Journalism studies at the University of Arkansas are thriving in the wake of Arkansas State’s decision to discontinue its multimedia journalism program last spring.
Not that one thing necessarily has anything to do with the other.
Journalism skills are still prized, even though many students these days never even consider careers in the dwindling industry of mainstream media.
Bret Schulte, director of the UA’s School of Journalism & Strategic Media, says enrollment is growing.
“It’s really hard to identify who may have planned to go somewhere else, and instead came here,” said Schulte, a former reporter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. “I think we are certainly the best program in the state, and that should be an attraction to any student interested in journalism.”
Schulte said ASU’s decision was lamentable. “I think that every time we lose a journalism training ground, we lose a little journalism. … I think we need it in every corner of the state.”
Schulte also mourns for the state of the news business, which had 114,000 total newsroom employees in radio, broadcast TV, cable and newspapers in 2008, the year he joined UA. By 2020, 30,000 of those jobs were gone, according to the Pew Research Center. And things have hardly gotten better since.
“The trend of the industry is despairing in a lot of ways, and our students suffer for that,” Schulte said. “A lot of them are avoiding journalism as a career, despite majoring in it. There are a number of reasons, but primarily it is the low pay and the lack of perceived opportunity for advancement.”
Openings are available because journalists regularly leave newsrooms for more lucrative opportunities. “People are bailing on the industry for a number of reasons, and the openings persist because the starting pay is so low,” Schulte said. He guessed those starting salaries to be between $30,000 and $40,000. “In some broadcast jobs, it’s even less,” he said. “I don’t know anybody who can support themselves on $30,000 a year, and even $40,000 is difficult.”
Journalism, Ads and PR
Schulte recalled that breaking into journalism was competitive when he graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1999. “But it didn’t feel like a hopeless industry, or one where there was no opportunity for advancement or a middle-class lifestyle.”
The UA program has about 940 students enrolled in its two degree programs, journalism and advertising/public relations. About 60% are in advertising/PR, and they take basic journalism courses alongside those on the journalism path. Journalism includes three main concentrations: multimedia storytelling, broadcast news and journalism. Multimedia storytelling is growing the fastest.
Graduates have no problem finding work, Schulte said. “They might have a problem finding work that pays a living wage in journalism, but a lot go into public relations or other communications jobs.
“We’ve got a lot of students going to law school,” Schulte continued. “We had a career fair last year and about 10 or 12 recruiters showed up, all looking for media professionals. But only about half of them were not from media companies.”
One, in fact, was the UA’s own Sam M. Walton College of Business.
“The Walton College, which is now the biggest college on campus, even bigger than the Fulbright College of Arts & Sciences … and it has positions open for people with the ability to put together communications for the college. They came over here, met our students and opened up two positions and hired two of our students who were about to graduate for those jobs.”
Valuable Skills
The bottom line, Schulte said, is that journalism students are in demand, and their skills are valuable.
“Journalism students know how to find information, how to prioritize information and to convey information. We’re still in an information economy, and this is not changing anytime soon.”
Students understand that, and see more alluring options beyond the news business. “They’re here because the skill set they acquire is going to serve them well in a different career,” Schulte said.
The UA program requires an ethics course and is flexing its muscles in teaching media literacy. “We doubled our mission last year to include media literacy, which is the responsible consumption and dissemination of information,” Schulte said. “How to teach people to recognize their own biases, how to teach people to think critically about the information they’re consuming. That’s also a really valuable skill set, thinking critically about what’s being delivered and asking the basic journalistic questions. Is this trustworthy? Who is saying this? Where did it come from? When was it said? What is the intent, and what is the context?”
The goal is for students to grow far more critical about the messages they receive, not just in the news but through all forms of media. “We revamped one of our required courses, called ‘Media in Society,’ to make it more of a media literacy course,” Schulte said. “We put it in the university core. It’s the first journalism in the university core, perhaps in the history of the university. It’s already been required by another division on campus in the College of Education & Health Professions, and they’ve got 2,000 students. Next year, all of those students will be required to take Media in Society.”
The school is also adapting to technological innovations, including artificial intelligence.
“We created an AI course last semester, taught by Dr. Ginger Blackstone, that looks at the effects of AI in the industry,” Schulte said. While professors don’t generally allow students to use AI in their work — it’s up to individual professors — Schulte thinks AI should be used as a journalistic tool. “If we don’t use AI, it’s going to replace us,” he said.
“So we have to teach how to effectively use AI, and I think that is happening incrementally, slowly, which feels at odds with the whole AI revolution,” Schulte said. “We need to make sure we’re doing it ethically, and to make sure that our students keep their most important skill set, which is analysis. … How to be a critical consumer of information and also a critical purveyor of information. You can’t do that unless you are making those choices yourself. So every step of every story is an editorial choice, from what you’re reporting on, to the people that you are interviewing, to the quotes that you are selecting, to the arrangement of the information. And if you don’t do that with your own mind, you lose the ability to analyze information effectively.”
For journalism to thrive in the future, its practitioners must have courage, Schulte said. “Journalists need to do less apologizing and more insisting that people pay attention to the news and value it,” he said. “Professional journalism is crucial in maintaining democracy, and journalists need to stand up for their industry.”
Sign up for Daily E-news
