The news business continues to be in a freefall thanks to a deep recession and changing reader and viewer habits but graduates from the Columbia School of Journaiism are relatively upbeat about their future.

From the Village Voice

In a down economy, the smart play is to go to school to learn new skills, network, and ride it out. At least, that’s the case in a normal industry. But conventional wisdom has it that planning for a future in journalism makes as much sense as signing up for a career as a Pontiac dealer.

That’s not how members of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism’s just-graduated class of 2009 see it, though. Despite the tough times, they are excited and hopeful that their freshly minted degrees will help prepare them for the news business’s rebirth.

Malia Politzer, who calls her Columbia experience “great,” says she “learned a tremendous amount” there. When she was considering applying to Columbia, she adds, she reached out to some alums for advice: “A bunch told me not to go.” She had already worked as an intern at The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong and had the opportunity to be a freelance writer covering the Beijing Olympics, but financial aid and networking possibilities tipped her decision in favor of Morningside Heights. Her concentration was new media and investigative journalism. “I’m a bit of a technophobe,” Politzer says, so she was glad to be pushed to learn how to make websites, shoot and edit video, build flash sites, and use multimedia in her reporting.

For now the graduates have managed to land internships or jobs at small papers but in the long run that won’t even remotely begin to pay off their student loans and other bills they face going forward.  Hopefully these j-school grads have prepared themselves for a very unpredictable future in the career they have chosen.

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