Jumping on the bandwagon

It seems like journalists are always the last to get with the times. An example is a trend article in the February/March issue of American Journalism Review that discusses journalists joining Facebook.com, a social networking site (for those of you who are really, really behind the times).

When I joined the Emerald in fall of 2006, one of the first pieces of advice I was given was to join Facebook because it is an invaluable tool for the college journalist. People use it to find others who are interested in the same things, they post phone numbers (many of them cell phones) and they RVSP to events, so it's easy to talk to them for a preview. Facebook is a way to judge sentiments on campus, to find and follow trends and locate people associated with newsmakers you don't know.

It makes me wonder, reading these articles, if that's the way it will be when I graduate. Will I always be on the heels of the innovators? College journalists seem to be on the cutting edge, and I firmly believe that I have attended one of the best journalism schools in the nation. But thinking back to when I was shopping for a university, I was sold by the campus publication as much as I was the school itself.

So college is almost over and I will soon learn the ways of the professionals. I hope that I can also stay on top of new things. Won't that make me even more valuable to my profession? It is stressed so much in classes that it is important to leave school with as many sets of skills as possible, to make oneself more appealing to potential employers. It's said journalists are increasingly asked to do more than just report, they must take photos and understand a little html and be videographers who can edit sound and bloggers as well. Sometimes you hear you don't have to do all those things, just a few.

While this is reiterated in class like a broken record, what is also said is that our instructors can't predict what is happening to our business. Newspapers are laying off employees left and right and the need to figure out how to make money using the Internet is constantly looming. Another article in AJR demonstrates the feeling resounds throughout the industry. It is an uneasiness about what lies ahead.

So how is one to stay on top of trends and be the most diverse employee they can when no one knows what to expect in our industry?