My Reaffirmation That I'm In The Wrong Business

I was smart enough in college to know that majoring in journalism was a waste of time and energy. Working for the college newspaper was productive and useful. Most of the good journalists I worked with and for once I got into the business didn't have journalism degrees. Most had political science degrees. The English majors turned out to be the best copy editors. Journalism degrees were overrated 20 years ago and now are all but worthless.

 

What you are doing/allowing your bosses to do is against federal law, Fred.

Unless you are an exempt employee, if you work the hours you are supposed to be paid the hours.

Now, if "working" is sitting at home waiting for a source to call, that's some gray area.

But if you are routinely on the job 60-70 hours a week and getting paid for 40, you need to really stop.

 

And I've known people, non-journalism majors, who had no clue regarding the basic ethical and communications law concerns. But there they were, making news decisions. Can't paint this with a broad brush. True, plenty of people who majored in journalism didn't pay attention in the right discussions while they were students. But the individual's skill and inquisitiveness (is that a word?) are more important than what was written on the sheepskin.

Agree that the worth of a journalism degree isn't what it was. And so it is for all industries that are in a prolonged bust right now.

 

I disagree; I think it's a fairly valuable commodity. Not because of the reporting aspect, but because of the writing aspect.

Generally speaking, you'll come out of there (even if you have zero natural talent), with the ability to put a sentence together and spel things rite.

As much execrable writing as there is out there in cyberspace, there are still a lot of things you can do with that skill - even if they're not as much fun as what we do.

It's almost like a trade school, in a way.

I have friends out of a job who have a marketing degree, which basically means sales these days. What the hell else are they going to do with a marketing degree? Accounting?

See where I'm going with that?

 

In terms of general intelligence, I would rate journalists quite highly. Their intelligence, though, is different than that of, say, a brain surgeon or a scientist.

Journalists' intelligence is usually more intuitive than technical, more broad, far-reaching and wide- and free-ranging than it is specific, finely focused or scientific. Its value is in an intrinsic ability to think, often outside the box, and to question everything, even if not to answer everything.

Their intelligence is often indicated by varying interests and versatile abilities and an empathetic nature.

It's a good combination in my book, even if we may never be brain surgeons.

 

Advertising, event coordinating... there's a lot of things you can do with a marketing degree.

 

Doesn't take a marketing degree to coordinate events.

 

Agree. It's funny that many outsiders consider journalists to be naive or dumb. In fact, it's completely the opposite. Some of the smartest and most witty people I've met are journalists.