<p>I graduated in 2008 (my teachers told my classmates and I constantly about how we were graduating at the worst time). Since the. Finding working in my field has been impossible, even after 3 internships. Does anyone have any ideas of what what would be a good graduate degree to compliment my journalism degree? Or did anyone major in journalism and know of any unconventional fields I should try to get into with my limited experience?</p>
<p>Thanks so much everyone! </p>
<p>If you don’t have a plan of what do with a specific graduate degree, don’t go to graduate school. If you already are having trouble finding work, don’t compound the problem by being unemployed but also swimming in graduate debt. A graduate degree isn’t a magic ticket to a job - you need to have a plan.</p>
<p>[Should</a> I Go to Graduate School?](<a href=“http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2014/05/19/should-you-go-to-graduate-school]Should”>http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/outside-voices-careers/2014/05/19/should-you-go-to-graduate-school)</p>
<p>With that said, if there is something that you really want to do other than journalism, you should observe and talk to people within that field. What degrees do they have?</p>
<p>I see. People around me keep telling me that’s the ticket to getting a job and earning more money. I like things dealing with new media, social media, writing copy, writing blog posts or entertainment news, etc. I’m not sure how to fix the problem because it’s already been over 5 years. </p>
<p>Having an employment gap of 5 years is a special kind of problem and maybe a professional can help you with how to present yourself that’s a lot cheaper than a grad degree. Unless ‘these people’ are industry professionals, then I take it back. There are any number of corporations, govt, non profits large and small who have PR and media and marketing needs and well as social media presence like Taco Bell is enormously popular on twitter, for instance. Getting a lot of those kind of jobs have to do with starting at the bottom, unfortunately although the journo degree should qualify you. You need a lot of gumption and hustle,and networking and I understand that is very taxing. A lot of people establish their own value with social media and leverage that. It doesn’t seem a smart idea to get a degree in just anything. Get the degree for the job you want. Journo is a rough field 2008 or not. But Indeed has almost 2,500 hits for copywriter. Maybe you have already done so but there is a lot of free infor on the web, such as
<a href=“Page Not Found | Monster.com”>Page Not Found | Monster.com;
<p>My best guess for a complimentary degree would be Marketing.</p>
<p>Journalism is also a tough field. They’re actually experiencing contraction - jobs in the field are expected to decline by 13% between now and 2022. I doubt that it’s your lack of a graduate degree so much as it’s just that there aren’t a whole lot of positions for full-time journalists. The really stable firms are probably super-competitive and require experience; the smaller places perhaps take mostly freelance work.</p>
<p>Consider what you want to do with your skills and start thinking outside the traditional box. The skills of a journalist translate to a lot of communications-based fields and there is actually <em>growing</em> demand for those skills in those other fields.</p>
<p>My undergraduate degree is in journalism. I graduated in 2010 and couldn’t find a job out of college either, but got a (barely) paid AmeriCorps internship with the Forest Service doing communications-related work. That led to an offer of employment through a student hire program, where I worked summers as a park ranger while in graduate school for natural resources management. Six months before I graduated, I was offered a permanent job on the public affairs staff of a national forest. I’ve been working there almost a year now.</p>
<p>Leaders in the agency recognized the usefulness of the new media/social media skills I gained as a sportswriter in j-school, and it was simply a matter of learning to apply those skills to a different field in a slightly different way.</p>
<p>It’s not “selling out” if you truly believe in the value of what you’re communicating — for me, my job is to tell the story of public land management, ecological conservation and sustainable community development in Southeast Alaska. Journalism does not have a monopoly on truth, justice and the American way, particularly in this age of increasing corporatization and centralization of the profession.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone! I have a lot to think about.</p>