By Liyu Sheng, MIA ‘10

Two things future journalists should know before they enter the job market. First, journalism is no longer a growing industry. Second, it’s a transition period, and nobody knows where the future of journalism is.

The Career Night Panel, organized by the media specialization at SIPA on October 12th, won’t address all the problems, but it can unravel some of the complexities. At the event, speakers from The New York Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, Newsweek, DailyFinance.com, World Bank, Human Rights Watch, Institutional Investor and International Rescue Committee discussed their outlook of the journalism job market.

The tone was mostly optimistic, yet not fully convincing. “I feel like when I talk to journalists right now, everyone’s really depressed,” said Anya Schiffrin, journalism professor and the director of the International Media, Advocacy and Communications Specialization of SIPA. “But in this panel it feels like there are still opportunities and jobs.”

The fact is that even graduates from the prestigious Columbia School of Journalism are stumbling as they search for jobs. A survey by the school showed by the end of May 2009, only 64 percent of its graduates claimed to already have career plans relating to their field. Those ‘plans’ refer to actual jobs, internships, or continuing education.

This is a snapshot of a fundamental structural change in journalism, caused by the rise of digital media, and the collapse of the traditional media business model, which sees advertising in free fall.

The days when major organizations had a monopoly on the production and distribution of news are gone. Agenda setting is decentralized to the thousands of individual content producers online, and traditional mainstream media outlets have to grapple with rapidly evolving technology for ever-fleeting audience attention. So the question that comes naturally is, what kind of digital media learning strategy should journalism students employ?

Few panelists gave a real constructive solution on that ground, which is normal – few in the industry have figured out how technology is transforming journalism, and where the current reshuffling is heading. The best answer for now is, like Sam Gustin from DailyFinance said, think yourself a one-person production shop, where you can operate across platforms. Erica Goode, the editor of a new editorial unit covering ecology and the environment at The New York Times agreed.

The Times, according to Goode, has completely transformed itself over the past few years as an organization in the face of new media. Everything at The Times has become multimedia, from video to slide shows, and even if staff can’t do it themselves, they think about how to incorporate it.

This doesn’t mean the nuts and bolts of journalism are no longer relevant, other panelists argued. Alec McCabe from Bloomberg, an organization known for its multiplatform news telling, said that his company is still keen on hiring people with good writing skills, which are, according to him, hard to find. An ability to make complicated subjects easy to read, and create stories capable of changing the world is essential for a good journalist, said the team leader for U.S. finance at Bloomberg.

A key issue underlining the conversations is that, despite the rapid evolving technology and huge amount of energy many students have invested into it, journalism schools have not come up with a theoretical framework as the underpinning of all digital media. Anne Nelson, new media professor at SIPA, thinks this could be a problem as students risk getting too caught up in learning technology.

“The bells and whistles don’t always serve the purpose of good journalism.” she said.

Nor does the industry know how technology will reshape journalism. In many workplaces, media veterans often don’t know about twitter and wiki, and have to ask interns to teach them. Consequently, learning about digital media becomes imperative yet not systematic. Students feel the purpose of the learning is only to keep up with the program, and most unfortunately, what they learnt in 2009 could be obsolete in 2012.

For Marie O´Reilly, a first year SIPA student specializing in media, this is a scary scenario. She admits she doesn’t have the skills already, yet young people going into the fields are often assumed to know all about digital media.

“It’s a pity, because I feel it’s not a labor of love,” said O´Reilly. “I feel you have to learn in order to succeed as opposed to my own desire to explore these fields.”

Yet those efforts could payoff. Media outlets are reportedly hiring more young journalism graduates, whose lack of experience could be partly made up by their new media skills, to replace of middle-aged and well paid editors and writers.

In the short run, student will still have to hurdle the tough climate. A number of panelists mentioned rounds of layoff in their organizations, and only internship opportunities were announced during the event. Schiffrin was not sure if the optimistic tone was enough not to depress the future journalists, but believed new media skills will help students differentiate themselves in the grim job market.

“Clearly the message came through is that multimedia skills are essential.” she said.