Q. Do journalism recruiters even look at grades anymore? Many of my students obsess about them, but I get the sense that editors view grades with some suspicion and have stopped assigning much weight to them. Your thoughts?
Rick BrunsonJournalism InstructorUniversity of Central FloridaA. Forgive me, but I am going to shamelessly quote right out of Chapter 3 from my book, "
Breaking In: The www.JobsPage.com Guide to Newspaper Internships."
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"The truth about your grade point average: Most newspaper editors will never ask for it.
"Few editors and even fewer recruiters will ask for your transcript. Your grades make it or break it with colleges, scholarship programs, grad schools and professional programs, but newspapers generally won't ask.
"Why not? Two reasons.
"One is that your grade point average is only one indicator of success and it is not as good an indicator of journalistic success as practical experience. While a good high school GPA might indicate how well you will do as an undergrad and a good undergrad GPA may tell us something about grad school, newsrooms are not classrooms. Editors use different criteria and indicators. Good grades can say that you're intelligent or work hard, but the editors are looking in different places for signs of that, too.
"The second reason editors don't often ask about GPAs is we don't want you so wrapped up in raising them that you drop practical experience to do better on exams. Recruiters know that students talk to each other, and recruiters know that if they ask a couple students about their GPAs, students left and right will hear about it after the interview and some will start bailing out of activities -- including journalism -- to spend more time polishing their GPAs. That is not what we want. Don't misunderstand. This is not an excuse to incinerate your GPA or to feel dejected because you worked hard to have a good one. Just remember to balance work in the classroom with work in a newsroom. If you have a great GPA, crow about it. Put it on the resume. Mention it in the interview. Get a tattoo. If it is OK and you're getting some great newsroom experience, that's good. If your GPA is in the toilet, don't mention it. Newsrooms don't want to hire dummies or slackers and they sometimes are the ones who wind up with the bad grades. The key is balance. Do well in all areas: grades, journalism experience, leadership. Do not excel in just one area at the expense of the others. That will be true in your career, too."
What do you think? Let's hear from some more professors and editors on this. How important do you think grades should be?
Join the discussion.
Coming Wednesday: As he contemplates proposing, he worries how they will manage their careers. He is a journalist; she is not.
I agree with my friend Joe's premise that students should...
