They wouldn’t be useless if they did, you know, their jobs.

Instead we had a band of lunatic reporters descending in Alaska to find out what brand of cereal a certain VP nominee bought. Meanwhile the biggest fraud in the history of our country just sailed into office without so much as an inquiry into his shady background. The man admitted to seeking out Marxists in college. And the media takes a collective nap. Purposefully. Shame on you.

So media…are you listening…DO YOUR JOBS!

Ask for the transcripts. No, DEMAND the transcripts.

My experience is that a journalism degree is what football jocks get when they fail at everything else in school, but have to get some degree to be let out.

Journalist… is just another word for Tool.

I would imagine that keeping employed as a journalist requires selling yourself out on some level. If your going to make it on network or cable newscasts or as a blog journalist you have to align yourself with the political slant of the organization that pays your check. Perhaps one would have to hide their personal feeling or beliefs in order to not become persona non grata. Some I would guess suck the poison potion and believe the crazy stuff they say. Wouldn’t it be nice if journalist didn’t insert themselves into a story.

From the info presented in the article I wouldn’t pick that profession. If you do, good luck.. I hope you don’t loose your soul.

TeaPartyPatriot said:
My experience is that a journalism degree is what football jocks get when they fail at everything else in school, but have to get some degree to be let out.

I thought that was ‘communications’? Eh, probably one in the same.

It’s sad to think that in Journalism these days we get more Jack Stuef’s than Jake Tappers but there you have it.

Hmmm…what was my first clue that a journalism degree meant nothing? Oh right, now I remember. It was seeing all the dumbass leftist “journalists” in the mainstream media.

I’d love to know where they’re getting that median salary.

I have a master’s degree in journalism from an excellent J-school and despite having plenty of experience as an intern, my starting salary was $27,500. That salary was cut six months later due to company struggles. Two years later I’m at a different paper and making a little more, with actual suggestion of possible raises in the future. But $35K as the *median*? I’d be shocked to make that any time in the next five years. Being a reporter’s a labor of love, because there’s not a damn reason otherwise to stay in it. You get comments precisely like the ones made here tossed at you by everybody who decides that because they don’t like a quote you used in a story you had ten minutes to write before deadline, you’re the sum total of everything wrong with the human race.

The problem with the Internet is that it is so easy to forget there are people behind these screens who have feelings and lives.

There’s egregious fouls in journalism, but they’re not the ones people tend to get worked up over. People need to be more worried about the slow erosion of the walls between reporters and their advertising counterparts. Companies are getting desperate for money to keep the lights on and are resorting to desperate measures that are endangering the industry’s already threatened standards. It goes beyond simple economics and even beyond right wing/left wing accusations. But no one seems willing to listen, because once they hear the word “journalist,” I’m already tarred and feathered in their minds. No matter that I’m just another daughter, another niece, another girlfriend, another woman sharing the same space they are and working a job to pay the bills like they are. No matter that what happens in this country affects me just as much as it affects everyone else. I pay my taxes too. I struggle with high bills too. This depersonalization of “the media” is driving people mad with fury. I fear I can’t be an effective reporter if I’m detested and disbelieved before I’ve even set hands to keyboard.

Journalism is far from dead. There’s always going to be a need for people willing to challenge elected officials in a legitimate way. However, the definition of “legitimate” is apparently changing in the eyes of the public, and the industry, for a number of reasons, is being slower than molasses to catch up.

Many people won’t believe me when I say journalism’s always been biased as hell, but then, most people haven’t spent six years of their lives studying where newspapers came from. Historically speaking, things are better now than they were in journalism’s earlier years because we have these things called “ethics” and are called to accountability ourselves for our blunders and/or biases. That was pretty lacking in the early days. Unfortunately, given the way media works these days, if we’re left-wing we migrate only to news sources that preach what we want to hear, and if we’re right-wing, we do the same thing. Nobody’s willing to find a compromise. Nobody’s even willing to listen. What’s the point of being a messenger if nobody opens the message because they’re busy reaching for their gun?

