In its first four years of operation, 227 students have served as News21 fellows, working on in-depth reporting projects that emphasize deep, well-sourced journalism presented in new and innovative ways on the Web. The hope was that these students would be prepared to lead the industry through a time of change and that they would land jobs at higher rates than other journalism graduates.
That appears to be just what is happening. An analysis of hiring rates after the first four years of the program shows that News21 graduates are much more successful in getting jobs than their journalism and communication school counterparts.
Seventy two percent of the 227 News21 graduates from 2006 through 2009 are working full time, including 87 percent in the communication field. In contrast, only about 60 percent of journalism graduates in 2008 got jobs and only about half of those are employed in the communication industry, according to the 2008 annual study conducted by Lee Becker, et. al., at the University of Georgia.
News21 alums are employed at a range of companies. A sampling: Newsweek, the Associated Press, Washington Post, Dow Jones, Bloomberg, the BBC, law360.com, the NepaliTimes.com, Al Jazeera English, readwriteweb.com and SnapFactory, Swarm Interactive and GUSH Productions. Currently at least three News21 alums work for Patch.com, including Berkeley alum Amy Jeffries, who is included in a gallery of editors in a Business Insider story headlined, “Meet AOL’s Fresh-Faced Future of Local News.
What’s ahead? That’s hard to anticipate, but we do know that the future is in the capable hands of some very talented young journalists.
We are tracking the News21 graduates, who are funded by the Knight Foundation and Carnegie Corp.