For our second assignment, we had to write a column in response to a column by David Bullard on how journalism is a bogus degree. You can find his column here. Here's mine:
Studying journalism: Yay or nay?
A lot of aspiring, young journalists start
out at the exact same place: a first year journalism class that gets smaller
and smaller every semester. I don’t know if it’s because they think they don’t
and never will have sufficient writing skills, they chose an entirely different
career path around June, or realising that their dream of dismantling the
establishment board by board might be trickier than they first thought. Maybe
it isn’t any of those. Maybe it’s because a journalism degree is a massive
waste of time, money and anxiety meds.
At one point or another, every aspiring
journalist was exposed to something that made him or her want to become
journalists. Newspapers and other publications may have had a hand in it, but
it’s more likely that broadcast media was the bigger influence and by that I
mean that they saw a character in a television show or film that made them
think ‘Wow! That looks cool!’. With that in mind, they go out into the world
and enroll in a journalism course hoping to be the next Hunter S. Thompson, only
to realize that the pay blows, there’s no trace of glamour and the newsroom is
quite a sucky place.
But let’s face it; I have zero newsroom
experience whatsoever. Who am I to be discussing the ups and downs of the unglamorous
journalist lifestyle? The closest I’ve ever come was watching Lois Lane do her thing at the Daily Planet, and that not only counts
for less than two XP (experience points), but also makes me one of the
aforementioned delusional journo wannabes.
Despite David Bullard’s argument in his
column that a journalism degree is a bogus degree, and the fact that I often
feel this to be the truth, especially when I’m up to my neck in media ethics
and theory essay prep work, there’s probably more to it than just that. For
starters, just going to university and having that experience is a big plus.
Spending a ton of money on university isn’t a
totally worthless endeavor. You get the opportunity to do a thing that
professionals call “networking”, you learn how to put yourself out there and
you can waste all your precious study time on Tumblr and YouTube, as
long as you pass your classes and keep your parents happy. More importantly
though, it gives you the time and opportunity to expand your mind and get to
know your wants and needs for the future, better than you could in high school
anyway. Also, did I mention student discounts?
It’s not like studying journalism means you’ll
be a journalist. It’s a degree that
qualifies you to do a bunch of weird things, most of which involve writing of
some sort. You could teach English to impoverished Cambodian orphans, you could
be the sassy new news anchor on SABC 2, or you can live off of cigarettes and
booze being a freelancer for underground street art magazines. The
possibilities seem kind of endless.
Whether or not journalism is a ‘bogus’
degree, I can’t quite say yet, but what I can say is that there’s more to a
journalism degree than eventually becoming a journalist.
Word count: 520
I got a 76% for this assignment. That's a distinction by our standards, so I'm happy with it.
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