Many people over the years have said that getting a journalism or communications degree is wasteful. That it will not help you in the "real world" and that it is just a dying industry. These accusations, however are 100 percent false. While STEM degrees are probably the highest earning and needed degrees to date, that does not make other degrees worthless. In fact, Journalism degrees can be used to earn just as much as some STEM majors depending on the field, exact job title, and company they are working for.
With journalism and communications, there are a wide variety of different of different jobs that people can work in. For instance, if you are in telecommunications or radio, you mostly would do jobs that have to do with video or radio journalism. Those who graduate with degrees could go onto do more work in the radio industry at a local or national station that people can be able to listen to in their cars, portable radios, phones, or online. With the radio industry, you do not always have to be a DJ as many people who work in the radio go into things like working the controls and/or operating the equipment to help the DJ sound crystal clear and to have a great radio show.
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This is similar to Telecommunications or TV/Video journalism. Those who choose more telecommunications field and decide to go into the TV industry can end up doing more than just being an anchor (although anchoring is a very esteemed and great position that can bring status and large amounts of money if popular enough). Many people are needed to work behind the scenes. So they can help with writing out the script/teleprompter/story for that news segment, work the camera, work controls, etc. The television industry is growing every day from making videos to post online to using satellite radios to give news casters their own radio shows. All these jobs, even news writing, can even transfer to online video outlets or podcast depending on the website.The world of telecommunications and radio is not only not going away, but actually expanding.
One of journalism's biggest annoyances with telling people their major is when people tell them newspaper and magazines are dead. This is 100 percent not true. In actuality, print journalism is not dying, it is just changing to more online. While there are still magazines and newspaper that are print and can be bought in stores all over the world, many journalist are able to write articles on the websites for these magazines. This not only gives the more material to the newspaper or magazine company (rather than just the so many pages in a paper booklet), it also gave the newspaper and magazine the chance to earn more money with more advertisers and subscriptions to the certain media website. Journalists also can have their writing featured on apps or mobile sites connected to a certain news organization. Besides just traditional and more well-known newspapers like New York Times or Washington Post, different websites for various subjects and even more local papers have websites where writers can get the chance to work, research, and write for these outlets.
Besides writing however, people who have communications and journalism degrees can also lend a hand in the marketing and PR department. Many people whom go into communications ends up usually having to use social media in some way, shape, or form. For journalists it may be about posting their articles online to see if they would get more views. For those in the PR and Marketing departments, they may end up using social media, advertisements, and more to help spread the word about their business or whatever company or person they are working for. Some end up using PR to help spread positivity about a presidential candidate, others may go into marketing field and help advertise about buying a certain brand of clothes or food products. Whatever the case may be, almost every company needs some kind of social media or advertising presence to be able to survive in this day and age. Some communications degree holders can even end up being "Social Media Managers" and with that title they would be in charge of running the Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other various social media accounts for the company to help both advertise for the company and show that whomever or whatever they are representing is a cool, fun, or just something or someone people should believe in.
Something that struck me is the other day one of my professors told my class that he tells parents who are skeptical about their son or daughters going into the field of Mass Communications, is that every company needs some sort of form of communications and that a communications degree could be helpful in almost any business. I completely agree with this statement and feel that Mass Communications or Communications or more specifically Journalism is not dying off. I do hope that more and more will see with the times progressing that degrees in the Communications fields are not "useless.'"
