Just last week Sarah Lacy, BusinessWeek columnist and avid Twitterista, asked why anyone would enroll in journalism school. She was baffled by the recent surge in J-school applications and said, "Journalism schools are like foot-binding. They force you into a style that a bunch of dinosaurs all agreed was acceptable a zillion years ago. So in an age of blogging, you have no voice."

I understand Lacy's skepticism and downright disapproval. Journalism as a career has always revolved more around hands-on experience than textbook memorization, and journalism schools have not been the quickest to adopt new media classes.

But what if it's too late to change your major? What if you already spent the last three and a half years analyzing New York Times articles, reading about Woodward and Bernstein and studying journalism ethics?

J-school undergrads in 2009 are faced with more than one conundrum: They can go to grad school, but may not make enough money to pay off their loans afterward; they could work at a newspaper, but it might not exist in three to five years; they could drop everything and become entrepreneurs, but will likely fail. The economy is in shambles and the industry they were trained to enter is in its last breath. "Journalism" in itself will still exist, but how and in what form remains a mystery.

As death-of-print experts argue back and forth over where "it's all going," J-schoolers patiently watch the tennis match of conflicting ideas, waiting for an answer.

Scared, Worried, Nervous

NYU junior Iman Richardson says she will cry when she graduates and that she's "scared as hell." She wishes J-school focused more on educating students into becoming well-rounded journalists with backgrounds in production, editing, print, broadcast, blogging and more. And despite her social media skills, Richardson is not looking forward to landing a digital job. "It takes away the hold-it-in-your-hand charm that made me fall in love with journalism to begin with," she says.

Taylor Riggs, senior, is also not sure what she will do and is nervous about the economy. "I am probably going to apply to more broadcast than print jobs -- seeing that the print industry is dying," she says. "I wish that our journalism school had incorporated more broadcast and print together -- I feel that my teachers taught me how to write a 300-word newspaper article, but no one taught me how to write a news segment for TV."

Other students have given up the idea of journalism as a career altogether. Audrey Tran, a senior, is pretty sure she'll be working as a paralegal or administrative assistant at an immigration firm.

"I'm pretty happy about this, but I do feel scared because of the economy," she says. "I'm entering the kind of position that would be first to go, if my firm had to lay off people." Tran added that she was discomforted by the lack of any support-system community among J-students.

One grad school hopeful, Lauren Gregory, plans to stay at NYU to get her Masters of Social Work degree and go abroad to Africa to be a social worker.

"I am excited to be done with college, but because I am staying here and going to grad school it's not a big enough transition to cause any stress," she says. Gregory added that while abroad she will be doing almost everything online (blogging, photojournalism, research and PR). "Skills pertaining to promoting yourself and creating an online identity are vital to becoming successful nowadays," she added.

Avoiding J-school

"I am not a journalism major," says NYU student and NYULocal.com founder Cody Brown. "You would have to be an idiot."

Despite having taken journalism courses, such as Professor Jay Rosen's class on beat-blogging, "Studio 20," Brown hates the idea of journalism as a major.

"Most J-school graduates will bluster around self-importantly for a year and half," he says. "They will start a blog no one but their mother and a few sympathetic friends will read, they will use family and friend connections to get some job in the meantime to tie themselves over. Some may get reporting jobs at once-prestigious newspapers, but that will pay half of what they normally do. And instead of raises you will get memos about doing less with more and pay cuts -- [all with] the job security of a politician in Baghdad."

Instead of majoring in journalism, Brown proposes students study how things get popular online, work for a rising blog, or study and publish prolifically on a specific field.

"There is no choice. If you're not an entrepreneur you will most likely fail," he says. "Actually, you will fail. There's very little question." In any case, Brown remains excited about the incredible opportunities the Internet provides, adding that it's the ability to invent and manage ideas that leads to success.

Contributing editor of The Atlantic, Michael Hirschorn, wrote recently that the death of the newspaper "...will also mean the end of a certain kind of quasi-bohemian urban existence for the thousands of smart middle-class writers, journalists, and public intellectuals who have, until now, lived semi-charmed kinds of lives of the mind."

Brown agreed: "That is what journalism school prepares you for. There will still be this semi-charmed life of the mind but you are going to need a day job. Some will try and start their own publications or companies but the success rate will be analogous to a group of seniors starting a 'production company' after they finish four years of film school."

Advice From a Veteran Journo

If technology journalist and social media consultant, Paul Gillin, were a J-school student today, he would prepare for the job market by consolidating all of his work on a website that included links to his portfolio items in every possible medium.

"I would have a blog, links to published articles, videos, photos and audio recordings," Gillin told me. "I would include photos of myself and a biography that makes me look inquisitive, versatile and ambitious. I'd also show that I know how to have fun."

