<p>NSM:
“Most students on the Harvard newspaper are not planning to be journalists (last I visited it, about 6 years ago, the editor in chief was planning a career in something like international relations), and no students are getting course credit for working there. There are no faculty advisors. Yet, students clamor to work there. Students even have to go through a several week competition in order to get selected for the staff, and many students are rejected. When I was at Harvard, a student who was rejected had a parent who was the head of a country. The student ended up being the head of a country a couple of decades after graduating from Harvard.”</p>
<p>Don’t you think there’s more intangible motivation for writing for a Harvard paper than the one from Keedlesburg Community College? Due to the same intellectual atmosphere you’re talking about, Harvard students are more likely to actually read the newspaper and give passionate feedback to the writers. Whereas at Keedles, the newspaper will more often than not end up in the trash if a copy’s picked up from the stacks at all. Both because you’re writing for Harvard and not some random school, and because Harvard students are more likely to take the paper seriously, there’s reason to write for free. On the other hand, I could see why some of these kids at lower-tier schools don’t see a lot of motivation for writing in the paper if they aren’t getting paid for it.</p>
<p>University of Denver produced Condoleezza Rice.
Golda Meir dropped out of a Milwaukee teachers college.
Marian Wright Edelman attended Spellman College
Maya Angelou, dropped out of high school
Nancy Pelosi attended Trinity college
Madeleine Albright attended Wellesley
Christine O. Gregoire Univ. of Washington
Barbara Boxer graduated from Brooklyn College
Dianne Feinstein attended Stanford
Katharine Graham graduated From the University of Chicago</p>
<p>Looks like powerful and influential women come from all kinds of places.</p>
<p>Talking heads,
There actually would be more reason for students at colleges with journalism programs to write for student newspapers than is the case at Ivies, which have no undergrad journalism programs and relatively few students planning journalism careers.</p>
<p>The ticket to getting journalism jobs is providing that one can report, write and edit, and the way that one does this is by publishing in the campus newspaper or doing work for the campus broadcast stations.
Also many colleges that have journalism programs give students credit in journalsim classes for working in campus media.</p>
<p>I do agree with you that students at places like Ivies are more likely to read their campus papers – and newspapers of all kinds – than are students at community college or at the colleges that are much lower ranked than Ivies. When I taught journalism at a second/third tier, I had to teach many students how to read newspapers, and I had to also test them to make sure that they regularly read newspapers.</p>
<p>viewpoint, your #4 is quite funny. I must have missed the posts that touched on this aspect. Was that bit something you inferred or was it implied? ;)</p>
<p>Quote:
“Ivy kids give away their time for free publishing school newspapers while non-elite school kids are partying, getting laid, etc.”</p>
<p>Right, because state schools don’t have things like student newspapers, they’re too dumb for that. :)</p>
<p>No hate here, but I think that it’s kind of hard to convince people who send their kids to Ivies and the like that they’re not getting allll that much more than a fancier sounding degree.</p>
<p>“Overbooked public institutions”? As a journalism professor, clearly you know that word choice is important and powerful. By gratuitously adding “overbooked” to your description, I assume you meant to give the impression that public colleges are teeming with students who are effectively packed in like sardines.</p>
<p>Hey, come to think of it, maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe your comment is a riff on Viewpoint’s great comment. It IS a lot easier to party when you are packed in like sardines.</p>
Exactly! Which is why you don’t need no stinkin’ journo degree. And which is in conflict with this statement:
Again, check the bios of the major figures in media today…you’re going to find tons of “elite” college grads who didn’t need to major in journalism.</p>
<p>Wisconsin has had two independent student run daily papers for decades plus various weekly and monthly papers such as The Onion which was a student published weekly humor and entertainment paper for years before going national and a couple of on and off campus radio stations run or dominated by students. Some are journalism majors while many are not.</p>
<p>It’s becoming increasingly hard to enter journalism without a journalism degree now. Back when we were young, one could get a newspaper job with an English degree and a lot of interest in the field. Now, however, experience --internships – is required, and usually that experience is at campus daily newspapers. While some nonjournalism programs have daily papers, their aspiring journalist students may not know to apply for summer internships.</p>
<p>I am not as familiar with what’s required now for broadcast journalists as entry level folks, but it always has been harder to get into than print journalism. My understanding is that entry level folks need to have proof that they can write, shoot and edit, and that might be hard to do without being in an accredited journalism program with good broadcast facilities.</p>
<p>It’s even hard to get unpaid internships in broadcast journalism, so I also would think that it would be important to have the connections that come with being in an accredited journalism program.</p>
<p>I have the feeling that if one checks the bios of people entering journalism now, one will find a higher proportion who come from J schools than existed in our day.</p>
I have to respectfully disagree that anyone with a degree from HYP (or similar school without a journo major) and a portfolio of writings for student publications is going to be at a disadvantage when applying for jobs in journalism.</p>
<p>I actually recruited for a Fortune 500 journalism company at HYP, and I agree, Driver, that those students are NOT at any disadvantage compared to students in journalism programs. In fact, the HYP students have the major advantages of independently (i.e. without faculty advisors) publishing daily newspapers, including making decisions about staff, business operations, etc. </p>
<p>The students also are exceptionally well read and informed, very independent, and have excellent grammatical, critical thinking and writing skills – all things that are highly prized by media employers, and that, sadly, can sometimes be hard to find in journalism school graduates.</p>
<p>The HPY folks also have a wonderful information network (fueled by graduates in the journalism business and parents who own media companies, so they know how to apply for internships and how to get other opportunities.</p>
<p>That’s not the same, though, at many other colleges, which lack daily newspapers as well as inside information about how to obtain journalism careers. </p>
<p>When I recruited at Harvard about 15 years ago, I met a sophomore who had done an internship at the New Orleans Times Picayune after freshman year. He got an innoculous looking press release, the type that many reporters would turn into a 3 paragraph brief. The student spotted major possibilities with it, and ended up producing a front page series related to the press release. </p>
<p>That’s the kind of assertiveness, confidence and good critical thinking and writing skills that one can find at HPY (and similar ) students and that are IMO related to the schools’ selecting students who have demonstrated the passion to creatively pursue their interests.</p>
<p>P.S. to my last post: The best J School grad also have the kind of traits that I mentioned. I’ve taught and have helped hire some of those, too.</p>
<p>One whom I got to know after he’d been hired was a U of Missouri J School grad who won a 1st place Hearst Award (college Pulitzer) for an investigative article revealing that an assistant to a top official at the university had previously lost a job for sexually abusing kids.</p>
:)</p>