Journalism and communication grads’ experiences with school, student media, and internships

The college journalism and communication experience

At a time of enormous change, how people learn — and how academic institutions, educators, organizations, student publications and others can help them — is a major issue. The survey asked people a battery of questions about how they learn, what they learned in school and their academic experience more generally.

In general, people view their academic experience positively. But schools clearly teach some subjects better than others, and there are longstanding underlying questions about what kind of experiences in school and on the job are most resonant.

We began by asking a broad question. Thinking about how people had learned their professional skills, we asked them to rank various methods of learning, from their core classes in college and graduate to professional on the job training and their own personal efforts at trial and error.

At the top of the pyramid of learning sits something more personal than what people found in a classroom. At the bottom sits what was organized for them in terms of professional development on the job, and even lower what they have found online or in distance learning. Fully 80% rated trial on their own as the most valuable way they have learned followed by mentors they sought out (60%) and then school classes (56%). The fact that classes comes in third behind trial and error and mentors may undercount to some degree the various indirect influences in education–where trial and error and mentors also occur. Stronger programs also will have stronger student media and more active and helpful alumni networks. But the findings point out how important those indirect influences are.

Form of learning	Percent ranked “very valuable”
Trial, error and practice on my own	79.8%
Peers and personal mentors	59.9%
College classes in journalism	55.6%
Direction from my managers or supervisors	50.5%
Internships during or immediately after college	48.3%
College classes in fields outside journalism or communications	42.9%
College classes in non-journalism communications fields	36.5%
Experience with student publications	31.4%
Attending trainings, conferences and meetups organized by associations	24.9%
Organized training at my place of employment	16.5%
Online courses / MOOCs / distance learning	6.8%

Data Source: Question: Thinking about the ways you have learned as a professional, please rank how valuable each of the following has been to you.
Showing percent who answered "very valuable."

American Press Institute

When asked to evaluate their academic experience in journalism, communication, public relations or media generally, they regard it with fondness. About 9 out of 10 (92%) rate their journalism/communication school experience as either “very” (57%) or “somewhat” (35%) favorable.  Only 4% rate it as unfavorable.

Rating	Percent
Very favorable	57%
Somewhat favorable	35%
Neither favorable nor unfavorable	5%
Not very favorable	3%
Not favorable at all	1%

Data Source: Question: How would you rate your journalism/communications school experience overall?

American Press Institute

When asked how effective their schools were at teaching specific skill sets, however, that picture becomes more nuanced. We asked this question a couple of ways. First, we asked about different fairly traditional journalistic skills that are taught in communication and journalism education — including audio and video storytelling, editing and opinion writing.

Writing stood again at the top of the list of skills for which people thought their academic institutions had prepared them well. Reporting and editing also stood high (No. 3 and No. 4 on a list of 13 skills). Interestingly, some skills that more than a generation ago schools identified as a need still sit low on this list of traditional items. Fluency with numbers and data ranked 11th out of 13 in the number of people who thought what they learned was effective.

Skill	Not at all effective	Not very effective	Somewhat effective	Very effective
Writing	0.7%	1.2%	26.2%	66.9%
Newsgathering / reporting / interviewing	1.5%	2.3%	31.3%	52.1%
Editing	2.0%	3.5%	35.5%	47.1%
Investigative reporting techniques	4.0%	6.3%	38.2%	24.5%
Opinion writing	5.3%	7.9%	29.9%	18.1%
Video production	8.1%	6.5%	18.9%	16.7%
Video storytelling	8.2%	6.0%	18.5%	16.5%
Audio storytelling	7.6%	6.6%	24.6%	16%
Still photography	8.5%	7.8%	20.6%	13.7%
Web literacy / search	7.9%	6.3%	18.5%	10.1%
Fluency with numbers and data	13.1%	14.8%	23.3%	6.2%
Using social media in reporting / storytelling	11.9%	7.3%	10%	5.6%
Data visualization and chart-making	15.7%	14.3%	12.7%	3.5%

Data Source: Question: How effective would you say your school was at teaching each of the following reporting and writing skills?

