[Sr. Mints]

From a journalism instructor at Kwantlen Polytechnic in Vancouver, which I honestly hadn't heard of before.

An open letter to journalism students

You saw the news today: Postmedia has chopped at least two dozen jobs, killed some of its newspapers’ Sunday edition, temporarily suspended Monday publication of The National Post and stopped printing on most holidays.


You may have noticed, in the coverage, the reasons: the company’s last quarterly financial report contained an operating loss of $11 million, and Postmedia is carrying a debt more than $510 million. Revenue from ads and circulation is still falling, partly because of a slow-growing economy but mostly because of long-term trends.


What you may not have noticed is that last week, there was – every single day, from Monday to Friday – news of layoffs and cancelled print editions from newspapers in the U.S. and Britain. So, we are into our sixth straight business day of bad news for newspapers.


I don’t want you to think, though, that we’re seeing the death of newspapers or of journalism itself.



Newspapers are, indeed, changing and changing rapidly. They are becoming smaller (in pages and staff) and more locally focussed. They are putting increasing burdens on reporting staff: Your copy better be good and it better be clean, because it will be read by fewer editors. You better bring more to the office than the ability to report and write. If you’re not engaged with audience through social media, you had better get there and get there quickly.

The rest: http://www.tamark.ca/public/2012/05/28/an-open-letter-to-journalism-students/