It is well known among student journalists that the news industry does not promise job security. None of us are doing this to strike it rich — it’s a love-of-the-game career. Shoebox apartments and microwave dinners in America’s most expensive cities do little to deter bright eyed college graduates who just want to do the news. This is the version of the story we tell ourselves: The myth that keeps the industry going. In this piece, Center for Media at Risk Undergraduate Fellow, Jasmine Ni, draws from interviews with fellow student journalists to explore how they navigate the uphill battle of building careers in the news industry.
I recently had a conversation with a friend who is far removed from the news industry. He said that pursuing journalism seems like being an Olympic swimmer who is always fighting an upstream current. No matter how far you get, no matter how good you are, there’s a cap on the monetary success and level of seniority you can achieve in journalism. I had to agree with his characterization. He said, “Well I don’t understand why you’d want to do that to yourself.” I shrugged, “Yeah, I don’t know either.”
The age-old wisdom from industry veterans to aspiring newcomers like myself has never been more pertinent: “If you can imagine yourself doing anything else, don’t go into journalism.” In recent years — indeed, in recent months — career concerns have been amplified by cataclysmic changes to the industry: changing corporate oversight of newsrooms, increasing tensions with the federal government and growing personal threats to journalists. Even with advance knowledge of the poor hand they would be dealt, early-career and aspiring journalists have been forced to reckon with an increasingly tenuous and volatile landscape.
I spoke with twelve young reporters about how these factors have impacted their career plans. The words “uncertain,” “bleak” and “precarious” came up a lot. More common though, was some version of “despite” or “in spite of.”
By no means are these interviews representative of the industry writ large. But after these conversations, I would say the word that best captures the collective psychology of the next generation of reporters is defiance. Call it wide-eyed ignorance, call it naivete. Whatever it may be, the higher calling of speaking truth to power and worshiping at the altar of a well-written lede still calls to these young journalists.
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“The media industry is always kind of fracturing and shifting no matter what the political context is, but it does seem like things are changing in a more marked way right now,” George Porteous observes. A junior at Stanford University, he currently serves as the Editor-in-chief of the Stanford Daily.
On the opposite side of the country, University of Pennsylvania junior Ethan Young serves as Editor-in-chief of The Daily Pennsylvanian. He says the one word he would use to describe the current media landscape is “uncertain.” Young references mass layoffs, corporate acquisitions and unionization hurdles impacting papers across the country. With these factors in mind, he is “confident that there will be a greater level of vulnerability and volatility in the next couple of years.”
By Diamy Wang’s assessment, the industry looks “pretty bleak,” citing rising distrust in the media, “growing disinvestment in journalistic organizations,” layoffs, and escalating legal attacks on large media corporations by the federal government. A graduating senior at the University of Pennsylvania, Wang spent her college career at The Daily Pennsylvanian and has completed internships at two separate newsrooms, with a third lined up for the summer.
These diagnoses ring true for many in the industry. But young professionals feel it first.
“When I’m thinking about my career, I think entering the industry and the obstacles within the industry are inseparable topics. It’s that nagging voice in my ear: ‘Journalism is in disarray anyway. Why am I doing this?’” Wang reflects. “It’s an inextricable experience, thinking about my personal career, and the trajectory of journalism and media as a whole.”
As he approaches graduation, University of Pennsylvania senior Ben Binday echoes familiar lines: “If you pursue a career in journalism, you’re doing it as a labor of love. You’re not doing it because you think it is the industry that will have the most stability or the best pay or anything along those lines.”
“I can understand and appreciate that it’s a very difficult time to be in the industry and it will not be an easy career. There are certainly easier careers out there,” Binday admits. “But if someone loves writing and reporting and gathering information and everything that goes into that, I still think that can outweigh all of the cons that have to do with the industry at this time.”
“We’re seeing publications, particularly local newspapers, shuttering right, left and center. A lot of publications are letting off significant portions of their workforce, and we’re seeing a decrease in trusted faith in the media across America. So that makes it much more difficult to justify joining the field at this time,” Binday explains.