American Press Institute

How much do these scores change depending on when someone graduated? The answer offers some clue to how much curricula may have shifted over the years, at least for these core content-producing skills. The answer is there are signs of change, but perhaps not as much as some might suspect.

First, the fundamentals remain. The first four ranks — writing, newsgathering, editing and investigative techniques — remain the same from the oldest graduate cohort to the youngest.

But other skills have moved up. Video instruction has improved in the estimation of graduates (10% thought is very effective before 1981, 24% in the last decade.) Web literacy, naturally, moves up, from 2% to 24% calling the training they received very effective.  But some things did not change much. When it comes to teaching fluency with numbers and math generally, 6% rated their training very effective before 1981. Seven percent who graduated a generation later rated it so.

The list does not change as much if one looks by the nature of the degree earned, whether it was in journalism, public relations and advertising or communication generally.

Then we asked about skills that go beyond traditional newsgathering — from the same list we asked about ranking how important skills were in the workplace — everything from computer science and the economics of media to career development skills and using metrics.

Here ethics and media law stood out well. Issues that related to data and technology did not.

Skill	Very ineffective	Somewhat ineffective	Somewhat effective	Very effective
Media ethics	1.1%	1.5%	33.6%	53.5%
Media law	1.6%	2.5%	34.5%	46.7%
General education subject matters	3.2%	3.7%	40.4%	29.6%
Marketing/advertising/PR	5.9%	5.9%	29.4%	22.0%
Continuous learning skills	6.9%	7.9%	26.1%	19.3%
Fluency with the business of news	7.1%	8.8%	35.7%	15.9%
Career skills	12.9%	14.4%	29.7%	12.3%
Understanding audience research	11.1%	9.1%	19.5%	7.1%
Social media	9.5%	6.2%	12.9%	6.4%
Graphics and web design	9.7%	9.2%	19.7%	5.9%
Entrepreneurship	16.7%	14.6%	14.5%	4.3%
Audience data and metrics	14.6%	13.1%	13.6%	3.9%
Theory of web and computer science	12.2%	9.0%	7.8%	2.2%
HTML	14.9%	8.5%	8.3%	2.2%
Other computer languages	18.5%	8.2%	4.0%	1.1%

Data Source: Question: How effective would you say your school was at teaching the following skills that go beyond the traditional newsgathering / news presentation skills?

American Press Institute

For these non-traditional and sometimes more digitally oriented skills, one might expect the date of graduation to make an enormous difference in how alumni ranked how effective the school was. That kind of shift, however, is not evident in the data.

Indeed, when one looks closely at the different eras, the overall picture is of an academy that has changed relatively slowly. As an example, 3% of those who graduated between 1996 and 2005 rated their schools as very effective at teaching HTML, the foundational and most basic computer language. In those who graduated in the next decade and most recently, that number grew by 1 percentage point to 4%.

Put another way, the ranking of mean ratings of the first six items on this list of non-traditional skills is virtually the same whether one looks at those who graduated before 1981 and those who graduated after 2005 (understanding the economics of the news business and being prepared for being a lifelong learner switch places). Schools get clearly higher rankings for some things: The teaching of career management skills rises progressively from 6% rating it very effective prior to 1981 to triple that number (19%) for those who graduated in the past decade. The teaching of social media skills increases sevenfold in the rankings of those who graduated between 1996 and 2005 versus those who graduated after 2005 (from 2% to 15%). That shift, and relatively high ranking, suggests communication schools have seized on the importance of social media strongly — particularly given that Facebook itself was founded in 2004.

But looking across this data more generally, not only do communication schools remain strongest in the ratings of older skills when it comes to those that move beyond core reporting and writing (such as media ethics and media law), but also the level of change on new skills is relatively low.

