a newspaper. That information is still out there. That’s not good for a journalist who wants to eat and wants to have a place to live.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes free news over the Internet mean if you are a journalist you will end up holding up cardboard signs on street corners offering to report, write, shoot or edit for food?\u201d he continued.\u00a0 \u201cHardly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe good news you can tell your parents<\/strong> is that’s not going to happen. The job outlook for people with journalism degrees is quite bright.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fiedler said the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the number of familiar news jobs in newspapers, broadcast newsrooms and related websites will grow by 136,000 in the next 10 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you expand the definition to include writers and editors, another 60,000 new jobs will be created,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s about 200,000 jobs waiting for traditional journalists above and beyond those jobs that exist today.\u201d<\/p>\n

More important, Fiedler said, the web is opening a \u201cvast and ever-expanding universe of opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you were born<\/strong>, the Internet barely existed,\u201d he said. \u201cThere was no Google; no newspaper was on the web.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first newspaper site was not created until 1995. In your lifetime, this tool has emerged and is now part of your everyday life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cConsider this: As of May there were some 110 million websites carrying more than 25 billion pages. If we count only English-language dot-coms, you\u2019d still have roughly 50 million websites.\u201d<\/p>\n

In today’s businesses, journalists are not only writing articles, but also helping to upload content on the websites of the publications and corporations they work for, Fiedler said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you ask yourself who runs the websites and who puts up the information, the answer is people who have journalism skills,\u201d Fiedler said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery major corporation in the country has a website of some kind. That website needs to have information that is comparable and needs to be updated. The people doing this have journalism degrees.\u201d<\/p>\n

High school journalists are already among the \u00e9lite<\/strong> in terms of marketable skills, Fiedler said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe skills you learn today already separate you from your peers,\u201d he said, citing \u201cthe ability to test what you hear.\u201d<\/p>\n

When journalists gather information and apply it to that type of context, they can reach an audience with the information they have, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are skills that will aid you anywhere that you go,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe final and most important part is that journalism matters.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing a journalist matters<\/strong>. I believe you have the ability to tell stories people don’t want told.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have the ability to make a change. The stories that you tell have the ability to change things in your school.\u00a0 You can change a community, change a school, change a country, change the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katie Dupere is an editor of The Villager at Westport High School in Westport, Mass. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shrinking newspaper circulation could make a career in journalism seem like a gamble.<\/p>\n

But with new technology revolutionizing the field and a growing demand for trustworthy news, journalism will flourish, said Tom Fiedler, dean of Boston University\u2019s College of Communication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":706,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1829,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/91"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/nespa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}