There’s a financial reality that Binday says is hard to look past: “A lot of these publications are doing badly and there’s not much of an avenue for them to stop doing badly. Whether that be local papers shutting down, papers in mid-size cities, or legacy outlets. Pretty much everyone is absolutely hemorrhaging.” His prognosis — which reflects the realities of the industry — is that outlets will inevitably consolidate in the “hands of owners who have a large amount of money, who are then going to break them apart, or use them as part of their portfolio, or implement layoffs across the board that are going to put more journalists on the market.” When that happens, Binday says the industry will fall into a “cycle where newer journalists are going to struggle to find jobs because there are going to be more talented folks on the market.” He poses a realistic question: why hire an intern if you could hire a Pulitzer Prize winner?
A graduating senior admits that he feels “very torn about whether to pursue a career in the journalism field.” A life as a reporter is what he would pursue “if money didn’t matter” — and if the industry was “in a more stable place.” But it’s a hard choice to justify with “everything that we’re seeing at news outlets across the country right now.”
“I think it’s very easy to be aspirational about wanting to do a job where you are going to really enjoy it and wake up every morning and be excited to go to the office and get stuff up. I think everyone should aspire to do such a job because I don’t think people should waste their life away working at desks at 9 to 5,” the graduating student journalist says. “At the same time, it is remarkably hard to justify being in a career where you might have extended stretches of unemployment, you could be laid off at a moment’s notice and you’re not being paid particularly well when you are working.”
He’s not sure he “could keep up with that forever. I would love to be in a position or in a role where every six months I didn’t feel like I might be laid off. And I think the constant stress of needing to worry about finding a new job, or jumping somewhere else, or suddenly being surprised with an email from corporate with bad news, is something that I would struggle with.”
Personal interest and intellectual engagement are important for the graduating senior; he says that if changes to a newsroom makes it such that he can no longer report on a subject that would warrant the degree of sacrifice necessary to survive as a professional journalist, “it would be remarkably hard for me to continue in the industry.” The layoffs have made him believe this breaking-point scenario is closer to becoming a reality, he admits. The “norm” used to be that reporters would stay at one outlet for decades, building up source relationships and area expertise (he describes journalism as a “continuity business”) once they got their foot in the door. Now, “strong financial headwinds” and a radically different presidential administration have made that largely impossible.
“Across the country, you see so many unbelievably talented journalists being laid off from their publications just by virtue of the necessity for cost cuts, with how much money many of these publications are hemorrhaging. I think someone can be an incredible journalist and it’s still a crapshoot whether they’re really going to be able to make it in the industry in this day and age. You start at a publication and God knows if you’re going to still have a job in five years’ time,” the senior says.
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In February 2026, The Washington Post made national headlines as its corporate owners cut a third of the newsroom — around 300 employees. Reporters at all levels found themselves unemployed overnight, informed by brief emails sent from corporate. Longstanding sections, including sports and D.C. metropolitan coverage, were substantially cut or shuttered completely; entire foreign bureaus closed on a day’s notice.
“The Post layoffs were shell shocking,” Emma Cordover says. Now an assistant editor at Politico after nearly three years at the outlet, she began her career as a digital producer following internships at Foreign Affairs, American Purpose, and a D.C. ABC affiliate. “They were very financially secure. Still, a decision was made by the parent company that radically changed the entire thing. This legacy newspaper is basically gutted.”
An incoming intern at the Post admits that “it’s certainly a challenging time to be starting at the Post,” adding that they “don’t really know what the newsroom dynamics are going to look like” after so much recent upheaval. “I think everyone is scared when they hear of a publication or a place that they’re going to work at doing badly, whether that means losing money or whether that means laying off a significant portion of the workforce. For me, the first thought was wondering whether, as many of the Post reporters did, my job was still going to be there.”
