Monday, March 05, 2007

Take a chill pill, journ majors

I’m graduating in a couple months, and I do not have a job lined up.

I repeat: I do not have a job lined up.

It’s OK, though. I’m not freaking out. I swear. I’m fine. Stop asking me questions.

Then again, maybe I’m a little stressed about the prospect of entering the “real world” in May and I have no idea if I’ll even be in the state of Pennsylvania. And while it’s tempting to use this space to beg the leaders of the journalism world for a decent salary and some benefits, that’s not what I’m going to do. Instead, this blog is for my fellow journalism majors – especially those who work at the Collegian.

I am in no way a career services mentor, so you can completely disregard my input on the job search if you’d like. But I do know one thing: The world is always going to need journalists, which means there’s always going to be jobs for them somewhere. Maybe newspapers will eventually disappear, and radio will go off the air for good. But that doesn’t mean the end of American journalism.

So fear not, soon-to-be graduates of the Penn State College of Communications. There are jobs for you out there, but you’re going to have to be patient. Journalism is an industry of high turnover, particularly at the entry-level positions.

Do yourself a favor and get familiar with JournalismJobs.com. Some of the top newspapers and magazines – including the Boston Globe, New York Times, Newsweek, etc. – use the site to find qualified applicants. What’s available now probably won’t be available in a month. And what’s currently filled might be surprisingly vacant when you’re submitting resumes in April.

I know the engineers and the business majors already have jobs. Good for them. But you know as well as I do that you didn’t go into journalism for the money, or even the job security.

So here’s where those sacrifices come in – the ones you knew you were going to make when you chose journalism for a career. And I don’t really think it’s that much of a sacrifice.

Now that I think about it, I know two things.

Being a journalist is the coolest job on the planet, and you’re never going to convince me otherwise.