Mindy McAdams’ Teaching Online Journalism:
“New U.S. graduates with a bachelor’s degree in journalism or mass communication had a median annual salary of $30,000, according to a survey of spring 2006 graduates. New graduates with a master’s degree in journalism or mass communication had a median annual salary of $38,000. Jobs held by all these graduates included those in public relations and advertising as well as online, print, TV and radio journalism.
Does this mean getting a master’s degree will increase your salary? Maybe in some fields, but not necessarily in journalism. I’d like to see this survey cut the grain a bit finer on the master’s degree data, because in my experience, a hiring editor at a news organization doesn’t give a hoot about your degree(s) or your GPA — a hiring editor cares only about your experience in the field.
This marks a distinct difference between journalism jobs and jobs in some other fields, where the extra one or two years in graduate school are assumed to make the candidate more fit to do the job. In our field, the only thing that makes you more fit is more work experience.”
I haven’t been involved in hiring for our newsrooms for long time, but I think experience would trump grad degree for us.
What if your the editor/producer/writer/publicist/publisher of a your own blog while working on your degree? Not that this is the case for me. But I’d be interested to see how many J-students are proactive with such an approach to graduating and trying to find a job. Because as you’ve said, when you need a blog it’s too late you can’t just fire up the box and start a blog. You better have one ready to go with some substance . . . kinda like a resume, only better?