The Society of Professional Journalists will hold their annual convention this coming week (October 4-7) in Washington D.C, some notable guests will include: Bob Schieffer from CBS News, columnist Robert Novak, and the Watergate dynamic duo of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
From the looks of the program schedule, it promises to be an enlightening week of presentations, touching on a variety of cutting edge issues influencing journalists today.
One noticeable absence from the program, however, is a presentation dealing with the dreadful job market for prospective print journalists, as buzz saws continue to tear through newsrooms and slice jobs in record numbers, either through company buyouts, attrition, or outright staff cuts.
According to the 2006 survey compiled by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication , only half of the journalism and mass communication recipients in 2006 were working full time jobs; while those receiving benefits were down from the previous year. Job benefits for graduates with full time jobs, in fact, decreased from 36.6 percent in 1997 to 22.4 percent in 2006
What's more, the median salary for a recent journalism graduate is $31,333, well below marketing graduates, who earned $41,285, economic grads make $53, 449, finance majors 47,877, and computer science grads earned $52,177, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. (NACE).
So as daily newspapers begin their mad dash to the web in order to stay competitive in an age of dwindling circulation, traditional print journalists are rapidly becoming an endangered species, right up there with the Maytag repairman, and Chinese toy manufacturers.
An article posted last year on the Project for Excellence in Journalism's website refers to a book: “The American Journalist in the 21st Century'' in which the authors report 116,148 persons were employed as full time journalists in 2002, 6,000 less than there had been in 1992, with daily newspapers suffering the most bruising loss at 8,500, while radio lost 4,000, and television 2,500 employees.
At this pace, there won't be enough journalists around to write their own obituaries.
From the looks of the program schedule, it promises to be an enlightening week of presentations, touching on a variety of cutting edge issues influencing journalists today.
One noticeable absence from the program, however, is a presentation dealing with the dreadful job market for prospective print journalists, as buzz saws continue to tear through newsrooms and slice jobs in record numbers, either through company buyouts, attrition, or outright staff cuts.
According to the 2006 survey compiled by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication , only half of the journalism and mass communication recipients in 2006 were working full time jobs; while those receiving benefits were down from the previous year. Job benefits for graduates with full time jobs, in fact, decreased from 36.6 percent in 1997 to 22.4 percent in 2006
What's more, the median salary for a recent journalism graduate is $31,333, well below marketing graduates, who earned $41,285, economic grads make $53, 449, finance majors 47,877, and computer science grads earned $52,177, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. (NACE).
So as daily newspapers begin their mad dash to the web in order to stay competitive in an age of dwindling circulation, traditional print journalists are rapidly becoming an endangered species, right up there with the Maytag repairman, and Chinese toy manufacturers.
An article posted last year on the Project for Excellence in Journalism's website refers to a book: “The American Journalist in the 21st Century'' in which the authors report 116,148 persons were employed as full time journalists in 2002, 6,000 less than there had been in 1992, with daily newspapers suffering the most bruising loss at 8,500, while radio lost 4,000, and television 2,500 employees.
At this pace, there won't be enough journalists around to write their own obituaries.
-Bill Lucey
billlucey@bellsouth.net
billlucey@bellsouth.net
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