Students shuffled into Room 119 at Tinley Park High School Tuesday morning to hear a Career Day presentation about journalism.
Most were attentive. Some looked bleary-eyed for the four different 25-minute sessions that began at 8 a.m.
Students could choose from dozens of Career Day options as adult volunteers shared experiences about their occupations. Presenters represented law enforcement, the military, medicine, public safety, trades such as pipe fitting and carpentry, marketing, accounting and other fields.
“We want to help them to start thinking about their futures,” said Kim Bartos, a Career Day organizer and project manager for student services at Tinley Park High School. “We want to give them the tools to start thinking about it now,” so they know what to expect and how to prepare for various occupations.
Students who attended the journalism sessions learned about skills needed to work as a reporter, correspondent and analyst. Journalists are a vanishing breed, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data provided by the U.S. Department of Labor.
There were 50,400 reporting and analyst jobs in journalism nationwide in 2016, and the industry is expected to lose about 10% of its jobs over the next 10 years. Median pay in 2018 was $43,490 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Newsroom employment declined 23% over the past decade, according to Pew Research Center analysis of BLS data. Pew’s 2018 study included some broadcast journalism jobs and concluded that newsroom employment fell to 88,000 jobs in 2017 from 114,000 in 2008, a loss of 26,000 positions.
Given the downward trends, why would a high school student today consider pursuing a career as a journalist?
Strong writing skills are valuable for a variety of careers, I told students. Taking a news writing class in college can help teach you how to write quickly with a direct style.
People with those skills are valued in virtually any organization. Fields such as education, medicine and law need people who can write executive summaries and analysis. Critical-thinking and problem-solving skills are essential, and often the best way to apply them is by writing reports, research papers, studies and grant proposals.
Corporate communications, public relations and marketing are fields where journalism skills tend to prove their worth. Organizations want to tell stories, and good storytelling invariably involves writing.
Social media moderators and content curators who manage brands benefit from good journalism practices. Authenticity is valued in social media interactions just as truthfulness is valued in traditional media. Studying journalism is one of the best ways to understand messaging and how to reach audiences.
Some Tinley Park students expressed interest in documentaries and filmmaking. The popular Netflix series “Making a Murderer” is a good example of storytelling rooted in journalism. The production involved researching court files, interviewing witnesses and participants, analyzing theories and other skills that journalists practice every day.
While print editions of newspapers may face an uncertain future, demand will no doubt remain high for well-told stories that inform and entertain.
Adult presenters gave insight into potential careers that students may be interested in pursuing, said Theresa Nolan, Tinley Park High School principal.
“(Career Day) is one of the most valuable experiences,” she said. “It gives students exposure to careers that maybe they hadn’t thought about. Or it allows them to interact with someone in a career that they may know little about.”
Students from all grade levels, from freshmen to seniors, attended Career Day sessions. Students could ask questions of presenters. Some wanted to know what a typical day is like for a newspaper columnist.
I’m never really “off the clock,” I told them. I pay attention to news and events in south suburban communities on evenings and weekends by tracking social media pages and news websites.
On Mondays I typically decide which stories to pursue that week. As an opinion writer, I like the autonomy of setting my own schedule and choosing which stories to pursue. Most topics are relevant to the geographic region that The Daily Southtown covers, I explained.
Then it’s a matter of researching an issue, preparing interview questions, identifying subjects and contacting them. Generally, I said, you can write a story fairly quickly once you know what you want to say. Then you revise, proofread and fact-check your story. You process pictures, write captions and headlines and handle some production aspects of online and print publication.
Other careers are more lucrative than journalism, I told students. But if you enjoy what you do and earn enough to make a decent living, the work can bring rewards that are more important than money.
Journalism can be a vocation, I said, where members of the free press and “fourth estate” serve a vital role in holding public officials accountable. We help protect our democracy by investigating how tax dollars are spent and whether elected representatives uphold their oaths of office. We help raise awareness about issues and concerns in communities.
I shared a story about how I help make a difference in the lives of Tinley Park High School students. I wrote a column in 2016 about how students walked along 175th Street because there was no sidewalk on the south side of the road.
There was a sidewalk on the north side of the street. But the school is on the south side of 175th, and few students bothered to cross the street to use the sidewalk on the other side. I wrote about how this raised serious safety concerns at a time when no one else in the community was publicly discussing the issue.
The column got results. Cook County transportation officials and village leaders in Tinley Park worked together to secure funding. About a year after the column was published, workers built a sidewalk on the south side of the road. Students no longer walk in the street.
The median annual income for journalists may be only $43,490. But on days when you help make a difference, it’s worth it.
