As newspapers dwindle, J-school students eye a communications path

New-media tools dovetail with the requisite skills for a corporate gig

The nearly 150-year-old Colorado newspaper, Rocky Mountain News,shut its doors Feb. 27. Almost simultaneously, University of Colorado at Boulder School of Journalism and Mass Communication reported an 11 percent increase in graduate applications.

Around the country, top-tier and lesser-known journalism graduate schools saw similar increases: Columbia’s applications increased 38 percent, Stanford’s rose 20 percent, and University of Maryland’s were up 25 percent, according to a recent Forbes article.

With newspapers large and small laying off employees in droves — the Chicago Tribune eliminated 53 more newsroom jobs Wednesday — the notion of paying an average of $31,000 per year for journalism school might seem counterintuitive. Think again.

As curricula diversify and career options widen, many J-school grads are seeing the more stable and better-paying corporate communications field as fertile ground for their skills. They’re armed not only with the ability to write a good article, but they can also tell a good story on a range of platforms, using a variety of media.