1. Go to a well known school
2. Work in finance for a couple of years
3. Go to b school
4. Be at least a 6 in looks
5. Get a job at Bloomberg

Fin journalism has a ton of jobs and people actually pay for it.

Anonymous wrote:I just heard Ray Suarez interviewed on WAMU, and his story would make me nervous about entering the field at this point. He was SO well regarded and experienced, yet has had trouble finding a full time job. Of course he had ageism working against him also, but still...

I have not heard this podcast, but suspect it will go over his story similarly:

https://economichardship.org/2021/10/a-veteran-journalist-finds-himself-the-center-of-the-story/

Working journalist here and I think the media industry Ray joined and worked for is long gone. For example, in his day if you wanted to be a radio reporter that's what you did and that's all you did. Audio production was the job someone else did for you. You didn't know or care about inverted pyramid because that's not what medium you worked in. Print journalists didn't have to or bother to learn about writing for radio. And so on.

Younger journalists tend to have a breadth of skills that translate to many mediums along with a depth of knowledge about specific beats. So a politics reporter might be writing for the website, writing a script for a podcast or video, shooting and editing video, using SEO to try and maximize for search, leveraging social media to create conversations and engage with audience (not just share links to their stories), and they do all of this without an attitude that they have to create content for several platforms. They get they have to find the audience and meet them where they are these days.

A lot of older journalists have an attitude if they have to do something other than the job they joined the field to do 20, 30, 40 years ago and feel like it's someone else's job to take the work they made for the platform they care about and somehow spin gold out of straw with it for the other platforms.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know a guy who is a correspondent for the NYTimes he supplements his income quite well writing non-fiction, journalistic style books.

Either of those gigs is fantastic. Good for him, and I mean that sincerely. But he's a unicorn, frankly, and his example isn't one that the OP's kid necessarily can apply to his or her own choices in the increasingly fragmented, nontraditional paths currently open to younger journalists. I hate to have to say that but it's reality.
--One of the former journalists from posts above

He is 30

That makes him even more of a unicorn. Absolutely great for him, but OP is talking about a student more than a decade younger. Not saying one can't aspire to all that, only saying his path is an increasingly rare path to success and stability.

And did he major in journalism in college, or in another subject with added journalism studies/newpaper experience to supplement the writing side? That information would be more helpful for the OP, based on the discussion in the rest of this thread.

He got a first in English Lit from Cambridge (UK) where he wrote and edited several college journals. He then took a post-grad year in journalism elsewhere. And he's worked constantly ever since.

This is the not the traditional journalism route, nor attainable for many kids from average families.

Actually it is the traditional journalism route. As others have stated. Study a subject and do extremely well at a prestigious college - where you spend time writing and editing college papers. Then do a 1 year post grad to learn the practicalities of the job and send out a lot of ideas / proposals / articles to magazines and journals and broadsheets (for lack of a better word) and accumulate work.

Anonymous wrote:I wonder how much of this is actually about him re-entering the workforce as someone older. Not necessarily about journalism?

I think it is a well known fact new journalism graduates have hard time getting well paying job.

Anonymous wrote:I was a journalism major (double major actually) but am no longer a practicing journalist.

If I were to make a recommendation, it would be to major in an area of interest - what the budding journalist would want to cover - economics, finance, political science, history etc, but work on the school newspaper/blog whatever.

There are fewer journalism jobs because hedge funds and billionaires have purchased many networks and newspaper syndicates and put them out of business.

As a result, many are creating their own forums, or are banding with others on Substack and other platforms to basically scrounge for income while covering a beat.

Something has to give, because it isn't good for a healthy democracy.

Journalism major still working as a journalist (though not sure for how much longer). I co-sign the above. And internships. Get them as early and as often as possible.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The skills learned in a journalism major translate well to more stable careers like content marketing.

What? Content marketing isn’t a stable field, it’s a race to the bottom in terms of pay.

I earn $240,000 a year doing it for a professional services firm. Been doing it for a decade. So. YMMV.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know a guy who is a correspondent for the NYTimes he supplements his income quite well writing non-fiction, journalistic style books.

Either of those gigs is fantastic. Good for him, and I mean that sincerely. But he's a unicorn, frankly, and his example isn't one that the OP's kid necessarily can apply to his or her own choices in the increasingly fragmented, nontraditional paths currently open to younger journalists. I hate to have to say that but it's reality.
--One of the former journalists from posts above

He is 30

That makes him even more of a unicorn. Absolutely great for him, but OP is talking about a student more than a decade younger. Not saying one can't aspire to all that, only saying his path is an increasingly rare path to success and stability.

And did he major in journalism in college, or in another subject with added journalism studies/newpaper experience to supplement the writing side? That information would be more helpful for the OP, based on the discussion in the rest of this thread.

He got a first in English Lit from Cambridge (UK) where he wrote and edited several college journals. He then took a post-grad year in journalism elsewhere. And he's worked constantly ever since.

This is the not the traditional journalism route, nor attainable for many kids from average families.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know a guy who is a correspondent for the NYTimes he supplements his income quite well writing non-fiction, journalistic style books.

Either of those gigs is fantastic. Good for him, and I mean that sincerely. But he's a unicorn, frankly, and his example isn't one that the OP's kid necessarily can apply to his or her own choices in the increasingly fragmented, nontraditional paths currently open to younger journalists. I hate to have to say that but it's reality.
--One of the former journalists from posts above

He is 30

That makes him even more of a unicorn. Absolutely great for him, but OP is talking about a student more than a decade younger. Not saying one can't aspire to all that, only saying his path is an increasingly rare path to success and stability.

And did he major in journalism in college, or in another subject with added journalism studies/newpaper experience to supplement the writing side? That information would be more helpful for the OP, based on the discussion in the rest of this thread.

He got a first in English Lit from Cambridge (UK) where he wrote and edited several college journals. He then took a post-grad year in journalism elsewhere. And he's worked constantly ever since.

My husband is a journalist and it is rough out there for him and his colleagues. So many of our friends have been laid off during acquisitions. We are late-30s, the jobs that many of the people our age did to get journalism jobs don't exist anymore, things like tracking legislation. It has all mostly been replaced by AI. And there is all this pressure to Tweet, go on tv, etc and other things that don't actually pay the bills but make it harder for you to get laid off if things go south. No thanks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know a guy who is a correspondent for the NYTimes he supplements his income quite well writing non-fiction, journalistic style books.

Either of those gigs is fantastic. Good for him, and I mean that sincerely. But he's a unicorn, frankly, and his example isn't one that the OP's kid necessarily can apply to his or her own choices in the increasingly fragmented, nontraditional paths currently open to younger journalists. I hate to have to say that but it's reality.
--One of the former journalists from posts above

He is 30

That makes him even more of a unicorn. Absolutely great for him, but OP is talking about a student more than a decade younger. Not saying one can't aspire to all that, only saying his path is an increasingly rare path to success and stability.

And did he major in journalism in college, or in another subject with added journalism studies/newpaper experience to supplement the writing side? That information would be more helpful for the OP, based on the discussion in the rest of this thread.

Anonymous wrote:The skills learned in a journalism major translate well to more stable careers like content marketing.

What? Content marketing isn’t a stable field, it’s a race to the bottom in terms of pay.

NP here who snorted at the op’s comment about learning from copy editors - they are endangered to the point of extinction and are not professors!!