Aspiring journalists press on

PHILADELPHIA — On a recent Wednesday night, the staff of The Whit, Rowan University's campus paper, was busy cranking out its last issue of the semester.

Journalism's next generation had heard the horror stories about newspapers: Sluggish ad revenue. Circulation siphoned off by the Internet. Thousands of jobs lost. Major papers on the block.

Has the gloom and doom deterred Liz Zelinski from her dream of a newspaper career?

"Not one little bit. I love it too much," said Zelinski, 20, fresh from laying out the front page.

"It makes me think about what my lifestyle is going to be," she said. "And it's going to be hard to find a job. But I can't think about doing anything else."

Like small ships setting sail on a roiling sea, young people are defiantly, and a bit nervously, staking their futures on the survival of newspapers.

"They're not sitting in class hearing the professor talk about a stockholders' revolt and thinking, 'Maybe I should do something else,' " said Lee Becker, director of the Cox Center for International Mass Communications Training and Research at the University of Georgia.

Educators are frank with students about entering a field struggling to reinvigorate itself.

"We never sugarcoat it," said Kathryn Quigley, a Rowan assistant professor and Whit adviser.

They pound the drum for "convergence" skills to tell a story across several media. And their students — who have grown up with the Internet, video, audio and podcasts — show little anxiety about the job's expanded duties.

"You can't just be a print journalist," said Christine Ernest, 20, a Cabrini College senior who, like many her age, gets most of her news online.

Some say veteran journalists' woes may spell opportunity for young applicants. After buying out tenured staffers, papers can hire younger applicants for less, said Arlene Morgan, associate dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

U.S. colleges and universities see strong interest in the field. Total enrollment in more than 450 journalism and mass-communication programs climbed nearly 30 percent between 1999 and 2004, according to the Cox Center.

At Pennsylvania State University last fall, the number of journalism majors was up 135 percent from a decade earlier.

The University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism had 750 applications for 160 slots this fall. But 900 applied last year, and students nearing graduation are feeling trepidation.

"There's been this palpable uncertainty about the world they're going into," said dean Thomas Kunkel. "There's no ignoring the turmoil."

Here's Newspaper Blues 101: Between 1992 and 2002, the number of full-time editorial employees at U.S. dailies fell by 8,438, almost 13 percent, according to Indiana University professor David Weaver, co-author of "The American Journalist in the 21st Century," due out this summer.

By this year, about 1,200 more newsroom jobs at paid-circulation dailies had been cut, the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported. Last year saw new investment in online reporting at newspapers, but not enough to offset cutbacks in ink-and-paper jobs, said Amy Mitchell, associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Those who do snag a position won't be paying off their school loans anytime soon. The median starting salary for applicants with a bachelor's degree is $26,000 at dailies, according to the Cox survey. At weeklies, it's less.

Some parents are less than thrilled about their youngsters' career choices.

When he told his parents what he expected to earn, "My mom sort of looked at me and said: 'That's what people on welfare make,' " said Whit staffer Jonathan Vit, 22. "They're not totally stoked on the idea."

Graduates adamant about working for a daily are finding jobs, said Bob Martin, head of career placement at Penn State.

They are urged to look beyond newspapers, as well.

Students are mulling public relations and corporate communications. Some have started newsletters or Web sites. Recently, Columbia held its first nontraditional media jobs fair.

Some young journalists are entrepreneurial, like Aaron Bernstein, 22, who graduates in December from Indiana University, Bloomington, and hopes to piece together enough contract work to support himself in Philadelphia.

Others take post-grad internships, such as Jonathan Fogg, 23, who will leave Maryland with a master's degree. He is looking forward to his summer job, reporting at the Allentown Morning Call. His mother, though, was taken aback.

"She said: 'You can only get an internship out of grad school?' "

He finds what's going on at newspapers "pretty disturbing." But, he said, "I still feel, deep down, there's always going to be a market for writers."