The economy is reeling, news organizations are contracting, and journalists are losing their jobs. At first glance, you’d think this would be a terrible time to look for a job in news. But there’s a silver lining if you’re a new journalism grad, according to Ernie Sotomayor of Columbia’s J. School:
Part of it is we have so many companies laying off and getting rid of reporters at bigger costs and they are hiring reporters at lower salaries, at the beginning of their careers.
Editor and Publisher reports that the school’s annual job fair, scheduled for next weekend, has drawn more recruiters than ever. But only 18 of the 110 employers participating are newspapers. Most are online, TV and magazine companies. The job fair is open only to Columbia students, but you can see the list of companies that are hiring here.
Filed under: 12. Getting Ready for the Real World |
Advancing the Story 
As someone who currently works in both newspaper and radio, I’m not surprised to see a small number of newspapers participating in this job fair.
But looking at the list of participants, there are just a handful of radio companies participating in the event, too, all public radio.
The lack of commercial radio participants in this job fair, even New York all-news stations WCBS and WINS, is very alarming, but doesn’t come as a huge surprise.
[…] Good news on the job front. Sort of: there are more jobs for rookies because the higher-priced talent is being bought out. Includes this: “… [Columbia j-school] annual job fair, scheduled for next weekend, has drawn more recruiters than ever. But only 18 of the 110 employers participating are newspapers. Most are online, TV and magazine companies. […]
While it’s true that news on the commercial radio dial is pretty hard to find in most US cities, the stations Walter mentions may be hiring. We can’t know, because they weren’t on the job fair list. But both are owned by CBS, which was on the list.
As if to confirm the point that companies are replacing more experienced, expensive employees with new graduates, CBS-owned TV stations have started cutting jobs left and right. Last week, video editor Shawn Montano, who had just won his second NPPA Editor of the Year award, was let go by WCNC-TV in Denver. Stations in Minneapolis and Philadelphia also let staffers go.
Commecial radio is pretty much dying out in the UK as well – the economics are not there now webbased media can strip out classified advertising. We have the BBC in the UK though, which is what is keeping speech radio alive. It is in fact actually going – but everyone in the country has to pay a tax of about $200 (licence fee) which in theory is a sales tax on TV sets. You go to jail if you don’t pay it. There a debate about that – and your Fox man Rupert Murdoch here gets his papers to ceasely campaign for its abolition.
But that’s the future in the multimedia world – some collective way of creating a pot of money to make ‘content’ and organisational arrangements to protect editorial independnce
I meant “growing” – not “going”!