Reply #2: There are still plenty of kids studying it? Do they study it as a future profession? Or as one [View All]

[Sam Ervin jret]

might study a long dead language?

I hope the former as I have a son at UMASS studying for his degree in it as we speak. My hope is that we are in a period of flux and confusion. A period of change that came so swift and with no direction. The owners of the medium that journalism relied upon seemed to be lost. the newspaper owners, the TV and Radio.

I think we need to separate the medium from the art itself. While i can see, as you did when you left you field, that the owners (few that they are) of the MSM have long since given up on real journalism, on research, investigation and even lately fact checking, I refuse to believe journalism itself can die.

And I'll tell you why I fell that way. As I told my son, I don't think people become writers because they want to. I don't think people become journalists because they want to. I think they do it because they cannot not do so. Why else would someone do any form of art? Art hurts. To really produce a good piece of art work, which good writing is, hurts. People like you, and i think my son, just can't help it. You can't help but write.

I once had a creative writing teacher (ya, i took it but I had to. It was required even for us Chemistry majors)say writing was like giving birth. Well she WAS a nun so I didn't take that too seriously, and having had two kids I was right, but still the metaphor does stand.

No I don't think it's gone. Not forever. No DeepModem Mom there is a future for journalism. I believe in it. I believe.