Only six in 10 U.S. journalism and mass communication majors were employed full time within eight months of graduation showed a survey this summer by Lee Becker at the University of Georgia.

Meanwhile, those programmes conferred 55,000 - more than ever granted in the discipline's history. "The days when you climbed onto the best newspaper you could and looked forward to doing the same thing for 40 or 50 years are over," Dean Mills, head of the Missouri School of Journalism, told the AP in an article on the subject this week. "People who want security or lack ambition probably should not be in journalism schools these days."

Meanwhile, news outlets large and small are heavily supplementing their staffs - both in print and online with a glut of unpaid interns in summer and throughout the school year, as illustrated by the Washington Post. And in the online world, former publishing professionals are back at square one, the Los Angeles Times reported.