The world won’t end with a whimper OR a bang. It’ll end with shouts and threats and namecalling better left on the kindergarten playground.

http://notloislane.wordpress.com

Azarkhan said:
Hmmm…what was my first clue that a journalism degree meant nothing? Oh right, now I remember. It was seeing all the dumbass leftist “journalists” in the mainstream media.

Are we seriously going to start a conversation disparaging all journalists? The random newspaper reporter for the Miami Herald or the guy on the crime beat for the Dallas Star? Are you people that thick? Or is the problem that journalists don’t report the “scandals” you personally want them to report? Are the journalists at Fox a credit their profession, the American truth-seeker as you define it?

Is this just another blah blah blah reason to take Rush-approved potshots at the “whatever that means anymore” liberal mainstream media. Any other professions that don’t measure up to your political beliefs? Are doctors useless because health care pays for some patient’s care?

I’ll add that I quit my first job in journalism because I was asked to do something I felt was ethically wrong. I had nowhere to go, bills to pay and no job prospects, but putting in that letter of resignation was the proudest moment of my life. I spent six years learning to be a journalist and the last three actually doing the job, but that moment was when I damn well earned it.

I know I’m not alone. There are still people in this profession who will go hungry before we roll over and beg for tainted scraps. And I’m not going anywhere.

Unfortunately, I’m also employed at a small weekly newspaper in the middle of nowhere. You’ve never heard of me or read one of my stories. But I do what I can, where I can, and I believe in what I do, tattered industry or not.

redleaf said:
Are the journalists at Fox a credit their profession

They are more of a credit to their profession then the leftist a-holes at MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, NPR, Washington Post, NYTimes, or LATimes.

Not Lois Lane said:
There’s always going to be a need for people willing to challenge elected officials in a legitimate way

When will the leftists in the mainstream media challenge the liars in the Obama regime? Sorry, but your profession has been polluted for the last 30 years by the Left, so much so that mainstream journalism in America no longer has any credibility. Get a new career.

Get a new career? Why? That’s giving up, and I don’t give up.

No. I’m staying.

If nobody tries to do the right thing, if everybody bows to their own biases and allows the actions of others to dictate their own, then we really are lost.

I’ll say this, and we’re anonymous here, so I have no reason to lie. I’ve worked at a right and at a left paper, and never has anyone tried to make me skew my stories toward the publisher’s view. Never. And if they ever do, I’ll walk.

If we all run away from the problem, whether it’s out of fear, frustration, anger, inability to get along with others or for any other reason, it’s never going to change. I refuse to accept that.

Azarkhan said:
When will the leftists in the mainstream media challenge the liars in the Obama regime? Sorry, but your profession has been polluted for the last 30 years by the Left, so much so that mainstream journalism in America no longer has any credibility. Get a new career.

Honestly, there is no use arguing with someone so indoctrinated into a way of thinking based on, ironically , the same bias and brainwashing they accuse the left of. Why would a cabal of right wing pundits telling you the left sucks be worse than a cabal of left wing pundits telling you the right sucks?

Either way, you’re getting your information from one biased source. And instead of researching both sides of an issue for yourself, you merely check with your biased source, the radio or TV personality protecting you from “the enemy.”

To me the all time losers of college degrees are Black Studies and Women Studies. After spending close to 100k for a college degree what do you do with those degrees? However, you are now a better victim of whomever is persecuting you.

Back in the ’80′s a journalism degreed co-worker got into comic book illustration. Then put everything into real estate. Then lost all their money. Good jobs DemoKKKrupts.

If those who work for the NY Slimes, Boston Glob, Philadelphia Inkwearer, LA Slimes, and most other outfits have journalism degrees I would agree they’re pretty much worthless.

zaks5thave said:
To me the all time losers of college degrees are Black Studies and Women Studies. After spending close to 100k for a college degree what do you do with those degrees? However, you are now a better victim of whomever is persecuting you.

You forgot to include Art History and Social Studies, but you named the most useless ones, indeed.