Is any university in America still admitting students as print journalism majors?

That question popped into my mind last week when I read a LinkedIn research post that claimed that newspapers have shed a larger percentage of jobs that any other industry in America over the past five years, losing more than 28 percent of its jobs during that time.

I mean, wow, everyone in the business knew that newspapers were shrinking, but dead last? And dead last in a down economy?

When you consider that many newspaper companies have been trying to add or at least redeploy positions to their online operations, the jobs picture becomes even more grim for the print side of journalism. As far as jobs go, this is – literally – the worst part of the worst industry in the worst economy since the Great Depression.

Given that job market, why would any students want to major in print journalism? More importantly – why would any ethical college or university allow those students to do so?

College today costs an obscene amount of money, an outrageous expense that’s often justified by the extra earning potential that college graduates enjoy over those who do not earn a college degree. But median wages for college graduates (adjusted for inflation) are shrinking, not growing. And given the collapsing job prospects in print journalism, it seems to me mad to invest tens of thousands of dollars in training to work for newspapers.

And, yes, I wrote “training.” Journalism schools long have considered themselves professional schools, with a focus on training over scholarship, and if you doubt that, consider the relative dearth of PhDs on university journalism faculties, compared with the large number of adjunct faculty and instructors. But it’s going to be increasingly difficult for journalism schools to retain support within their universities if employment prospects in the profession for which they are training their students continue to collapse at the rate that newspapers’ are.

Students are wise to all this, of course. I’m hearing plenty of anecdotal accounts that students are abandoning print journalism, choosing instead to apply or transfer to programs in online journalism, public relations and communications. Add that newspaper companies are no longer enjoying the massive double-digit annual profit margins that led them to fund million- and billion-dollar foundations to support journalism education, and journalism schools are facing a one-two punch to their revenue with many feeling declining enrollment and donation support.

Fortunately, there’s some very good news in the LinkedIn analysis. Take a look at the top three growing industries over the past five years. There’s the Internet at number two and Online Publishing at number three. That’s the future of journalism education right there – fulfilling the growing need for instruction and guidance in profitable and community-building communication in the growing online publishing media.

Unfortunately, too many journalism faculties aren’t well staffed for this shift. While the core principles of sound reporting, clear writing and honest imagery remain for online journalism, today’s journalism students also need instruction in entrepreneurship, as well as building and leading communities in a dynamic, real-time, interactive publishing environment – skills where print veterans too often lack needed years of real-world experience. Worse, too many print-focused instructors advocate journalists maintaining distance from the communities they cover in the name of objectivity – advice that I believe harms 21st century journalism students.

The situation reminds me of the dilemma that newspapers have faced over the past generation, as they tried to diversify the ethnicity of their newsrooms, while at first holding their size steady, then laying off workers. It’s next to impossible to make the numbers work for adding new people from different backgrounds into a work environment that you’re trying to shrink. It’s far easier to diversify a growing industry, where employment opportunities abound.

So, too, will it be difficult for journalism schools to find the empty positions to recruit and hire community-minded entrepreneurial online journalists – who often have plenty of competing career opportunities – while those schools feel funding pressure due to the newspaper industry’s collapse. Journalism schools shouldn’t abandon instruction in print journalism, for jobs and opportunities remain the field. And the history of print journalism needs to remain a part of any journalism or communication school’s curriculum, for the lessons learned (and ignored) by that industry remain instructive to publishers and journalists in any medium.

But with the newspaper industry collapsing faster than any other segment of the American economy, it’s time to quit actively directing students into print. FWIW, I could make the same argument about many professional schools in which colleges and universities recruit and admit far more students that their fields need, including law schools and some departments of business schools. Over-recruitment of students for shrinking fields is an emerging national scandal in higher education. Or, at least, it ought to be.

Students considering professional programs deserve hard facts about job market in those fields, not to discourage them from learning, but to help them be fully informed about their prospects in the future. The primary responsibility for journalists is to tell the truth. So journalism educators should lead the way.

American journalism today is in crisis because it has not adapted financially to digital media, yet I believe we could turn this crisis into an opportunity to make significant improvements in the industry. Journalists and entrepreneurs are searching for business models that would generate revenue to help support high-quality digital media. No matter what forms they take, the newly emerged media products always should be consumer oriented. That is, the products should either meet new, unsatisfied consumer demands, or help reduce the costs of existing products or services in the market. Specially designed online educational clubs could help provide a new and effective alternative for which many consumers would be willing to pay. There is great social value in these clubs that would help draw support from outside the journalism field as well. The project could be implemented in three steps.

