I am a mechanical engineering major and journalism minor, and there’s always one day each semester I take a journalism class that reinforces my belief that I made a brilliant decision four years ago when I declared my major. I have yet to understand why journalism professors talk about, or bring in speakers, who deliver the sad news about their profession and hiring rates. The day Rosenblum visited our class was that day during the semester when I wondered why so many students are pursuing a journalism major and what will become of them in 5 years.
Rosenblum said journalists need to grow some balls and own their business. But they won’t. As I will most likely have no future in the field of journalism, listening to Rosenblum tell the class what’s really out there was fascinating not just because of all the dynamics taking place in society, but because everything that was coming out of his mouth was authentic and passionate. I’ve never had a (I’m assuming) multimillionaire come and speak to me in a classroom like that and it was cool.
I disagree with his belief that newspapers will go the way of the dinosaurs – he said that the main reason print publications were going down was because of the operating costs – so God forbid someone figures out how to reduce those costs, and the newspaper should survive quite a while longer.
If people were motivated by his speech, I wonder if it would be more advantageous to drop out of college and pay whatever price i is to take one of Rosenblum’s courses. I neither know what the opportunity costs are nor the long term effects, but I would be curious to know. I don’t know how all of the graduating journalism students are going to compete for jobs, and I wonder how many of Stony Brook’s undergraduates are considering, what would be, a “major” change?
Mr. Farnham, like Mr. Rosenblum was a journalism student, so I guess that shows me what can come of a degree in journalism. I really thought his idea was brilliant and given enough time and resources, his idea could challenge the newspaper industry. Think about it - every local area could get in-depth local news from the site, there could be a national tab for everyone to click on, and there could be some sort f interactive portion to combine twitteresque elements.
What I was wondering, is what is stopping a bunch of twenty-somethings from starting their own patch.com. It would be an imitation brand, but the idea isn’t original in it’s own right. One thing I took away from his presentation was a deep sadness for the editors of the patch sites. The amount of work they must do, and for the pittance they must receive, is probably not very rewarding.
My mind hurt after each spoke, and now again after writing about all these innovative ideas. I feel like there’s so much going on technologically nowadays (says the mechanical engineer), and I wish I were born 50 years ago. Although, I guess even then there were a whole bunch of technological breakthroughs surfacing. Well, we’ll just need to adapt, journalism students included, to excel during these inclement times.