Skill	Graduated 1980 or earlier	Graduated 1981-95	Graduated 1996-2005	Graduated 2006-15
Media ethics	50.0%	54.8%	55.7%	53.8%
Media law	41.5%	49.2%	47.6%	48.0%
General education subject matters	33.1%	32.0%	27.2%	26.8%
Marketing, advertising and PR	21.0%	25.1%	21.0%	20.8%
Continuous learning skills	20.5%	20.1%	18.0%	18.3%
Fluency with the business of news	13.6%	16.0%	15.3%	17.9%
Career skills	6.2%	8.0%	13.9%	19%
Understanding audience research	2.8%	3.4%	3.7%	5.2%
Social media	2.7%	1.8%	2.2%	15.4%
Graphics and web design	2.2%	4.1%	7.1%	8.8%
Entrepreneurship	3.4%	3.2%	4.0%	6.0%
Audience data and metrics	2.8%	3.4%	3.7%	5.2%
Theory of web and computer science	0.6%	1.0%	3.0%	3.8%
HTML	0.5%	0.2%	2.9%	4.3%
Other computer languages	0.6%	0.5%	0.6%	2.4%

Data Source: Question: How effective would you say your school was at teaching the following skills that go beyond traditional each reporting and writing?

American Press Institute

To verify what schools do well even more, the survey asked a follow-up: In which topics did people feel “most prepared,” asking them to pick up to three choices. Here, as one would expect, the three most traditional and core skills, transferable across topics and even industries stood out. But only one skill was cited by more than a majority.

The majority (though a slim majority, 53%) named writing skills, and roughly a third (37%) cited “editing” and then news and information gathering/reporting and interviewing skills (36%). No other skill set rose above 15%, though different people in this very large respondent base named many different skills as ones they were best prepared in.

Skill	Percent
Writing	52.6%
Editing	36.8%
Newsgathering, reporting and interviewing	35.6%
Marketing, advertising and PR	14.9%
Media ethics	14.7%
Media law	9.7%
Video production	7.6%
Investigative reporting	7.5%
Video storytelling	6.9%
Still photography	4.9%
Career development / job-seeking	4.3%
Audio storytelling	3.9%
Opinion writing	3.4%
Business management	3.1%
Social media (general)	2.9%
Graphics and web design	2.8%
Subject matter expertise	2.7%
Fluency in the business of news	2.6%
Preparation for lifelong learning	2.6%
Audience / consumer research	2.4%
Entrepreneurship	1.8%
Web literacy and search	1.7%
Fluency in numbers and data	1.6%
Social media in reporting and storytelling	0.9%
Audience data and metrics	0.7%
HTML	0.7%
Data visualization and chart-making	0.6%
Theory of the Web and computer science	0.2%
Other computer languages	0.1%

Data Source: Question: In which of the following areas did you feel you were the most prepared? Choose up to three.

American Press Institute

This list changes in subtle ways, rather than dramatic ones, when one looks at when people graduated. While the rankings are similar across generations, fewer people who graduated after 2005 say they feel most prepared in newsgathering than do those who graduated before 1981 (31% versus 43%, and successively fewer in each age cohort in between. The patterns and the numbers show an almost identical drop in editing. (The pattern does not hold for the evaluation of writing training.)

Conversely, more people in the youngest graduation cohort say they were most prepared in video storytelling and production, social media and career skills, and design.

