Faced with the growth of Google, Craigslist, citizen journalism, blogs, vlogs, empowered audiences and media convergence, how would the chief executive of the News Sentinel's parent company describe the future to a group of December grads from journalism school? Could he do it in two words?
Well, his commencement address was more like 1,500 words, but graduation speeches have to give parents' their tuition-money's worth. Not too far into his talk, however, there actually were two little words that may have pleasantly surprised the graduates and their parents: "Job security."
That's what E.W. Scripps Co. President Kenneth W. Lowe said the media future holds for journalism school grads.
"The demand for good writers, reporters, editors, videographers, producers, communications managers -- you name it -- isn't diminishing in this age of information ubiquity," he said. "Far from it: It's growing and it's growing fast."
He told the students, who were graduating from Arizona State's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, that their career decisions "won't be fettered by traditional notions of what media is." (What am I doing reading Arizona stories? There's a Knoxville connection coming toward the end.)
"Videographers can work for newspapers and the
best writers and editors can work in television," he said. "And if newspapers and
TV aren't your things, well, you can bypass them altogether and work
for some Web-only enterprise."
Lowe also had words of caution for the graduates: "We'll be looking to you to embrace lofty ideals like accuracy,
integrity and honesty... bedrock values on which our
industry stands, but my fear is that left unguarded, the foundation is
in danger of eroding. Too often, our core values give way under intense deadline pressures to meet this incessant demand for immediacy..." But enough quoting. The full text of his address is online at ASU, brought to you by the magic of the Internet.
Back to that Knoxville connection: Before moving up in the Scripps organization, Lowe was here as chairman and CEO of Scripps Networks, which the PR folks call "one
of the nation's fastest growing and
most successful creators of unique
brands for television and the Internet.
" Those brands include Home & Garden
Television (HGTV), Food Network, Do It Yourself (DIY), Fine Living and Shop at Home.
Another note: It's between-semesters solstice-holiday-of-your-choice break at UT... I still can't keep away from computers, but when I'm not at my main blogging keyboard, I may simply post bookmark links on my del.icio.us page. If I have more to say about those links, they'll probably reappear here or on my course Web pages in a month or so.
4:27:08 PM 
|
|