Fortunately, the recent graduate still has a spot waiting for them this summer. But they’re painfully aware of how much “institutional knowledge and expertise” was lost overnight. “There are folks I’ve talked with who worked at the Post, for whom we had tentative plans to get coffee over the summer, who now no longer have jobs there because of the layoffs. I think it really hurts the structure and morale of the newsroom for there to be people that I thought were going to be there and I was very excited to learn from who are no longer going to be there.”
A former summer intern at The Washington Post says that they “experienced how bad it can get.” “People were so demoralized. It was really sad, to be honest,” they added. “The morale was in the trash. People were disappointed by the future of the paper, by the number of people leaving, all of that.”
Their experience at the Post was a reminder that they must find meaning in the work “despite the external challenges that, especially in early career, I don’t have much control over.” Even at their current outlet — which is also facing financial struggles due to federal pressure — they say that they’re experiencing a different newsroom environment. “I don’t know if it could get any worse than [the Post].”
“That’s part of the early-career mindset: making the most of the opportunities you’re given, because no opportunity in the media industry is ever going to be 100% right now. There are struggles everywhere. There are very few papers or outlets doing well,” the former Post intern notes.
There’s always an equation of “how much you’re producing — your value — versus how much you cost in salary,” the former intern observes, adding that this arithmetic makes it so that both early-career and mid-career journalists are vulnerable. “I don’t know if certain demographics are targeted more than others in layoffs, but it does make it such that early-career journalists aren’t going to be hired at places that are doing massive layoffs. That makes it more challenging for people trying to get their first foot in the door and get experience.”
In contrast, Cordover is of the belief that “youth can be an asset.” She has observed a belief at play that the journalism industry needs to adapt and change — and “older journalists toward the end of their careers, who are old-school, can’t adapt the way younger journalists can.” If young journalists can play their cards right and figure out how to make themselves “really valuable,” Cordover says that they’re likely less vulnerable to newsroom cuts than the old guard. “The people I see doing the best right now are young people who invented a role for themselves, figured out how to market a piece of reporting super well, or built a super-niche beat with a huge audience to adapt and make themselves valuable,” Cordover notes.
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Since its emergence as a mass-market tool, artificial intelligence — particularly generative AI — has provoked a widespread fear that it would come to replace reporters. Cordover recalls that the technology was constantly cited in her discussions about the viability of a career in journalism, “It was kind of at the cusp, the beginning of us reckoning with AI being a real thing. A lot of people were saying AI is going to be writing all the stories soon, sooner or later.”
The proliferation of AI is top of mind for many young journalists. They’ve watched newsrooms integrate AI into editorial workflows and products to various degrees of success. Despite her resistance to spending a lot of time thinking about industry struggles, Stanford University first-year Emerson Prentice says that the uncertainty around AI is constantly on her mind. “It feels we’re betting on something that we have just no sense of what it’s going to be in five years, 10 years, you know?” As with any industry, the new technology threatens to upend decades — if not centuries — of common habits and best practices. Drexel University senior Erik Heyman-Meltzer is a staff writer and incoming co-news editor at his student publication. He believes it threatens to “take away the creativity of journalism” as “corporate entities use it as a financial shortcut to maximize their profits.”
But in many ways, particularly as the industry struggles to adapt to AI, young journalists are advantaged by the growth of AI. “Reporters of older generations are struggling to adapt to this new technology because they just aren’t familiar with it and they’re used to much more traditional journalism practices,” Young observes. In contrast, recent college graduates and early-career journalists may find it easier to make themselves indispensable alongside AI technology.
“Because of our position as both journalists and college students who are using this technology, we are equipped with unique skills and opportunities to help harness that power in true, authentic, journalistically based storytelling,” Young says. “While there might be concerns about what this means for the market, we are also in a position where we are at least fortunate enough to have the ability to be learning about these tools in real time and thinking about unique ways that we can use them.”