Skill	1980 and earlier graduates	1981-95 graduates	1996-2005 graduates	2006-15 graduates
Writing	52.7%	58.2%	55.8%	46.7%
Newsgathering / reporting / interviewing	43.4%	36.9%	33.9%	30.5%
Editing	43.8%	40.7%	34.0%	31.1%
Marketing, advertising and PR	12.7%	18.3%	15.3%	13.6%
Media ethics	14.5%	13.4%	16.6%	14.8%
Media law	10.5%	11.5%	10.3%	7.5%
Investigative reporting	11.6%	8.6%	6.3%	4.5%
Video production	4.0%	7.1%	8.7%	9.8%
Video storytelling	3.2%	5.0%	7.9%	10.3%
Audience / consumer research	1.8%	2.3%	2.1%	3.0%
Business management	3.9%	3.9%	3.3%	1.8%
Audio storytelling	3.2%	4.5%	3.9%	4.0%
Career development / job-seeking	1.4%	2.5%	5.5%	7.0%
Data visualization and chart-making	0.1%	0.2%	0.4%	1.2%
Understanding audience data	0.6%	0.5%	0.8%	0.9%
Fluency with numbers and data	1.4%	1.7%	1.9%	1.7%
Entrepreneurial skills	3.1%	1.4%	1.2%	1.4%
General social media	0.9%	0.4%	0.3%	7.8%
Graphics and web design	0.6%	1.5%	4.5%	4.2%
Theory of the web and computer science	0.0%	0.1%	0.2%	0.3%
Fluency with the business of news	2.2%	2.6%	2.2%	3.1%
Opinion writing	5.5%	3.0%	2.4%	2.7%
HTML	0.0%	0.1%	1.3%	1.1%
Other computer languages	0.0%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%
Preparing me for continuing learning	3.4%	3.0%	2.6%	1.8%
Still photography	7.0%	5.3%	3.1%	4.4%
Subject matter expertise	2.1%	2.7%	3.2%	2.7%
Using social media in reporting and storytelling	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	2.5%
Web literacy and search	0.2%	0.2%	2.7%	3.2%

Data Source: Question: In which of the following areas did you feel you were the most prepared (by your school)? Choose up to three.

American Press Institute

We also asked what people felt least prepared in. Many of the answers, but not all of these, are more digital skills, and the answers vary significantly by when people graduated. But some of the top areas that people felt ill-prepared for — such as fluency with math in general, career development and business management — are hardly items that are a function of digital technology.

Skill	Percent
HTML	18.3%
Business management	14.7%
Entrepreneurial skills	13.8%
Career development / job-seeking	13.6%
Fluency with numbers and data	12.9%
Other computer languages	12.6%
Data visualization and chart-making	12.0%
Graphics and web design	12.0%
Understanding audience data	9.8%
Audience / consumer research	8.5%
Video production	8.0%
General social media skills	6.1%
Social media for reporting / storytelling	5.7%
Theory of the web and computer science	5.6%
Fluency with the business of news	5.3%
Investigative reporting	5.1%
Audio storytelling	4.9%
Video storytelling	3.6%
Opinion writing	3.9%
Still photography	3.7%
Marketing, advertising and PR	3.7%
Web literacy and search	3.6%
Editing	2.3%
Subject matter expertise	2.3%
Preparation for continuing learning	2.1%
Media law	1.7%
Newsgathering / reporting / interviewing	1.5%
Writing	1.4%
Media ethics	0.9%

Data Source: Question: In which of the following areas did you feel you were the least prepared (by your school)? Choose up to three.

American Press Institute

Interestingly, too, more recent graduates are more likely to say they were least well prepared for various digital and multimedia skills. For instance, higher percentages of those who graduated in the past decade feel ill-prepared in graphics and web design. Fully 27% of these most recent graduates say they feel least prepared in HTML, the highest percentage saying they were ill-prepared for any of the skills queried. That finding, for a skill many high school students now receive, stands out.

Skill	1980 and earlier graduates	1981-95 graduates	1996-2005 graduates	2006-15 graduates
HTML	11.3%	12.3%	19.9%	26.8%
Other computer languages	6.5%	8.4%	13.9%	19.4%
Business management	19.0%	16.6%	13.8%	10.9%
Career development / job-seeking	13.1%	16.8%	13.8%	11.5%
Data visualization and chart-making	10.4%	12.0%	13.5%	12.3%
Understanding audience data	7.9%	9.8%	10.3%	11.0%
Fluency with numbers and data	12.2%	15.0%	12.9%	12.1%
Entrepreneurial skills	14.3%	15.3%	14.0%	12.1%
Graphics and web design	8.0%	9.3%	13.5%	16.0%
Audience/consumer research	10.0%	8.1%	8.1%	8.1%
General social media	7.4%	6.4%	7.0%	4.2%
Audio storytelling	6.4%	5.1%	4.7%	3.8%
Theory of the web and computer science	5.5%	4.8%	3.8%	7.2%
Investigative reporting	4.3%	5.4%	5.4%	5.4%
Fluency with the business of news	6.6%	5.3%	4.9%	4.6%
Using social media in reporting and story-telling	4.5%	5.1%	7.8%	5.7%
Video production	6.0%	7.6%	8.3%	9.4%
Video storytelling	2.7%	4.5%	5.5%	4.8%
Web literacy and search	5.2%	4.9%	3.2%	1.9%
Marketing, advertising and PR	3.3%	3.0%	3.6%	4.5%
Media ethics	1.4%	0.8%	0.5%	0.8%
Media law	2.6%	1.3%	1.6%	1.6%
Newsgathering / reporting / interviewing	1.4%	1.6%	1.5%	1.5%
Opinion writing	4.3%	4.9%	3.5%	3.1%
Preparing me for continuing learning	2.3%	2.9%	1.7%	1.7%
Still photography	2.5%	3.4%	4.2%	4.6%
Subject matter expertise	1.8%	2.0%	2.0%	3.1%
Editing	1.7%	1.8%	2.7%	2.9%
Writing	0.9%	1.3%	1.4%	2.0%

