Australia’s future journalists apparently don’t like getting their fingers dirty
According to research conducted by a professor at the Queensland University of Technology, nine out of 10 journalism students in Australia don’t read newspapers. It’s not that they’re not interested in following the news, says Alan Knight; it’s just that they’d rather get their fix from a television or the Internet. The most common complaints against newspapers were that they contain “too many long-winded articles,” “you have to buy them,” “they fall apart,” as well as the time-tested grievance that “they get ink on your fingers.” Knight found that students strongly believe newspapers will eventually give way to other news sources, but if it’s any comfort to the ink-stained wretches who work in the newspaper industry, Knight predicts “it’ll take a long time for them to die.”