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As the demands of the profession shift, so too do the barriers for entry — and for some aspiring journalists, the gap between where they are and where employers expect them to be seems to have widened as the industry changes.
Editor-in-chief of The Waltonian at Eastern University, Hannah Bonanducci has spent her senior year reviving her campus paper while applying to graduate school. Her post-grad plans weren’t always clear, but as Bonanducci thought about the skills required for entry-level journalism positions, she realized that she didn’t “feel as confident.” While she used to think “there was room to learn when I first got into a job, that’s no longer a possibility — both because of the fact that those entry-level jobs don’t really exist anymore, and because the jobs that are open, they’re looking for people that already have that experience.”
Bonanducci conjectures that the combination of political circumstances and declining trust in the media has led media outlets to avoid hiring “people that are a risk.” Newsrooms, Bonanducci argues, “want people that don’t have to worry about as much off the bat, because anyone who comes into the industry as a risk is a much bigger deal now because there’s already so much distrust. All it takes is one bad article or one thing that was [done] with good intentions, but missed something, for a publication to come under fire.” While she understands that as a journalist — “It’s not just about writing articles, you’re trying to build trust in something, which is so crucial right now” — Bonanducci believes that this mentality has led newsrooms to avoid taking chances on entry-level reporters.
Riya Misra, 2025 graduate of Rice University who served as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper for two years, is currently a magazine intern at Politico covering politics and government. Misra describes the industry as “a little fraught,” but admits that she doesn’t have much to compare the current landscape to. “I can hear from veteran editors or veteran journalists who speak of these glory days where you could start out at a small local newspaper and work your way up to being a national correspondent in like seven years or something. That’s not a pathway I, or anyone of my peers, can relate to, because I just don’t think that’s a pipeline that’s available anymore.”
As graduation approached last spring, Misra heard back from few outlets she applied to. “A lot of entry-level jobs ask for three to five years of professional experience, and well, I’m 21. I can’t have five years of professional experience because I was a child,” she recalls. “I hear this from people all the time too: it’s not a reflection of your talent or your hard work or whatever — it’s just a tough industry to be in.” As newsrooms are hiring for fewer and fewer roles, Misra says that “competition feels stiffer. It feels more stressful.” She considers herself “lucky” that she “managed to get employment” because it feels like demand for journalism roles has begun “outpacing the supply.”
Amid internship applications, Young says he’s noticed an “interesting paradox.” As the nation bears witness to front-page news on the daily (in many regards, the news media has never had more material to work with), readers have been flocking in droves to both traditional and open-source outlets. At the same time, Young says that he hasn’t noticed the number of newsroom positions — or compensation — increase alongside the growing audience demand. As a result, competition for entry-level positions has quickly grown. “College campuses across the country have become hotbeds for national news in a way that’s made a lot of people very rightfully and logically so enthusiastic about this as a career.” In short, he says “the allure of this industry is potentially increasing in a moment when the news is increasing, yet the positions are not.”
For an industry that many consider to be dying — or at least undergoing radical shifts — this dual phenomenon is difficult to square. Young journalists are struggling to enter the workforce, largely due to financial realities; newsrooms have been forced to scale down training programs and fellowships. Simultaneously, journalism is an industry that needs young people desperately. Traditional media outlets are itching for entry-level employees to fill non-reporter roles (audience engagement, digital strategy and social media managers, to name a few) as they try to reach a younger readership.
“It’s 100% hypocritical,” Cordover asserts. “You’re not going to get a younger audience — you’re not going to have an audience in however many years — if you’re not investing in young journalists.”
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Amid these drastic changes to the journalism market, Misra points out the rise of “new types of media”: podcasts, Substacks and blogs, where reporters at varying points of their careers have a “direct line from journalist to reader.” But she adds that the “systems we have in place at traditional media exist for a reason: extensive factchecking, rounds of edits, legal reviews, standards reviews. Those systems are in place to make sure the journalism you’re putting out is top quality, accurate, not slanderous, airtight.” New media forms pose risks when they forgo those “checks and balances.”