Data Source: Question: In which of the following areas did you feel you were the least prepared (by your school)? Choose up to three.

American Press Institute

To some significant degree, these numbers may reflect ongoing issues educators face. There are limits to how many journalism and communication credits schools can teach due to accreditation. As the list of skills needed grows, the available credits to teach new courses cannot grow at a commensurate rate. Faculties and curricula may change more slowly than industry. But the numbers raise issues.

Student media and internships

One area educators are curious about and that the survey probed with some granularity is the experience and impact of student media organizations — from publications such as print and television to advertising clubs and public relations societies. Another was the impact of internships.

Not all graduates participated in them, though most did, and student newspapers were the most popular, with more than a third (39%) saying they had spent some time with them. But the list shows some significant change over time. Prior to 1981, more than half of students worked on a newspaper in school. That had fallen to 40% between 1981 and 1995 and stands at 31% for those who graduated between 2006 and 2015. Radio participation has declined as well. Magazine work has become more popular. Online work still lags well behind most other kinds of student publications, even in the past decade.

Organization	Prior to 1981 graduates	1981-95 graduates	1996-2005 graduates	2006-15 graduates
Advertising club	4.4%	4.4%	3.3%	4.1%
Public relations society	6.7%	10.2%	9.8%	8.3%
Newspaper	51.1%	40.1%	35.5%	31.1%
TV station	10.3%	13.0%	13.8%	14.6%
Radio station	18.2%	20.7%	15.0%	14.6%
Magazine	7.2%	7.7%	8.2%	12.2%
Online	0.0%	0.0%	1.6%	6.5%
Yearbook	7.0%	4.2%	3.4%	2.9%
Didn’t participate	14.6%	17.8%	18.4%	22.5%

American Press Institute

Of those who did participate, most people spent a sizable amount of time on student media organizations, too. More than half (56%) spent at least three semesters working with them.

Number of semesters	Percent
1-2	31.8%
3-4	31.6%
5-6	18.8%
7-8	13.9%
9 or more	3.8%

Data Source: Question: How many semesters did you spend working at student–run media organizations or agencies?

American Press Institute

The majority of those who worked on student publications (six out of ten), did not hold senior management positions on them–which often can take enormous amounts of student time. But those who did take on those management roles did so for long periods. More than a quarter of all those who worked on student publications held senior management jobs for at least a year.

Number of semesters	Percent
I didn’t hold such a position	64.3%
1	8.5%
2	15.7%
3	4.1%
4	5.2%
5 or more	2.2%

Data Source: Question: How many semesters, if at all, did you hold one of the top two positions at a student-run media organization, such as editor in chief, managing editor, executive producer, news director, or other officer?

American Press Institute

The study also looked at internships. Fully 7 out of 10 said they had internships of some kind. And 41% said they had more than one.

Internships	Percent
0	29.4%
1	30.0%
2	21.0%
3	11.4%
4 or more	8.1%

Data Source: Question: How many internships did you have in journalism either during school or immediately after graduating?

American Press Institute