Don't wear rose-colored glasses

Robert Niles with the Online Journalism Review has suggested eight things journalism students should demand from a j-school. I’m going to post them here along with what I think of them. And I’m going to ignore the fact that I think anyone who bothers with j-school in this climate is bat-shit crazy.

This one stuck out to me, of course, being that I am an unemployed journalist.

Passion, not excuses
The worst thing that journalism schools can do to their students is immerse them in a culture of failure. Instructors do that anytime they complain about the state of the news business, griping how much better it used to be and how awful bloggers/forums/websites are.
Students need passion for their field they are about to enter, and complaints and excuses from those who have left it.
There are more news sources available today to readers than ever before. More eyes are watching our governments and our business institutions. The public can speak for itself to a global audience, moving closer to fully realizing the potential of democracy. Experts are becoming storytellers, offering greater detail and deeper insight to the readers who want that.
I can't speak for you, but this fires me up. It should fire up every journalism instructor, too.
There are so many opportunities out there for our journalism students today. But they won't be able to engage those challenges if they've been steeped in a culture of a failure, knowing no other way to work in journalism than to be hired by a shrinking newspaper chain.
Students must demand better than that from their journalism schools. Those schools owe it to their students to deliver.

My experience in j-school, though it was a few years ago, was that some professors were too damn positive. Some students obviously would never get hired at any decent newspaper of any size but were still encouraged to continue with their degree. Journalism students need an accurate picture of what working in the business will be like: they may have a tough time finding a job that pays them a living wage.

And most bloggers/forums/Web sites are pretty damn shitty. There’s a difference in a blog that delivers some kind of information and those that consist of someone who just writes about how their kid threw up, their dog is cute or they have might have the flu.

And please, how many “news” sites have sprung up via the Internet and are so biased that they only appeal to a select demographic? I certainly don’t aspire to work for one and don’t think any journalism student should. These kids need to know that if they get a job at a small daily, they will have a tough time moving up to a metro daily.

Here's the other deal: Where, exactly, are all these other journalism jobs not at newspapers?

Magazines are in woeful shape. I see lots of blogging jobs advertised -- and they pay, on average, $3 a post. I see Web content writing jobs and they pay up to $15 or $20 apiece for roughly 500 words. Most of the jobs I've seen for which I could apply my j-skills are in corporate communications and public relations. Anybody know about all these great job opps out there for journalists?