the death of journalism

All I hear about as a journalism student is the death of journalism and how newspapers are falling by the wayside.

Regardless of whether newspapers are going to live, journalism itself is never going to die. It's one of the oldest professions in the world (think of those hieroglyphics on pyramid walls...ancient journalist drew those so we could all remember). Everyone still needs to know what happened and when, and someone will have to write it down and write a story.

One of the things emphasized the most in my classes is the art of crafting a story to make it more believable. Working on the Otter Realm this semester has definitely helped me expand my knowledge about writing and crafting a story in such a way it makes people care.

Another writer on staff this semester actually got to interview Jayson Blair, a reporter from the New York Times who was caught plagiarizing and submitting inauthentic work. He said he resigned from the Times "because he got caught." In all regards, he shouldn't have been doing it in the first place. I know firsthand how fast a deadline can come up on you and you're left without a story, without a quote, and you still have to make it work. People say academia is the profession where it's "publish or perish," but I believe journalism is even more cutthroat. Freelancers especially have a hard time, subsisting on stories here and there to keep their name in the papers and their reputation intact.

I love every minute of it, though, and wouldn't change it for the world.