Doom and Gloom

Last week one of my journalism professors brought in a guest speaker to tell us all about the awesome life of a journalist. He opened with telling us all about his awesome friends who had awesome jobs in awesome publishing houses... who are now not-so-awesomely working as carpenters and secretaries. He ended by telling us "I didn't tell you that to scare you..."

I don't care if he didn't want to scare us - he did. At least he scared me. It was all I could do to not curl up in bed and cry and then drop out of school. He literally told us that at the end of the day things like our GPA and our degree are ultimately useless.

I did NOT want to hear that. I've had my heart set on writing since probably the third grade, so I'm not going to like it when someone comes and tells me I won't be able to.

I know a lot of these people just want us to have realistic expectations with the economy the way it is and what not, but for the most part we know how it is. We're journalists; it's not like we haven't been exposed to any sort of news outlet in the last eight months. We know it's bad.

But as discouraging as it is, deep down I refused to believe that print journalism will ever truly die. There will always - ALWAYS - be people who heartily appreciate holding a newspaper or magazine in their hands. Maybe that pool will shrink, but it'll never disappear.

The industry is changing and it's our job to adapt. I was talking to a friend of mine online last night and she brought up a good point - back in the day everybody thought print journalism was going to die with television, but it didn't. It adapted and moved on. And now that the internet is threatening us in the same way, it's just time to adapt again.