J-school: Worth it?

Yeah. That pretty much covers it.

Oh, yeah.

I had a pretty good time at Gannett before I moved to Newhouse. Sorry.

Seriously, Fredrick, any chance you had of presenting a coherent message has been eliminated by your penchant for overstatement.

 

I'm not saying merit raises never were allowed. They are not being given any more. Name a newspaper giving merit raises now. It's all 1 to 3 percent.

 

Damn, dude, you're not nearly as smart as you think you are.

Remove the word "all" from ALL your future posts.

 

My chain is still giving merit raises. I received one at my last review.

I don't work for Gannett, but I do work for a pretty good size chain.

 

Same here.

But how can that be, considering that Fredrick said they've ALL stopped giving merit raises? Hmm.

 

They're still giving them at my place of employment as well.

 

Not mine, FWIW. And no raises at all for two straight years, I believe. Then 2 percent. Then talk of an across-the-board wage cut. Then layoffs.

 

While our union - at a paper in the chain - negotiated out merit raises in favor of small, 1-3 percent, yearly step raises for everyone.

Some papers do give merit raises. Their rank is dwindling.

 

Let me add on to the pile of responses that suggests you avoid journalism school. I was a communications major who walked into the student newspaper for the heck of it. I did some stringing at my local daily paper when I was a senior in high school and wanted to cover college football and hoops to stay out of trouble. I ended up with both beats and winning the award the j-school gave for "excellence in journalism" or whatever the heck it was. I was watching all these journalism majors busting their rears in pointless classes (this was a very big school, by the way, with an award-winning student newspaper) while I was cruising along towards my communications degree. When I graduated I had quite a bit of experience (covering the football and basketball teams for the student paper while also writing features on the local MLB and NFL teams in the market for my local daily) and hooked on with a daily paper within a month ( a 35,000 circ in a suburb). Simply put, if you can write you can land a job if you keep at it. Do some stringing, submit stories to as many publications as possible and keep working at it. One thing I will say you should do is write something every day, regardless if it is for publication or not. It's really easy to get rusty and the only way to get better is to work, work, work.

 

"Simply put, if you can write you can land a job if you keep at it."

Ten to 15 years ago, sure. Now? Ha.

 

He's right. If you can write, you can land a job. May not be in something where the paper lands on the doorstep, but it will be somewhere.

 

Simple answer: education is never a waste of time. Don't think of it as a ticket to the newsroom at the New York Times. Think of it as a way to expand your understanding of the industry and the world you want to write about.

As many have pointed out here, it's a grim time to be chasing the journalism dream. That's the same line I heard when I started chasing it 25 years ago. Like all of us, newspapers have been dying for years. But there will always be a need for people who can gather, process and share information.

There's no substitute for finding a place to type and learn your craft. That said, your career will be a long road with some twists and turns you can't anticipate right now.

As someone who chased the dream, had some success, got "spiked" and moved on, I'm grateful for the time I spent pursuing my degree. Don't underestimate its value later in your career.