At the same time, Misra acknowledges that trust in the media is declining across reader demographics. “If readers would rather read someone’s diary on Substack than a reported investigation in a newspaper — readers want what the readers want,” she concedes. “I think those reading habits and the changing news diet is probably a reflection of something greater.”
That “something” is a big question mark that Misra says the industry has yet to find an answer to: “How do you maintain trust with the readership?” She grants that certain outlets, such as ProPublica and local media, offer a good example of producing journalism that “reestablishes trust with readers.” While certain new forms of media seem to have struck that chord with their audiences, Misra still isn’t convinced that they should “replace traditional journalism.” “But maybe I’m old-fashioned,” she laughs.
As a student at Cornell, Cordover says that she kept being told by older people that “print was dead” and “nobody reads newspapers anymore.” The discouragement she heard cited the common reasons for avoiding a career in journalism: the evolving technology landscape and the economics. She admits that they were right: “print is dying — if not dead. But there is a whole other universe beyond that,” referencing the rise of digital-first outlets and innovative forms of storytelling.
A junior at La Salle University, Claire Herquet is the incoming editor-in-chief of The La Salle Collegian and serves as communications lead for the Philadelphia Student Press Association. She recalls her professors telling her, “Print is dying and you’re never going to make journalism a sustainable career, and the world doesn’t need more writers. The world is moving more digitally.” But Herquet says rather than discourage young people from pursuing a career in journalism, she believes the media landscape presents an opportunity for innovation. “A lot of people are shying away from journalism like it’s old, and new things are coming to replace it. I think it should be ‘this ecosystem is turning into something new, and let’s figure out how to navigate it together,’” Herquet says.
This summer, Porteous is pursuing an independent documentary project in Mississippi instead of taking another journalism internship at an established outlet (he interned at CNN last summer.) He believes in the inherent creativity of the profession, and his priority is “just to keep writing.” The forum in which that takes place is “much less relevant to me than just doing work that I’m excited about and proud of,” Porteous says.
“I started feeling like to be a journalist you kind of just have to start doing it at some point. If you can find a newsroom that facilitates that, amazing, but if not, I think you just have to make it happen for yourself … I would say that’s probably a more independent idea that stems from this landscape we’re in, where seemingly anyone can post things online and these gatekeepers don’t seem to matter quite as much,” Porteous explains.
The graduating senior cites two other factors that he believes are making it a “remarkably difficult time to be a journalist anywhere.” The first, is the decline in public appreciation for the job of a traditional reporter. “It’s very hard for journalists to carry the respect that they once did if you look back a couple of decades, where folks were simply much more willing to talk to journalists — either because they don’t believe their work is important, or because the trust that used to be present isn’t there anymore,” the student says. His second reason is the “weaponization of the press in many regards by the [Trump] administration and other folks in the federal government. People are scared to talk to the media for fear of retaliation or other things that may happen to them.”
As the “current administration has made a real push from the White House to flood the media zone,” the importance — and precarity — of local outlets is top of mind for Young. The “onslaught of news makes the importance of local journalism even more integral to communities who want to understand how these national issues are impacting them.”
“I hope to see in the next two years that there is some sort of local resurgence of smaller papers. I’m hopeful that smaller papers, and especially their readers, can understand the importance of local news and can make it clear to the papers that exist at a local level that they’re valued and appreciated,” Young says.
While it may be “easy” to look at the tumult of newsrooms like The Washington Post or CBS and believe that the “vast majority” of outlets are headed in a different direction than reporters and readers alike are hoping for, Young says that the work of small papers deserves more attention. “I think as much as there are legitimate concerns of what is happening at the national level and at these bigger papers, local journalists are meeting the moment.”
“You’ve seen the rise of people who are not journalists that are telling stories about their communities — whether that be uploading quotes or videos or recordings of events that are happening. Those are just as valuable as someone going into a neighborhood with a CNN press badge and asking people questions,” Young notes about the proliferation of nontraditional journalism. He cites the recent ICE murders in Minnesota as an example of crowdsourced news dissemination. “There are many success stories of people championing their First Amendment rights and still making their voices heard.”
