Journalism's 'darkest hour'

According to a J-Blogger whose blog is advertised on journalism.co.uk, the industry is going through its darkest hour, particularly in the US, writes Chris Gaynor.

The stark warning comes as Pat Thornton, who writes a blog on the state of global journalism called The Journalism Iconoclast, was emailed by someone this week asking whether a degree in journalism was the right way to go for them.

This young woman apparently loves to write, but, her family were worried that she was going into journalism at a bad time, he said. Thornton said: "Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: Journalism is under fire right now, much more so than just about any other industry in America.

More than a thousand US journalism jobs have already been cut this year from mainstream media organisations and thousands more will be in the coming months. It’s a very dark hour for journalism."

But he added: "But that’s traditional journalism. New media journalism is just beginning to flourish. Your sister will have to be willing to entertain the idea of working for non-mainstream media organisations if she wants to make it in journalism. I’m confident that journalism will eventually be stronger than ever after this transitional phase."

His advice would be not to go into journalism just because you love to write. Not to go into it if you are not willing to train in new media such as video journalism. And not to go into it without being internet savvy, including learning HTML and other web applications.

Thornton warned: "Only get into journalism if you are willing to turn this industry around. Don’t get into journalism because you loved All the President's Men, about two iconic US journalists exposing corruption at the very top of American politics.

Don’t get into journalism because you think you were born to write. Get into journalism because you love to inform people. Get into journalism because you want to make a difference in communities. Get into journalism for the people, not yourself."

Visit the site here: http://patthorntonfiles.com/blog/.

Bookmark/Search this post with:

delicious | digg | reddit | newsvine | furl | google | yahoo | technorati | icerocket