"I'm happy with my decision. I'm not getting paid a whole lot of money-though that's to be expected-but I get benefits and it's stable. I don't really think the newspaper business is as bad as people think. While the big metros are struggling, thus hurting the business, there are still hundreds of towns that rely on newspapers for, well, news. Towns like Charles City don't have TV stations or bloggers who steal from the newspapers or Huffington Posts that care about what's going on here. (The Press doesn't even put all of its content online to keep people subscribing to the print product.)
"If students want to work for a newspapers, I still think they can find ones to work at. They might not be the New York Times, but anything is a start. Besides, I'm also getting experience designing pages, taking photos and putting content at the Web site, things I might not be able to do at a bigger paper. Over the summer, I applied for magazines and Web sites (there weren't many opportunities at either) but didn't get so much as an interview. I've also written a blog and contributed to a sports Web site, but I didn't make a dime doing either.
"Working for a newspaper is still an attainable job for those students with a passion for it. And having that passion is a necessity because you aren't going to get paid a ton of money, at least not right away. But you'll be able to do what you enjoy for a living, and I think that's why most people get into journalism in the first place."
This is the message we need to keep telling people: that what they're hearing and reading about the newspaper biz doesn't apply everywhere. Newspapers remain the lifeblood of many, many communities. I think we sometimes forget that.
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