By Janae Neely, education reporter
It seems that with each passing day, the media industry takes another hit. Whether it’s the cessation of federal funding or banning select news organizations from the Oval Office, the Trump Administration has initiated an attack on the press and media within its first 100 days in office.
Journalism has been present in society since the beginning of time, with a knack for being able to shift and adapt its business model to fit the needs of its audience. However, these hits to the press have left an overwhelming cloud of uncertainty over the media space. This uncertainty has especially affected graduating college students who are looking to build careers within these spaces.
For seniors who are looking for advice on how to enter the media industry, luckily, at Virginia Tech, there are events held in an effort to help these students and educate them with the resources available in order to have a long and successful career. One of these events is Comm Week, a week full of professional and networking events to help students prepare for post-grad careers. This year’s Comm Week was organized by Brandi Quesenberry, Undergraduate Director and Senior Instructor in the School of Communications.
“Comm Week is something that we started in 2018. We took a hiatus for a couple of years because of COVID, and it really is an opportunity for the School of Communication to offer all of our majors, so journalism, sports media analytics, comm, PR, and advertising, as well as any of our minors, to engage with us as a falculty or as a school, as well as our organizations” said Quesenberry. “What we want to do through an event like Comm Week is highlight our student organizations, provide those organizations opportunities to better promote or have a wider promotion of events and connections that they have, and what their goals and missions are”.
This year’s event included partnerships with Lambda Pi Eta, the Communications Honor Society on campus, and the Society of Professional Journalists. One of the major events featured guest speaker Ryan Ripken, a former baseball player who now owns his own media company. Navigating the post-graduate world can be tricky and confusing, Quesenberry gives this advice to those enetering the media and press space during this fragile time, “I do think it’s important to develop relationships with your faculty members, who have either worked in the industry or potentially still work in the industry, and who have their finger on the pulse of research and current trends in the industry, even if they are full time faculty members.” Quesenberry also noted that, “You can lean into their networks, and certainly pick their brains and find out more information from them.”
Lastly, Quesenberry wants students to keep in mind that forging connections and networking is important at these times, “Make sure you stay marketable with your skills. So, the skills that we are teaching in our classes, making sure that you’re taking full advantage, Virginia Tech has tons of resources through LinkedIn Learning. There are just a wide variety of options to help you hone your skills, so regardless of what the landscape is politically or what the economy looks like, you’re gonna be marketable, you’re gonna be employable in a wide variety of industries”.
The Trump Administration’s continuous attack on the press and media has left a lot of questions surrounding the legality of these executive orders and how this affects the meaning of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. There are also several questions regarding President Trump’s ultimate goal in his slow but steady attempts to censor the press. Understanding what this means is essential to graduating seniors who are building their careers within the media space.
Dr. Cayce Myers is an author and professor of Communication Law at Virginia Tech. When speaking on these executive orders, Dr. Myers stated, “I don’t know if it has infringement rights on freedom of speech, but it certainly does pivot the business model of those organizations.” he continued stating, “I would expect that in some ways, these platforms will survive through a different model. The public television model and also the public radio model come out of an era that is pre-streaming cable reality. And so, the way they find their marketplace is very different than the world they entered.”
In terms of what these orders mean for the quality of news sharing, Dr. Myers commented, “Now what does this look like in terms of programming quality, what does this mean in terms of some of the things they’ll be able to do? That likely will change.” Myers continued, “But, I think that this overall will be a shift that’ll change the nature of their business. I don’t know that it will eliminate them completely, I think they may be able to function, and their content will get out in other ways, but that remains to be seen.”
Many have wondered what the end goal is for the Trump Administration, and what it is exactly that they want to come out of this. Dr. Myers has two different reasonings for why President Trump has set his sights on the press, “Well, I think the ultimate goal is reduction of cost of government, and that’s an overarching goal that like I said, this has been a Republican talking point for a long time, cutting the bureaucracy of the government and streamlining it and providing services that are essential, and then cutting extraneous services. I think another part of it is that there is an underlying criticism of television, of public radio, that it has a very left-winged bent to it and it’s not a nonpartisan outlet, it’s a partisan outlet. And so, I think there is this sense of a lack of support for continuing funding for something that is kind of seen as antithetical to many of the Republican talking points.”
One of the most interesting things about President Trump’s time in office thus far is not only the surplus of executive orders he has signed, but the quickness of these orders.
“The problem with executive orders is that they don’t have the staying power that a law does. The staying power is just not the same. So there’s this immediacy, but there’s not that long-term effect. It gives, I think, in some ways, in that context, you can have a sort of whiplash for people to kind of figure out ‘What is the norm here?’” – Dr. Cayce Myers, Communication Law Professor
Many view Trump’s orders as a way to control the narrative and only push out the stories that he believes are worthy of being news. For graduating students who are worried about the uncertainty surrounding the press, Myers says keep these things in mind “I think for students entering the media world, what they should be more concerned about is the economics behind the media structure. Because this is a small subset of media when you’re talking about public funded media. When you’re talking about media in general, we’re in a world of convergence, and we’re in a world where the most interesting thing is that you used to have these big corporations like CBS News or ABC. And they’re being competed with and being outdone by individual podcasters and people who have no infrastructure or very little, and it is like they are able to compete with these multi-million dollar industries.” Myers continued, “I think that is the bigger challenge is how do you keep up with this changing economic structure of the media.”
“In the creative fields, you have to market yourself differently. A lot of other fields don’t require a portfolio, because you want to be able to showcase your work. I think you also have to learn to describe things a little bit differently, because you have to describe your art.” – Leigh Anne Byrd, Assistant Director for Career Development and College Relations
Byrd advises that flexibility, persistence, and perseverance are the most important qualities to have when attracting employers in the changing media world. “The keyword that we always heard during Covid was pivot, so thinking about different avenues or different places that you didn’t have in mind at first.” Byrd also discussed the increasing importance of networking and prioritizing quality over quantity when it comes to filling out job applications.
The media world has seen many changes over the past five months, and a lot of these changes don’t have solid outcomes or solutions. But this isn’t anything new. Journalism and the media have consistently revamped themselves and have still survived despite it all. Media will always have a place in society, and no amount of censoring can change that.
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