My friend/classmate/protege Kali Zigrino wrote today about her plans to apply for an internship for her final semester at college. Like many other journalism majors, she is concerned about her future job prospects in the industry.
She writes:
While I know I want to be a journalist; that is a relative term. I’m not sure if I want to write for magazine, newspaper, alternative press, blog, or just chalk my college education up as a loss and go work with my mother.
She goes on to say that one goal of her internship is to gain a more specific direction, but I don’t think that a lack of specific direction is necessarily a negative. Journalists these days have to be more versatile than ever and be willing to take any job that comes along – regardless of it’s print, web, journalism, or technical writing.
Maybe I’m biased, but I think that my lack of specific direction is one of my biggest strengths. It provides me with more options when I’m sending out resumes, and also allows me to take on more responsibilities in whatever position I do obtain – making me more valuable as an employee.
“Jack of all trades but master of none” is usually thought of as a negative, but more and more it is the specialized “master” writers that are losing their jobs at publications while those that are able to cover a variety of topics manage to hold on.
What do you think? Is it better to have a specific focus in your career goals? Does keeping too much of an open mind leave you unorganized and stretched too thin?
Either way, good luck to Kali on her interview Wednesday!
