Should we lie to journalism students?

Do auto workers tell kids to get into the call-center industry?

 

Stitch, probably not. But auto workers don't have $40k in student loan debt either.

 

I just give prospective journalists the SportsJournalists.com Web site address and tell them to read any thread with "relationship" in the title.

 

I wouldn't lie to students. I would simply tell them both (or all) sides of the story. There are good and bad aspects to any job. I have a friend that makes more than twice what I make, but hates his job and has to force himself to get up and go every morning. How long will that last? Sure, the paycheck is nice, but it wouldn't be enough to keep me in long-term.

 

I feel where you're coming from, Mark2010. But having to dodge the landlord on the way to work in the morning would make me wanna stay in the bed as well.

There has to be some kind of middle ground. Yeah, everyone wants to do what they love, but everyone also needs money.

I saw a position recently posted with a salary of $15-20k. Is that all a journalism graduate is worth nowadays?

 

Yeah, you just tell the facts and let them make the decision. It's their life, not yours. If they want to cover sports and make half what someone else does, that's their decision. I'm all for telling the WHOLE story, but let them make the decision. If they ask for your advice as to whether or not it's worth it, then note that yours is one man's (or woman's) opinion.

 

Kids may not realize it's hard to get a job at the Chicago Tribune, but I don't believe anyone looking seriously at the business should be surprised when they're offered $23,000 at their first job.

I graduated in 2004 and I knew what I was getting into, and I'm pretty sure all my classmates did as well. We joked about it frequently. (FWIW, I'm one of two guys on the college paper's sports staff my entire time in college still working in sports journalism.)

 

At its most local levels, has this ever been a well-paying profession?

 

OK, so maybe you tell them that one in 20,000 of them will start at the NYT and maybe twice as many end up there one day. But the rest better brush up on their knowledge of county rodeo rules and the local holiday parade schedules.

 

OK, so my first FT gig out of college paid $14.5k. Admittedly, that was more than 20 years ago and everything cost far less (rent = $250 per month for a nice place; gas = 85 cents per gallon, etc.).

 

After the layoff, did you just throw in the towel? Look at somebody here like Johnny D. Everybody here knows he's good, and he kept pounding until he got a new gig. I tell students all the time...if you are good, you can get work. I don't say you'll never be laid off.

And BTW, I know people who start at the N.Y. Times. (Not me. I started in Podunk. But I know people.)

 

I've thought about this one a lot.

My parents didn't want me to be a journalist.

At each of my internships I had people tell me I was better off going into another field where I could make more money, have better job security and not have to move around all the time. I remember being told, "Well, if you want to make $16K a year and move from shitty paper to shitty paper for five years before getting a shot (if I was lucky) at working at a big paper. I was also told that 95 percent of journalists will never clear $50K a year during their careers.

Well, I didn't listen to any of it.

I got a job at a major metro straight out of college working at the same place where I had interned and where one of the editors who I dealt with on a daily basis was one of the people who told me to run away from the business.

I never had to work in BFE. I made decent money the whole way, starting at $35K my first year and I was making around $60K when I was forced out of the business 13 years later. I had a pretty good run, covering three pro sports and a couple major colleges.

But my journalism career was done before I was 35. I lost my job when my wife was pregnant with one of our kids. The only way I could have stayed in the business was to move across the country, which I was unwilling to do. Fortunately, my wife has a great job and after a rough couple years, I have a really good job now.

The truth of the matter is you shouldn't lie to journalism students because the majority of them will never listen to you. If they think they're good and that they can make it, there's nothing you can say to discourage them. If you can talk them out of journalism, then they were never going to make it there in the first place.

My journalism career was over way before I would have liked it to be, but I was incredibly blessed to have it and I'm glad I didn't let anybody talk me out of in back in the 1990s.

Don't lie to students, just make sure they're well-versed in all of the things that most of us in our late 30s and older aren't very good at.