As a journalism major and a millennial, I feel like I’ve heard it all before: “What will you DO with your degree? Don’t you know journalism is dying?” Many seem to feel that the future of traditional journalism is dead as things like the newspaper are slowly fading away, replaced instead by online news websites, or even news apps. But the real question is this: will millennials get anywhere near that mid-to-late 70s journalistic excitement that existed for the post-Watergate world? Probably so. But the means by which we will get there as journalists will be different. The jobs we get will be different as well.
Instead of being a savvy writer for a paper, a standard copy editor, or a graphic designer, you may have to be a little bit of all three: a news reporter who must gather their information, report it appropriately as copy, and perhaps add some type of design or graphic element to the work prior to submission to the editor. In short, we have to be “cocktail” journalists.
Personally, I find things such as design and social media tedious and confusing. But as social media takes over journalism, advertising, and public relations more, it would be foolish not to stay up-to-date on these trends, and how journalism is evolving as a medium. We can’t just sit at our desk and write an article anymore. There has to be something more to catch a reader’s eye. Social media is a fantastic example of this. Who would reach for a print copy of The New York Times for over $5 an issue when they could get The New York Times news app on their phone for $9.99 per month?
When it comes to newsprint, one must sit down, sit back, and be quite focused if they want to digest what they’re reading. A news app, on the other hand, will notify your phone of breaking news as it is happening - this is an advantage newsprint will never be able to match. Instead of sitting at the breakfast table leafing through the sections of a newspaper, you could read your news while walking from your car to your office, or while standing in line at a food establishment.
So, yes. Millennials will be exposed to quite a different journalistic atmosphere than our baby-boomer counterparts. But that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. With the advent of new technologies, journalism is evolving and progressing. Most likely for the better. As globalization makes the world smaller and smaller, it is no surprise that technological advances are essentially taking over every aspect of how we live our lives, and journalism is no exception. But instead of being overwhelmed by the possibilities, we should seize the moment, and strike while the iron is hot. By utilizing these new technologies in journalism, we will not only improve our journalistic pursuits through variety, we will progress how we disseminate information to the public by making it better, and more interesting for the reader. If you want to learn more about the futures of millennials in journalism, you can check out this article from Digiday.
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