As I move into my senior year of college, I can’t help but be excited that I’m almost done. I’ve known what I’ve wanted to do since I was little and now I can finally see the finish line. I can’t wait to start filling out applications for my dream job. Although I’ve felt very confident about the field I want to go into, I’ve gotten a lot of criticism over the years. I’m majoring in journalism and my dream is to be a reporter. When I’ve told people this I get laughed at. I get told that journalism is dying. I’ve been told that I won’t make enough money to survive and that there aren’t enough jobs out there. I just roll my eyes at them. I’ve tried to explain to people how journalism is growing and evolving. How it is in no way dying. They never listen, so I’ve given up trying to convince them. I’ll just prove them wrong when they see how successful I am someday.
From an outsider’s point of view, I can understand why they think this. Some assume that journalism is reporting for a newspaper. Over the years, more and more newspaper companies have shut down as society has become more technological. Reading newspapers is no longer the way people are receiving their news.
When I was little, I did picture myself working for a newspaper. I was even the editor-n-chief of my high school’s newspaper. I loved it. Writing and designing the pages was so fun. As I’ve researched the journalism field and have seen how it is evolving, I’ve accepted the fact that writing for a newspaper is not the way to go. Who knows how long newspapers will even be around? That’s okay because newspapers are not journalism. Journalism is reporting what is going on in the world and making people aware of it. That’s what I want to do. The way people receive their news is just changing.
There are still so many options I have for jobs in journalism. I could write for a magazine, whether that is paper or online. I could also write for an online news site. Now that social media has become a big part of people lives, I could get a job centered around posting news to social media. I could freelance for any of these. Or the platform I’ve decided I want to use is TV reporting. People have argued that this platform is dying as well as many people are getting rid of cable because of viewer subscriptions like Netflix. TV news may not always be around, but it can move to an online platform and continue to grow.
News is an important part of society, whether people believe it is or not. It’s a way to record history and let people know what is happening in their community and all around the world. There have even been journalists who have uncovered secrets, lies and crimes that people high in power were getting away with like the Watergate scandal with President Nixon. Journalism will never die. It is too important. It will just continue to evolve with technology.
