Monday, November 19, 2007

Successful Newspaper Cuts Jobs

USA Today announced last Thursday that they were cutting 45 newsroom jobs calling the cuts necessary because of “economic realities”.

What is weird about this news is that USA Today is actually a newspaper that is excelling in today’s world of journalism. They had increased circulation last year and usatoday.com was recently named the top news website in the country by Online News Association.

They are offering buyouts to people with more than 15 years experience at the company and less than 5 years of online experience. Basically anyone non-computer savvy is getting the boot.

Still with the world of newspapers going online and none of them making the majority of their money from online, is this just the first cut of many?

So what does this mean for the journalism students of today? As a journalism student it’s a little scary to think that getting a job out of college isn’t the end of my worries anymore because who knows how long it will be before the next cut.

1 comment:

Sue Burzynski Bullard said...

Mary - I think the world will always have jobs for people who report the news and write well. Those jobs won't be limited to traditional newspapers anymore. Your skills will be needed but on many different platforms of delivery. That's why it's so important to not only learn basic journalism skills but also to arm yourself with new media skills as well.