After graduation, Heyman-Meltzer plans to enter the freelance space rather than “something inside of the legacy media bubble.” While he has always been drawn to the “journalistic freedom” and independence that freelancing offers, he says that recent upsets at large national outlets have cemented his decision to avoid national newsrooms.
“I feel like we’re seeing these legacy media organizations and a lot of industry players try to take the financial easy way. I think they’re putting profits over true journalism. I don’t think that is something that will do the journalistic industry any good, but I don’t think that that is something that is going away either,” he says. With the consolidation of national publications, Heyman-Meltzer feels like newsrooms fall into patterns of “cookie-cutter outlines, where they want things done a certain way, in a certain style, up to their own subjective standard.” Even so, talented reporters who have “done vital work” get laid off. “That’s one of the main reasons why I approach my career in a more freelance and journalistic freedom kind of way, so my journalism doesn’t have to fit into a mold that might not even exist,” Heyman-Meltzer explains.
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The growing influence of corporate parents — a long-standing phenomenon that has recently attracted more scrutiny because of high-profile situations at outlets like CBS — is “bone-chilling,” Cordover says. While journalists have always known their work is tied to the “capitalist world,” she says that recent decisions mark an escalation in how much “we have to capitulate to capitalism.” Cordover says that today’s newsrooms are “at the mercy of whoever buys us, and these numbers, and huge corporations, and how many billions of dollars they can shovel over. It feels like a loss of control.” She believes that the consolidation of independent papers under huge conglomerates is “not good for a democracy” and undermines “independent observers.”
Cordover’s exit-point from the industry depends on two factors: “If the environment became toxic and the paychecks became toxic.” On the former, she says that if her publication is bought and newsroom leadership begins to “heavily police what we report, if the newsroom environment became totalitarian, and journalism was truly stunted,” she would leave. (She qualifies this with the caveat that she doesn’t know how she would define “truly stunted versus marginally stunted.”) The second factor is easier to quantify: a “huge pay cut.” Cordover works in New York City, notorious for its sky-high living costs. More importantly, she feels like “a valuable employee, and I want that to be compensated. I feel confident about what is acceptable. I didn’t go to college and do all this work to be truly economically struggling.”
Since she first entered the industry, Cordover says that concerns around the economics of journalism and financial stability have changed. She attributes the change to the second Trump administration, which has “encouraged going after journalists.” The President and his allies have made frequent attacks on individual reporters a key part of their media strategy.
The biggest change Cordover has witnessed under the current administration is “how vitriolic people have become and how loathed certain publications are.” She says that when outlets or reporters are “branded as remotely left or liberal,” they get a target on their back and heightened scrutiny.
Cordover recalls that her newsroom responded to the growing tension by implementing “back-to-back trainings” on a range of topics: what to do if you receive a subpoena, how to handle a death threat, what steps to take to fortify social media platforms and sourcing channels. “Our standards and legal team were telling us that life was about to get more dangerous for all of us, no matter what our role was,” she recalls. “We’re contending with a shortening attention span, rapid advancement of AI, and now we have the government going after us. It’s like a triple whammy.”
The predominant feeling in the journalism world right now is unease, according to Cordover. She describes a “prevalent” sense of fear, uncertainty and concern. “Any journalist would tell you that, and I’d be remiss not to.” During her short tenure in professional journalism, Cordover can name a slate of major publications that have undergone mass newsroom layoffs. “Those things are real: disillusionment, psychological tolls. But one of the biggest tolls isn’t necessarily the state of the business. It’s what we’re covering,” she says.
