Parents
Parents of Prospective Students
Dear Parents:
Thank you for checking out our website. Your son or daughter is considering a career in journalism, public relations, advertising or photojournalism. He or she wants to write, to make a difference, to change the world. Today’s students have something to say and the World Wide Web means that they have a chance to be heard.
And yet…
And yet, Journalism? Aren’t newspapers, like, dying?
Or Public Relations? Do I really want your son or daughter running interference for a celebrity?
And just what exactly is – or are – New Media?
As for Advertising and Photography, are those still viable career fields?
Good questions all.
You probably have three underlying questions:
- “Will they be happy in this major?
- “Will they be able to get a job with this major?”
- “Will they move back in with us for five years after graduation working at the local pizza joint?”
We’ll try to answer these very legitimate concerns as best we can: First, #1 and # 2.
If your young adult wants to make a difference in the world, he or she has come to the right place. As other departments in higher education are getting out of the writing business, we’re adding more and more classes to meet the need. In fact, all major journalism programs in the country have had record enrollment in recent years.
It makes sense, when you think about it – while there may be fewer newspapers than before, every state and federal agency, corporation, business venture, athletic department, educational institution, religious entity, and mom and pop shop now have webpages – and they’re all desperate for well-written, interesting content. Lots of it. Every day. We will give them the tools to do just that. In addition to journalism, public relations and new media (more on that last one in a moment), we offer classes in broadcast news (both reporting and writing), photography (all kinds) and advertising. Our grads are able to gather any kind of information quickly and accurately, compile and organize the material and turn out readable, well-designed, informative copy in a variety of formats (digital and otherwise) in a remarkably short amount of time.
Related to that is Public Relations – taking a message to the widest possible audience with skill and integrity. Our public relations grads have the skills to create multi-million dollar campaigns for public and private institutions and individuals. If someone has a message or a product or a belief, we show them how to best share that information widely and with integrity. We’re doing some pretty serious work in the research side of public relations – from race relations to the influence of television news.
As for the New Media – well, those are the tools to enable our students to put their information, whether it is in the form of writing (from books to blogs), digital photographs, ads, or broadcast-quality news and documentary footage, directly on that wonderful World Wide Web. We’ll also teach them how to design both their product and their webpage, master the strange new world of Social Media, craft extraordinary narratives out of mountains of raw data.
No one can – or should – promise you that your child will have a job waiting for them once they graduate. (Well, unless you own the company…) But if they enjoy meeting new people, going new places, and learning new things – AND they’re willing to work – we’ve got some real success stories we’d love to tell you about!
As for #3 above. Can’t help you there. We can promise that if your son or daughter comes to the Department of Journalism, Public Relations & New Media and work with us, we’ll give it our best shot to see that it doesn’t happen! (Except on holidays, of course. You want them to come home on the holidays.)