Before the recession and before the economy tanked, the news industry had already begun to get clobbered.
But a new journalism major launched at York College hopes to prepare students to help the ‘new’ news industry pick up the pieces.
In a news climate that has recently witnessed the closure of a paper like the Rocky Mountain News in Denver and the return to subscription fees for Newsday.com because advertisement revenues have dwindled, the panelists at the luncheon believed that in addition to quality reporting and writing, a new journalist must have multimedia skills.
A cutting edge institution with a smart classroom, a high definition and digital video television studio, new multimedia lab and radio station are some of technical goals that program director Glenn Lewis wants to achieve in order to build a community news service. The news service – he hopes – will give students, who will be assigned neighborhood beats in Queens, the opportunity to get everyday people in the news.
“I think a lot of students want to feel empowered, and I think journalism is a great equalizer,” said journalism program director Lewis, who created the 42 credit major with concentrations in news writing and reporting; broadcast journalism; and book and magazine publishing. “I think that community news reporting is doubly empowering.”
The program, which officially began in the fall 2008 semester, had hoped to get 20 majors and 10 minors in the first year. After the beginning of the program’s second semester, however, they already had 34 students who had declared journalism as their major and about 15 minors.
“That’s close to our third year goal,” said Lewis, who also teaches narrative journalism and feature writing at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in midtown Manhattan.
Some of the students in attendance, who sat and listened to panelists from newspapers like the NY Daily News and El Diario La Prensa or the online news outlet, Gotham Gazette, appeared optimistic about their chosen major.
“I think that the program is very exciting and it’s teaching me how to adapt to the business,” said junior Antonio Devers, who commutes from the Bronx to attend York College. The 20-year-old said the online journalism class he was taking this spring was his favorite course.
Another student, Jenelia Cato, 19, said that she chose journalism because in addition to writing she likes to be out in the community.
“I want to inform readers about issues that are current and that they are affected by,” said the sophomore, who gets the news online at NYTimes.com. “That’s what I enjoy doing.”
York’s journalism degree brings the number of CUNY institutions that offer journalism courses to students up to seven.
“There are a lot of new technologies that our students need to be aware of and this program will help them do that,” said Michael Arena, City University of New York (CUNY) director for communications and marketing who briefly mentioned a new CUNY initiative with the news magazine, The Economist. “York College is very much a cutting edge institution. The old ways just won’t cut it anymore.”
