Award-winning blogger-journalist Dorte Toft ponders why young Danes queue up to get into journalism school on Berlingske.dk this week (via Journalisten.dk):
"I can't recommend anyone today to train as a journalist unless it's such a burning desire that it would break your heart if you do not undertake such training. I would rather suggest you specialise in a subject and, when your get experienced in this field, use it to break into a writing career. That would also enhance your ability to make sense of our increasingly complex society," she writes in a blog post headlined "Young people WANT to become journalists. I wish they'd become something more useful" (freely translated from Danish by me). Toft herself started out as a programmer and turned to journalism later in life.
The issue isn't "Why would we want to be journalists?", but "Why would we want to study journalism?" I figured that in the current job market, NOT having journalism school on my resumé would put me at a disadvantage. Plus I figured journalism school would get me my first "real" journalism job by continuing an internship. I was right. But I would not have been ready for journalism if I hadn't studied politics and economics as well.
Posted by: Julie R. Andersen | September 03, 2010 at 05:46 PM