The newsroom of The Diamondback, the student paper at the University of Maryland, College Park, retains the feel of an old-school city room. Framed front pages line the walls and bound volumes of yellowing issues collect dust on tables. Daily meetings are oriented toward producing the next morning's newspaper.
The staff members know it might be the last newspaper they ever work for.
As the industry sheds jobs by the thousands and papers close or go digital-only, there is a rethinking of journalism education. Still, a crush of students want to join in.
"All of the kids in journalism school still have idealized visions of journalism," said Steven Overly, 21, a Maryland junior and editor in chief of The Diamondback. "We've all seen All the President's Men and that's the journalism we fell in love with - the print paper, what we put out in high school, what we're doing now. And the idea that that might not be there is gut-wrenching."
Readers and advertisers are migrating online, where competition for eyeballs and ad dollars is fierce. Almost 16,000 jobs were lost at U.S. newspapers last year, according to a tally maintained by Erica Smith of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on a blog called Paper Cuts. She estimates half those jobs were in newsrooms. As revenue has plummeted this year, 6,800 more jobs have been lost.
Paradoxically, journalism schools are more popular than ever. Maryland received 25 percent more applications this year than last for its graduate journalism program. Columbia University's program saw a 40 percent increase; the school is planning to enroll more students than usual to meet demand.
Why? Journalism professors and experts who convened in Washington on Monday to discuss the "future of journalism jobs" said that journalism will and must survive, even if newspapers don't.
"I see this as being like a forest fire," said Bill Grueskin, dean of academic affairs at Columbia. "It damages a lot of trees, but once the smoke clears, you see the buds come out."
Journalism deans say the ethics and skills they teach - skepticism, fairness, accuracy, persistence - are highly valuable in a world where truth and reality are increasingly hard to discern. And with curriculum overhauls, they say, students are getting the tools in audio, video and the Web that will allow them to create the new media of the future.