Cordover describes the political scene right now as “chaotic” and “gruesome.” On a minute-to-minute basis, she sees “vitriol exchanged. I see fellow journalists getting excoriated by the president himself, or online. I see people literally dying. We’re writing about shocking, sickening stuff, no matter what side you’re on.” Amid the constant onslaught of devastation and violence, journalists have to “cover it in an unbiased, straightforward, logical way.” The irony is not lost upon Cordover that this was the very characteristic of the industry that first drew her in; the current social and political moment has made the work “emotionally hard.” “You grit your teeth through things that would make a grown man cry,” Cordover says.
On the other hand, Cordover concedes that the “crazy stuff” keeps journalists and newsrooms in business. Despite all the “emotional turmoil,” Cordover says that she’s witnessed journalists find the lightness in their work. “There’s a jovialness, a throw-your-hands-up feeling, like, ‘This is our world, and we’re keeping a record of it.’ That’s a privilege.”
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That sense of privilege — the front-row seat to history, the license to keep the record — is what brought most of them here in the first place. It is, in the end, a strange kind of love. The industry is contracting, the threats are multiplying and the pay has never been the point — but still, the next generation of journalists arrives at the same conclusion their predecessors did: there is no other place they would rather be.
“I’ve always been tethered to making some sort of change in the world,” Cordover says of her decision to become a reporter despite all the challenges it would entail. “I think a lot of people who pursue journalism are like this. I love to write. I loved everything that journalism was. I frankly just thought what journalists do was so cool.” Like many of her peers who pursued careers in journalism, there was also a higher calling for Cordover. She graduated in 2022, a period where “things were hitting the fan. Everything was kind of blowing up. And all I wanted was to be a part of it.” Journalism’s mission “aligned perfectly with what I felt like the world needed, especially at that point as a politically engaged Gen Z person.”
“I thought a journalist’s perspective — where you’re on the outside, you’re not in the fire per se — you get to see every log burn. You get to witness how everything is either collapsing or coming back together. You get a front-row seat, and then you get to shape the narrative about it. You have a voice. I think I wanted a voice really badly,” Cordover recalls about her post-grad self.
Prentice arrived on Stanford’s campus last fall with no journalism experience but quickly involved herself as a reporter for the Stanford Daily. Soon after, she became hooked on the idea of pursuing journalism professionally. “I just really fell in love with it, and I really love how integrated I feel with things that are happening on campus, and how intellectually stimulating I find it. I think the pursuit of knowledge being my career sounds amazing.” Despite already facing scrutiny as a student journalist, Prentice describes the profession as a “noble pursuit.”
She says that she thinks about her “future journalistic career every day, multiple times a day,” but tries not to think about the obstacles in the industry. “Most of the time I just try to channel that nervous energy over something I fundamentally cannot control into the work that I’m doing now. And I think I try to frame it as: how can I write more? How can I write better to get closer to that goal?” Still, Prentice says she has “oh fuck” moments when news like the Post layoffs rolls in.
“Before I was interested in journalism, I didn’t really think about what the consequences would be if we didn’t have it. I mean, what if we didn’t have someone bringing hidden information into the public eye and educating you on what’s happening in the world?” Prentice recalls. That reckoning, paired with embracing the Daily newsroom and seeing how hard her peers worked to produce the “most truthful, accurate and in-depth” reporting possible has given her the sense that journalism “will prevail.”
Young shares a sense of optimism about the industry for the same reason, a belief that “there is a role for the media in American democracy that will persist in some shape or form for many, many years.” The role of journalists has in some ways been “enhanced by the fact that there are so many questions — about the role of institutions and the role of narrative and the role of who gets to tell a story — being asked in our country right now.” These challenges to the ethos that has persisted since the golden age of journalism are forcing reporters to rise and meet the moment, Young adds.
Penn graduate from the class of 2025, Anusha Mathur, has interned at the Flathead Beacon, Politico, MSNBC and The Washington Post, and is currently completing a six-month internship at NPR covering immigration. Mathur has always known that journalism was something she wanted to do. “I feel a really deep connection to the profession. I love writing. I really wanted to write things that would be impactful and read by people in the real world,” she reflects. Because of this, she was willing to “make sacrifices” regarding financial stability — at least at the beginning of her career.
