By Joel Thurtell
If you are one of the 1,100 people who received PhD diplomas in history last year, let me express my condolences.
You are looking at a pretty bleak future.
According to the American Historical Association, there will be 685 jobs for 1,100 brand-new PhDs.
That works out to 1.61 wannabe profs for every college history job opening.
Pretty depressing, if the newly-minted PhDs only look for academic jobs as history profs.
Also pretty depressing if they wind up selling insurance instead of applying their knowledge of history along with their skills at investigating the past.
I understand the feeling, by the way. I passed my general exams, aka “prelims,” for the Ph.D. in Latin American history at the University of Michigan back in 1970. Had I finished my dissertation, I would have graduated into the job market about 1972 or 1973, when the ratio of history Ph.D.s to jobs was even worse — roughly 2:1.
Ironically, in 1968, when I earned my M.A. in history at UM, I was offered academic history teaching jobs by two four-year colleges. I turned them down after conferring with my draft board, whose secretary assured me there was no deferment for college teachers. It looked like the infantry for me. How I avoided being drafted thanks to Chicago’s finest and the 1968 Democratic National Convention is a story I’ve already written about on this blog.
I was able to finish my graduate course work, pass the prelims and do dissertation research leading to the Ph.D., except that life intervened in the form of a stint driving Yellow Cabs in Ann Arbor followed by service in the Peace Corps followed by farm work, factory work and finally a gig as a radio reporter that led to a career that keeps on going even though, supposedly, I am retired. That career has been — and is, thanks to books and blogging — journalism.
And journalism is the job I’m thinking is the perfect fit for people who have been trained as historians. This is the pitch I’d like to make to historians with those freshly-printed Ph.D.s: Set aside your dream of living out your life in academia. Open your mind to another possibility.
It’s a possibility with a hell of a lot more excitement than languishing on some ivy-infested college campus sipping Starbucks and shooting the bull with self-appointed intellectuals.
Think of the assets you bring to journalism. As a historian, you are highly trained in the evaluation of evidence. You are like Pavlov’s dog when it comes to demanding documentation from anyone trying to convince you that this or that or such and such is fact. You are conditioned to demand exacting proof. Journalists tend to shun records in favor of what radio people call “actualities” and print reporters call “quotes.” Well, the “actualities” and the “quotes” may enliven the sound and brighten the page, but they’re a poor substitute for verifiable fact.
You come equipped, little do you know, with a highly sensitive, thoroughly calibrated bullshit meter.
In short, you have been trained, albeit unwittingly, to be a journalist.
But you say you’ve never studied journalism.
Good for you!
You are light years ahead of those who majored in journalism.
For you not only possess a mental attitude honed for the kind of investigations journalists like to do; you also possess a huge repository of knowledge about the world — history — that few J school majors have. Knowledge can be a filter for accepting or rejecting so-called “ideas” for stories that all too often make their way into mainstream news outlets due to basic knowledge and critical thinking that go wanting with many journalists.
As a history major and later a history PhD, you have not wasted your time learning how to do an activity — reporting — that any literate person can pick up through on-the-job training.
Unlike the J school grad, you as a historian come pre-packaged to think independently. You know automatically how to weigh evidence.
Not only that, but the nation desperately needs people like you who can look at local, regional or world events and analyze them, assign causes and discern effects.
In other words, as a historian, you can help to fill a national dearth of high-quality journalists. Many journalists’ training did not include mastery of knowledge in several fields, reading knowledge, at least, of one or more foreign languages and an ability to analyze evidence and draw rational conclusions on your own.
When you were studying Colonial History of the New World or, say, European intellectual history, the journalist was banging his brain through a course in the Associated Press style. Can you imagine such a waste? You could buy the book for a few bucks on amazon and learn AP style in a couple hours. But why bother? You’d find yourself working on a paper with its own style book, and all that college tuition or self-primed study would be for nothing.
You didn’t waste your time on style. You took classes that taught substance, and along the way, you learned to ask questions and how to think.
Journalism needs you!
So, to that 39 percent of this year’s history PhDs who face no academic job prospects, I say: Take a leap.
Jump-start a career in journalism.
How do you do that?
Hah!
Thought you’d never ask.
No, I’m not suggesting you enroll in classes on wire service style or copy-editing or magazine writing or anything else that will cost you money you don’t have.
Rather, I suggest you spend twenty-five dollars on a short course in starting your career as a journalist.
Simply purchase my book, SHOESTRING REPORTER: HOW I GOT TO BE A BIG CITY REPORTER WITHOUT GOING TO J SCHOOL AND HOW YOU CAN DO IT TOO!
Armed with your historian’s knowledge, together with your well-sharpened critical thinking skills and my book, SHOESTRING REPORTER, you can bypass the J school program and head straight to a career in journalism.
One more thing: Don’t believe all the newspaper-generated hype about journalism being a dying field.
But wait — I discuss all of this in SHOESTRING REPORTER, along with how to start your career in this exciting endeavor.
Enough said: Buy SHOESTRING REPORTER!
