The 17th annual journalism forum on Tuesday, April 19, will focus on how students can establish journalism careers in the age of digital news.
There will be two sessions, both held in Rollins 127 of the Newtown campus. One runs from 8 to 9:15 a.m., the second from 11 to 12:15 p.m. The forums are free and open to the public.
Tony Rogers, the head of the journalism program at Bucks, said the forum “is about giving students the opportunity to hear from professional journalists who are out working in the field.”
He added, “Typically, each speaker will give a short talk on their careers but then we generally open things up and have a question and answer session where students can ask the speakers whatever they want. I think this kind of event can be invaluable in helping students decide whether they want to pursue journalism as a career.”
The featured speakers include Marion Callahan, the projects and video reporter at the Bucks County Courier Times, and her colleague, Courier Times reporter Freda R. Savana. Matt Flowers, a reporter and online digital producer at the Courier-Post newspaper in New Jersey, and LevittownNow.com founder and editor Tom Sofield will also be speaking.
Rogers said the speakers will “talk about their careers, how they got into journalism, what it takes to get a job in the news business and what their jobs are like on a day-to-day basis. They will also talk about technological developments in news, such as the increased use of web videos, social media and blogging.”
Rogers pointed out that two of the speakers – Sofield and Flowers – are recent graduates of the journalism program at Bucks. “That shows there are jobs to be found in the news business,” he said.
Rogers said since the speakers work in both print and online journalism, and use many tech tools including web video, they will be able to offer a fresh perspective on how the news business works today.
“The news business is undergoing a huge transition right now from print to online journalism, so it’s an incredibly exciting time to be getting into this field,” he said.
And while many journalists faced layoffs after the Great Recession of 2008, many news outlets are hiring again, and are especially keen on finding young, tech-savvy journalists.
Rogers began organizing the forums not long after he began teaching at Bucks in 1997.
“The biggest one we ever had was the one right after the 9/11 attacks, when we had a group of journalists from New York who talked about what it was like to cover ground zero. For that forum we nearly filled the auditorium.”
For more information on the forums or on the journalism program at Bucks, go to: www.bucks.edu/journalism