While interest in the profession remains steady, journalism students are having difficulties finding work and are seeking alternative futures outside the newsroom, the Iowa City Press-Citizen reported. Enrollment at the University of Iowa's School of Journalism and Mass Communication has remained strong; however, graduates are finding it increasingly difficult to find jobs as newspapers across the U.S. make staff cuts, and in some cases, close.

Students are changing or adding degrees in fields outside journalism, enrolling in post graduate courses or taking time to travel while the news industry attempts to find a suitable model for the contemporary online environment.
"Somebody's got to pay for it, somehow," Associate Professor Don McLeese told the Press Citizen of the newspaper's ailing business model. "Somehow, someone has to figure out a way to generate money."

Senior Emileigh Barnes, the editor-in-chief at the university's student newspaper The Daily Iowan, has postponed a future in the industry.

"I had an overwhelming fear that I would move across the country, get a job at a newspaper and get laid off two months later," Barnes told the Press Citizen. The Daily Iowan scholarship recipient and national Hearst Journalism competition runner-up will instead take a two-year break from journalism at graduate school for poetry writing. Barnes said she was unaware of any seniors at The Daily Iowan who have found jobs in the journalism industry.

However, McLeese said he sees an important future for young journalists as the industry transitions through a period of great change, and stressed the role of journalism schools in producing good reporters no matter what medium the news takes, the Press Citizen reported.

"We have to train our students as best we can for the moving target journalism has become ... and teach them flexibility of mind to go into this profession wherever this profession goes," McLeese told the Press Citizen. "Journalistically, we have more tools at our disposal than ever. We can reach more eyeballs than ever."