Crunchy Conservative Rod Dreher, an editor for the Dallas Morning News, ponders the fate of J-school students suggesting they had better be in it for the love.
“Can you imagine going into debt and devoting two years of your life to earning an advanced degree in a field in which you have very little chance of earning a living? I mentioned this to my wife, who, like me, holds an undergraduate journalism degree. “Can you believe people are actually going to journalism school anymore?” I said. She responded, “You and I, when we were that age, would have been completely romantic about it, and wouldn’t have listened to older people who told us there would be no jobs for us.'”
Hmm, sounds like some other industry I know of. What was it again?
He goes on to talk about writing a grad school recommendation for a young journalist he knows.
“And yet, I warned him not to go to journalism grad school, because of the job market, to no avail. He’s got passion, and he’s got hope. I can recommend him to these schools with great confidence in his ability to do the work required of him. He will emerge an even more capable journalist than he already is. Any magazine or newspaper would be lucky to have this guy working for them. If only potential paid the bills! Sigh.”
Ha ha! Finally we get our revenge on those two bit critics who panned our shows! Now they shall be brought low and learn how it feels to ply your craft out of pure love of doing it and have people who have little understanding of their work tell everyone it stinks!
Actually, that sounds a lot like what playwrights and novelists go through. In reality, journalists are really just talented writers who found a format for expression that would pay them regularly for exercising their art. Unfortunately, it seems that time has passed and what was an exception looks to join the rule of the arts and humanities where there are a lot of hard working and talented practitioners and few notable successes that everyone believes they can become.