Placement

Placement steady despite slow economy

“The Orange County register’s job freeze of 1991 has thawed,” the ad begins in the May 2 issue of Editor and Publisher. And the number of want ads surrounding that one has grown in recent months.

All that is good news for the students and faculty of the College of Journalism. Bud Pagal, chair of the news-editorial department and the placement director for the department, said the recession seems to have eased enough that more papers are hiring again, filling positions they had left vacant during tight economic times.

All three departments within the College of Journalism are enthusiastically involved in helping graduates get jobs, no matter what the market may be. The placement directors are tenacious, and according to the records, quite successful.

For example, during the years 1986 through 1990, news-editorial graduated 108 students. Seventy-six of those found jobs at newspapers, 42 of them at Nebraska newspapers. Most recently, all 17 the December 1991 news-ed graduates were employed as of April 1992, Pagal said.

The advertising department graduated 199 students during 1990 and 1991, according to vice chair Clancy Strock, who also serves as placement director for the department. While records are not entirely complete, the department has verified that 61 or those graduates are working in advertising, public relations or related pursuits. Six more are in graduate school.

Sixty of the 88 broadcasting department graduates from December 1989 through August 1991 are working in mass communication jobs, according to Rick Alloway, placement director for the department. And things are looking good for 1992, with 29 of the 48 graduates placed in journalism-related jobs by mid summer.