First: Foreign Language Enhancement

Journalists should start by investigating ways to combine traditional studies of foreign language with news delivery to make the learning process more interesting and cost-effective. The project is meant to establish an online portal for interested consumers to learn about different cultures, languages, and international news of current relevance. This site could also be used as a complementary tool for international affairs, world geography, or other international fields of study. An emphasis on music, video, and other modern multi-media technologies would help make the learning process more interesting and diversified.

The goal at this stage is to attract paid institutional group subscriptions. These, in turn, may help attract individual and business subscriptions. Paying small fees for an online collection of existing news stories and documentations would likely help reduce the cost of labor-intensive teaching methods. In addition to accurate, in-depth, and up-to-date foreign news stories, current computer technologies would allow student consumers at different learning levels or with different career focuses to practice particular languages of their choice. The clubs also would focus on learning a language as a way to learn the values and wisdom of different cultures, to learn how other peoples make their decisions and live their lives, and to learn how they solve their problems. Therefore, these bilingual clubs potentially would provide attractive learning tools for many consumers.

Second: Global Inspiration

After the foreign language clubs are well-established at the first stage, the project would then be expanded to include clubs with a more general educational focus. These online learning clubs would offer users broad access to a large selection of cultural and professional content in English from the bilingual club archives, as well as from English language newspapers. The goal of the educational clubs is to help consumers benefit from understanding the problem-solving wisdom of other cultures, a skill that many bilingual or multilingual workers have, without having to learn a foreign language. Ideally, the realization of this goal would help save a great deal of effort in terms of time and money invested in foreign language studies.

News stories would target ordinary citizens with a high school education, rather than a highly specialized audience. Journalists are trained to simplify complicated incidents or concepts into interesting and fresh stories. This type of technique would be very helpful for attracting students who are not fully motivated by traditional academic teaching methods. Therefore, these learning clubs would likely possess strong market values since the clubs would help enrich consumers’ lives by providing inexpensive and diversified alternatives to improve their knowledge and job skills.

Journalists and editors managing these online clubs should be trained in both journalism and a specific academic field. Writers who have both interest and knowledge in a particular field will be more successful at finding and creating vivid news stories for consumers with similar interests.
One crucial step for this second stage would be to organize existing resources from the journalism field and to coordinate newspapers and freelance journalists to contribute content. Contributors would be compensated for the use of their articles. Ideally, the fees paid to journalists and newspapers by the clubs would help support and encourage high-quality journalism.

Third: Bridging the Gaps

At this stage, the website would bring together journalists, experts, and consumers, and provide a platform for exploring solutions to important issues. For example, the clubs might have been able to have organized ways to help Japan deal with the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and the following tsunami and nuclear crisis in March 2011. The clubs can help bridge the gap between local communities with specific information and international organizations that could provide support. Since the clubs would have access to local news about recent developments as well as to professionals who have specialized knowledge in various fields, they would be able to facilitate bringing together these resources.

Another interesting project would be to investigate how the learning clubs could best serve students who do not perform well with traditional theory-intensive learning methods, as well as adult workers who are transitioning careers. The goal would be to examine whether these online clubs can help organizations (for example, workforce training or adult education programs) to reduce costs by providing access to more efficient and up-to-date educational methods.

At this point, the function of the clubs would be to complement news organizations or investigative journalists to better attract government funding or grants from foundations, corporations, and communities.

Conclusion

Instead of trying to find an investor to fund the entire project, our plan is to break it down into three manageable stages and attract funding for each stage individually. At the end of each stage, there would be concrete benefits for users. To summarize these benefits, consumers would first gain access to better tools for learning foreign languages and cultures. During the second stage, people would be able to save money on expensive education and career training. Finally, communities would be able to search for experts who are interested and qualified to help with local problems or crises. This media product would benefit both consumers and journalists. The market is ripe for this kind of innovation. Yet, the most difficult part of the whole project may be getting the public to recognize its potential market value and social benefits.

For more information, please read my previous article entitled “A New Approach for Profitable Foreign News Reporting.” I always wish to find an opportunity to thank Prof. Dan Gillmor properly. I greatly appreciate his help and support regarding this project.