Monday, April 7, 2008

future for journalism students?

I have pointed out before to my co-writer that my problem with moving to academia, as he has done, would be keeping myself from advising journalism students to run for the exits.

It's not just the increasingly lurid tone of the press, and its acceptance. The Idaho Statesman, for example, just got a runner-up award from the Pew-litzer folks for asking a bunch of men if Sen. Larry Craig came on to them, long before the now-famous bathroom incident.

It's not just the limited career opportunities. Most big newspapers have suffered layoffs, and many small ones (like the last newspaper I worked at) are no more.

It's not just what's replaced them. Witness this recent New York Times story about bloggers blogging themselves to death.

It's that amid all this, people like Anne Coulter and Bill O'Reilly have made millions posing as journalists.

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