New media means new opportunities for those with digital journalism training. A certificate in this discipline allows you to pursue careers in a wide range of fields including photojournalism, editing, newswriting, advertising, and publication production and design. Work involves generating professional blogs, photos, videos, tweets, posts and podcasts.
While the web can be a chaotic jumble of do-it-yourself reviewers, photographers, and reporters, trained digital journalists are rising above the clutter. As New York Times journalist David Carr explains, “News stories are so much richer and deeper with subtext than ever before. We are seeing deep analytical pieces 40 or 50 minutes after an event takes place. When we look back, we’ll see that the efficacy and impact of journalism jumped significantly because of the tools journalists now have.”
Photographer Damon Winter provides examples of that impact with photographs he took with his iPhone of soldiers in Afghanistan. Edited with the Hipstamatic app, Winter’s artistic photos provided an immediacy and intimacy that helped him win a prize from Pictures of the Year International. As critic Matt Buchanan writes, “Winter might be the first photojournalist to win an award using a slick photo app to document an event, but he won’t be the last.”
Department of Labor statistics show that within five years more than 90 percent of all communication and information jobs will require post secondary education. With a degree in digital journalism you will be poised to succeed in the booming cyberspace media world of digits and pixels.