Even with her confidence that she chose the right career and still has “so much to learn,” Mathur acknowledges the challenges. “It’s a very uncertain career compared to other careers. There’s no linear path. It’s hard even at the start to figure out where you want to go and how to get there. It’s all very opaque.” With the heightened competition in the industry and external threats to newsrooms, particularly public media, her mentality is governed by a hope that “things work out in addition to working really hard, because you have such little control — especially in journalism compared to other industries — over where you end up.”
Misra chalks up the appeal of journalism to a certain personality: “I think this industry attracts a specific kind of individual who — to put it nicely, because you’re recording me — thrives on high pressure and tight deadlines and loves the adrenaline and to some extent the instability of the game. I never want to be bored. That was my biggest thing growing up, I was terrified I was going to be in a job I didn’t love that bored me.”
Wang characterizes herself in the same way as she goes “full send into journalism.” She laughs as she admits that decision “could be a lapse of judgment” — before adding that her choice to pursue a career as a reporter is “honestly in spite of the current media environment… almost in defiance of it.” She’s hell bent on defeating the odds: “It’s bad, but it can always be worse. And then worse comes along and it’s like, it’s going to be awful, but it could also be great.”
She doesn’t consider herself to be “someone with unrelenting hope.” But as the industry weathers attack after attack, she considers herself lucky to have friends and mentors in journalism. “We’re all struggling together. At least there’s community in these dark times.”
“I really believe in journalism as a higher calling. It’s almost like a religion,” Wang explains. She believes journalism is essential, that it benefits society as a whole. “I’m driven not just to inform people, but to inform people about the truth. It’s a value system thing,” Wang adds. Like so many others facing the question of pursuing journalism, Wang says the decision is clear. “I’ve always been excited by the work. Everything I’ve done in journalism has been fulfilling. I can sit at a desk, but I need something mentally stimulating. Journalism can be that five billion times over.”
Porteous falls into this camp of unfortunate souls who “can’t help but” when it comes to journalism. While he may regard a “newsroom that had seen considerable instability” with a little more hesitancy, Porteous admits that he has “committed to [a journalism career] to a point that I just need to ride the waves, the ups and downs within it.” At the end of the day, all he needs is an environment that will allow him to fulfill the responsibilities of being a journalist — what he characterizes as “free and independent reporting on the truth.”
***
I arrived on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus thinking that I would attend law school and practice as an attorney. That option is still on the table, but it’s plan B now. Like many of the student journalists I spoke with, I was quickly enraptured by the fast pace, direct impact, and ethical nuance a newsroom demanded. Conducting interviews, filing stories, and cramming edits to report the news on my campus gave me a simultaneous rush of adrenaline and burn of intimacy I hadn’t known before.
Journalism became the thing I couldn’t imagine not doing.
The obstacles facing the industry are intimidating; it’s not easy watching institutions I’ve revered crumble from fabricated yet relentless attacks from external actors who I believe fundamentally misunderstand or knowingly misconstrue the mandate of the fourth estate. I’m humbled, however, hearing from my peers on how steadfast they are in the greater mission of this work. While so many have lost sight of the crucial role reporters play in our society, we — the scrappy, stubborn young journalists — haven’t yet.
“I think we’re in kind of a golden age of student journalism at universities, from what I can tell. I feel like there’s a lot of talent in student newsrooms, and I just hope — for my own sake and my friends’ sake — that there are ample opportunities in this industry for those talented people to go on doing this work,” Porteous says.
I hope so too.
Jasmine Ni is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania studying English and Political Science and an Undergraduate Fellow with the Center for Media at Risk. She currently serves as the Executive Editor of Penn’s independent student news organization, overseeing the editorial operations of its three publications: The Daily Pennsylvanian, 34th Street Magazine, and Under the Button.
