I thought I had it bad. Seventeen years ago, I graduated with my Master’s Degree in Journalism at the University of Western Ontario only a scant few months after Southam Newspapers laid off hundreds of reporters and editors across the country. It was 1992 and the recession was yet to lift. My class faced a bleak time as we sought our first jobs. I ended up starting my career in the small tobacco town of Tillsonburg, Ontario working for a twice-weekly paper and earning less than I had been working as a waiter the year before graduate school.

The start of my communications career wasn’t easy, but it was mild compared to what today’s journalism students face. Virtually every major news organization has announced major lay-offs in the past few months: CanWest Global (which today owns those Southam papers that once frustrated my career hopes), the Globe and Mail, the Winnipeg Free Press, CTV. Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.

The news business has changed dramatically in my lifetime. Newsrooms have been shrinking and the quality of reporting and editing in most regional papers has declined markedly.  Reporters too typically work for a couple of years in their chosen profession before fleeing in frustration over low pay and low morale.

To make things worse for the news biz, the blogosphere is flooding the Internet with free, specialized content covering every topic under the sun. And that content is often written by leading authorities who offer “reporting” straight from the source.

I’m guessing that future J-school classes will be seeking work at online blogs and newsletters much more than at newspapers or radio and television stations.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 16th, 2009 at 10:56 am and is filed under Social media and blogging, Media relations, old media vs new media, blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.