Non-reading future journalists Part 2

The other day I posted about how Detroit News columnist Laura Berman was bemoaning her visit to a University of Michigan-Dearborn journalism class. The thumbnail: Berman was dismayed that almost no one in the class read a newspaper and that some said print did not provide the needed instant gratification, even though the students said they expected to go into newspaper and magazine careers.

Now, the students, in the form of the school paper, fire back in "Laura Berman needs to, like, back off."

The Michigan Journal editorializes:

The class Berman was addressing may not sit down everyday with a newspaper and a cup of coffee but that doesn't mean future journalists aren't informed or aren't reading. They are more informed than any previous generation. This is a generation that has grown up with technology where it is quite normal to read an online edition of the newspaper or to look up headlines at CNN.com.

This generation may not depend on printed copies of the newspaper for information, and because of this, circulation may have gone down. But newspaper readership will always be there, whether it's reading it online or reading it on paper.

When the radio, and later T.V., was invented, the end of newspapers was predicted. With the invention of the Internet, the end seems inevitable. But it's not the end per se--it's a new beginning.

You know, if you think about it, there's something refreshing about that. Let's hope they're right (and that they get a copy editor to look at that first graf).