3 ms·

Isn't it a luxury to be able to put down money for a journalism degree tuition in the US? I think this may already be explained quite well for the US higher edu

Isn't it a luxury to be able to put down money for a journalism degree tuition in the US? I think this may already be explained quite well for the US higher education system, how do these ratios compare to journalism degrees'?

whimsicalism 5y ago
The luxury is more in the post-college pipeline.
ghaff 5y ago
A journalism degree is by no means a pre-requisite to working as a journalist. In fact, a fair number of people would argue it's a negative relative to real-world experience. I'm not sure any of the working tech journalists I know have a J-school degree.
- brabel 5y ago
  How do they become journalists? Straight out of high school? Or there are non-university shorter courses they need to take? I always thought that you even had to take an oauth to be a journalist, as the impact of the profession can affect the public opinion and therefore comes with a good amount of responsibility. To think someone without any qualifications can just start writing for credible news outlets seems quite scary to me.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    By journalism degree/J-school, I was referring to the (essentially) masters degree in journalism that universities like Columbia offer. The more typical route in my experience is that people get some sort of liberal arts undergrad degree like English, communications, or journalism (not sure how common this is as an undergrad major). Though you also get journalists with various science or engineering degrees who end up gravitating to science reporting. In many cases, people going into journalism have worked on the school paper. I'm guessing straight out of high school is uncommon these days; I assume "apprenticeships" are rare though poorly paid/unpaid internships may be less so. There is also a lot of movement in and out of journalism (though mostly out these days) to a variety of other fields that involve a lot of writing such as IT industry analysts and content teams at companies. But in general my experience is that journalism doesn't especially gatekeep by credentials (though it does by connections to a non-trivial degree). And a lot of working tech professionals publish blogs etc. in various online tech pubs. For a number of years I had one when CNET used to have a whole external blog network.These days I write for TechTarget every now and then as well as a couple of sites my company sponsors. There are some bad examples of this but it's widespread. Papers like the NYT segregate external content more carefully.

whimsicalism 5y ago

The luxury is more in the post-college pipeline.

ghaff 5y ago

A journalism degree is by no means a pre-requisite to working as a journalist. In fact, a fair number of people would argue it's a negative relative to real-world experience. I'm not sure any of the working tech journalists I know have a J-school degree.

brabel 5y ago
How do they become journalists? Straight out of high school? Or there are non-university shorter courses they need to take? I always thought that you even had to take an oauth to be a journalist, as the impact of the profession can affect the public opinion and therefore comes with a good amount of responsibility. To think someone without any qualifications can just start writing for credible news outlets seems quite scary to me.
- ghaff 5y ago
  By journalism degree/J-school, I was referring to the (essentially) masters degree in journalism that universities like Columbia offer. The more typical route in my experience is that people get some sort of liberal arts undergrad degree like English, communications, or journalism (not sure how common this is as an undergrad major). Though you also get journalists with various science or engineering degrees who end up gravitating to science reporting. In many cases, people going into journalism have worked on the school paper. I'm guessing straight out of high school is uncommon these days; I assume "apprenticeships" are rare though poorly paid/unpaid internships may be less so. There is also a lot of movement in and out of journalism (though mostly out these days) to a variety of other fields that involve a lot of writing such as IT industry analysts and content teams at companies. But in general my experience is that journalism doesn't especially gatekeep by credentials (though it does by connections to a non-trivial degree). And a lot of working tech professionals publish blogs etc. in various online tech pubs. For a number of years I had one when CNET used to have a whole external blog network.These days I write for TechTarget every now and then as well as a couple of sites my company sponsors. There are some bad examples of this but it's widespread. Papers like the NYT segregate external content more carefully.