Forbes.com recently ran a story titled “Journalism Bust, J-School Boom” that expressed the not-so-shocking revelation that newspaper jobs are decreasing. The article also commented on the more surprising fact that journalism school applicants are increasing at tremendous rates. As a recent graduate of the UNC Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication, it is startling to think that I, along with thousands of other intelligent college students, flocked to a school to learn about a profession that would ultimately lead us to unemployment. While it may appear that Generation Y isn’t particularly intuitive when choosing a career path, I would like to believe that maybe we just know something that the rest of you don’t. We have watched as our parents canceled newspaper subscriptions and turned to the computer, we have participated in social media boom and we are well aware that technology is altering the way we do things each and every day. We realize that journalism as we know it is changing and we want to be a part of what is to come. Articles like this make it seem that wannabe journalists will be stuck flipping burgers post-graduation, but it doesn’t take into account that journalists these days aren’t necessarily sitting in a newsroom. The problem isn’t that there won’t be jobs or there will be too many unemployed J-school grads. The problem is that journalism schools aren’t keeping up.
Apparently, while the rest of America is changing their news consumption habits, prestigious J-schools are still preaching the how-to’s of writing the perfect print article. Instead of ignoring the huge overhaul of traditional journalism, J-schools need to step up their curriculums to keep their students aware of and prepared for the multitude of changes.
Because I’ve “been there, done that” so to speak, I’d like to offer my opinion of a few things I should have learned in J-school, but didn’t:
1. How to use Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, etc… and the list goes on and on.
2. How to make your headline click-worthy in an RSS feed.
3. The journalistic value of a blog.
4. What is a social media news release?
5. How social media makes a better journalist.
6. What is HARO and how do sources like this make me a better journalist?
7. How to increase SEO for articles. (Or even what SEO stood for.)
8. Emerging job opportunities for a journalism major. (Writing for a newspaper or working for a news station not included.)
It’s hard to believe that Facebook is only 5 years old, especially when you consider that the site now serves over 200 million people across the globe. These numbers are shocking as I think of my first Facebook experience and how drastically things have changed since then. I created my Facebook profile in June 2005 after learning about the for-college-students-only site at my UNC-CH orientation. Since the early days, Facebook has been something unusually personal, where I can be myself and communicate with people who know me or want to know me.
On Saturday, 
On March 28, all of us here at 
On a daily basis you’ll find our top dog Camden casually roaming around the Talk office without a care in the world. Sometimes she likes to stretch out on the rug by the door, or curl up in her bed next to her Mommy, Debbie Elliott, Talk president and creative director. When she’s all rested, Camden will strut from desk to desk hoping for a nice pat on the back or a tasty treat.
