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This is the question I hear most from students and early-career reporters. It is usually posed something like this: “Journalism jobs are disappearing. Where they do exist, the pay is low. Even if I work ethically, lots of people won’t trust my reporting—and some may threaten my well-being, online and even in the real world. I worry all this will get worse in Trump’s second term. Have I made a mistake in committing to be a journalist? Should I switch fields now?”
This is such a painful and difficult question, especially for a journalism professor who has spent his adult life in the news business. I applied for eighty-five reporting jobs out of college and felt so blessed to get just one—which was offered to me over the phone at 7:30am from an editor with whom I’d never interviewed and who did not appear to be sober at the time. I didn’t ask questions, took the job, and got to do something I’ve loved and believed in for more than forty years.
So my bias is toward building your skills and developing your career. I can’t say much that’s new or encouraging about news industry finances, although some promising efforts are afoot here and there. But journalism work, however scarce, does exist, whether at mainstream news organizations, local not-for-profits, niche micro-sites, local TV stations, or in emerging roles such as podcast production. Persistence can pay off if you want it enough. My former teaching assistant at Columbia Journalism School applied for sixty-six jobs and fellowships over a two-year period and finally got the position she wanted last fall. She loves reporting and simply refused to give up.
But what about our maligned profession itself? Trust in the media is exceptionally low—twice as low as it was in the 1970s. The recent election seems to show that earnest, deeply reported press coverage, however fact-filled, may have little or no effect on voters—at least compared with whatever nonsense appears on social media. News organizations don’t always help themselves: a credible case can be made that even the strongest outlets missed or misreported some of the most important stories of the 2024 campaign.
The only real antidote to being perpetually despondent about all this is to do responsible, consequential journalism, generate as much trust as possible in the integrity of your own work, and stay abreast of ways you can protect yourself legally, physically, and on social media.
What I always come back to is the impact that accountability journalism continues to have—even as many people insist it doesn’t matter what the mainstream media reports. When you uncover harms caused by—among many examples—a blood-testing company, a baby-powder maker, a powerful city council, a military-housing supplier, a massive online retailer, or a Hollywood mogul, good things can happen. Not always, but often. We remain essential watchdogs over powerful interests in society, and—when we work ethically, accurately, and fearlessly—we can improve people’s lives, even as we are sometimes derided for doing so.
Plus, we write the first draft of history. It’s our duty to get that right, or as right as we possibly can, so that future generations can understand what really happened in our times.
So, yes, I’d say to students and practicing journalists alike: stick with it.
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