The WORD Blog

As burgeoning technology writes and rewrites the profession and business – as it has been doing for many years – this writer/editor as instructor had tried for years to revise curriculum and syllabi to keep up with changes even though the uncertainty and warp speed of change seemed formidable. Cues  from recent graduates and seminars and discussion sessions and workshops were informative as the angst reverberated through various media about journalists whose careers and expectations seemed to be withering as newspapers cease to exist and layoffs seem to reign. So-called broadcast media also were effected.

How should students be informed was a regular concern as the tsunamic gloom and doom, amply supported by waves of anecdotes about the demise of this or the death of that or  the whatever tradition, swept forward. Now this, from Michael Mandel, a former chief economist at Business Week: The Evolution Of The Journalism Job Market: We May Be Headed Into A Golden Age.

First, the next jobs expansion is likely to be driven by a communications boom (see this paper I did for the Progressive Policy Institute).  Second, we may be headed into a Golden Age of Journalism, where the combination of the falling cost of communications and the high demand for news just opens up all sorts of possibilities for doing journalism in different ways.
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Read the rest of the article here.