Given the tidal wave of bad news about the journalism industry, a story with the headline, “Surprise! J-school grads are finding jobs“, is bound to attract attention.

Best of all, the headline is not link bait. Instead the Daily Finance story reports on how journalism school graduates in the US are thriving.

It found that two-thirds of recent grads from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism report having jobs or other post-school plans, such as internships, fellowships or continuing education.

CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism reported similar numbers, with 60 per cent of recent grads in full-time jobs in journalism. Another 15 per cent have quasi-full-time internships or freelance gigs.

I don’t have stats for the recent grads from the UBC Graduate School of Journalism where I teach. But they have found positions in places as diverse as CBC, the Globe and Mail and the Walrus.

Some may be surprised that there are are opportunties for journalism students. But they should not be.

The abundance of news online means there is a greater need than ever for professionally-trained journalists to navigate and make sense of this ocean of information.

There are other reasons. Students should graduate from j-school the skills to practice journalism across all media platforms as newsrooms are looking for journalists who are flexible and adaptable.

The Daily Finance story also speculates there is a less noble explanation:

My guess is at least some of it is a direct result of the massive staff cutbacks just about every media organization has enacted in the past couple years. It’s a corporate cliche to lay people off and euphemize it as “restructuring,” but you can be sure that some of the companies that are letting go well-paid editors and writers in their 40s and 50s are quietly stocking up on fresh j-school grads whose lack of real-word experience is at least partly made up for by their effortless fluency in the ways of the web — and their willingness to work for $35,000 a year.