When Gillin graduated journalism school in 1979, he entered the real world with only a one-page resume on ivory paper and a black leather portfolio full of clips. The tools available to him were the phone and the U.S. mail. Employers couldn't scope him out ahead of time; they had to wait until Gillin's letter arrived with copies of clips or he showed up in person with portfolio in hand. "It was very inefficient," he says.

Today, Gillin says graduates can promote themselves much more broadly and their loyalty will be to themselves rather than their employers.

"Media brands are becoming less meaningful. Personal brands are on the rise," he explains. "The challenge for any graduating journalism student today is to begin the process of creating an online profile that is independent of institutional affiliation."

Gillin's advice to young J-schoolers is to create a resume on Facebook and alert all friends and business contacts to its existence. Then do the same on LinkedIn. He suggests starting a Twitter account to notify all friends of any new online outposts, then ask them to retweet that information to their followers. "Every time I posted new content, I would promote that via these channels. I'd syndicate my blog on Facebook and LinkedIn and tweet new entries to my followers," he says.

Lastly, if paid writing assignments weren't forthcoming, "I'd write anyway," says Gillin. "The secret to visibility is to publish constantly, promote relentlessly and make sure the online presence is search-optimized like crazy." Gillin added that he would also clean up any online detritus that reflected negatively on his image.

Stuck in Limbo

Unfortunately, there is no right answer for young twenty-somethings who love writing and reporting. Taking all the "right steps" may not be enough.

I look at myself as a perfect example: I have honed all my social media skills, promoted my name and my work, and networked with professionals.

Still, as a journalism major from a renowned university with over 4,000 Twitter followers, links to numerous professional connections on LinkedIn, social media expertise, and a well-established personal brand -- I have no idea what I am going to do when I graduate.

Alana Taylor is a junior at New York University, double-majoring in journalism and history with a strong interest in film, entertainment, new media and technology. She currently manages her own blog, and works part-time as both a freelance social media consultant and a correspondent for Mashable, the world's most popular social networking blog.

Last Wednesday, MediaBistro held a panel discussion titled, "Journalists and Social Media: Sources, Skills, and the Writer." The panelists included NYU professor and PressThink author Jay Rosen, NPR senior strategist Andy Carvin, BusinessWeek.com community editor Shirley Brady, and Daily Beast columnist Rachel Sklar. The four journalists discussed which social networks they liked best, their top concerns for the industry, and what they saw as the future of journalism. The main topic of conversation, however, was (of course) Twitter.

Twitter is popular not just because it allows journalists to crowdsource with thousands of people or because it's a fun way of amassing followers and inflating egos. It also gives reporters a chance to create a new system of reporting. In the past, journalists were confined to their words and research methods, all dictated by traditional routines. Now they can create new strategies, use different tools, brand themselves differently, and propose new ideas. Twitter has given them hope and direction to do this because it has given them a public forum in which to loudly speak their ideas.

Twitter is hope for the future. It is promise of change. Twitter is journalism's Obama.

Geo-locating Sources Helps Niche Reporting

"Journalists need to start seeing the public not just as audience members, but as sources," said Andy Carvin as he held his cell phone tightly in his hand. While he explained the concept of Twitter to the audience, he was also sending out tweets in real time. In some places it could be interpreted as rude for Carvin to be immersed in his gadget while in front of an audience, but most likely the audience was doing the exact same thing.

Carvin highlighted this year's presidential election as a perfect example of how Twitter could be used for journalism by capitalizing on niche topics and using location-based tools. "Twitter can be used to to report on, specifically, voting irregularities," he explained.

NPR collaborated with the creators of Twitter Vision to create TwitterVoteReport.com, a site where people could use tweets, text messages, or voicemail to report any strange or bothersome experiences at voting locations. The site was a success, with around 10,000 people participating and numerous volunteers monitoring the stories.

It's no wonder that an established organization like NPR was able to reach this level of response. Beat reporters, too, would benefit immensely from monitoring key words and hashtags on a micro-blogging platform, but it would require the public to be aware of such a platform and how to participate on each beat.

Twitter is a good starting point for monitoring conversations, but the real feat will be when someone figures out a way to create a community where the participants are knowingly and actively contributing their first-hand information to the reporter rather than the reporter taking the "overheard" information from the public.

Twitter Impossible to Avoid?

"These days you can't hide behind your byline," says Shirley Brady, agreeing that Twitter serves a role as a mediator between reporter and reader. "No matter what your specialty is, these days you are forced into the public arena. You have to really engage with your readers and you can't just publish your story and move on to the next one. You have to keep the conversation going...which can be a pain when you're done and on to a new assignment."

Brady's efforts at BusinessWeek have been focused on getting journalists to interact with the public and getting staff comfortable online. These days there are 33 BusinessWeek blogs, with about 90 staff bloggers. It has become common practice for reporters to pick up interesting stories suggested by readers. "The economy is tough, but in a strange way, it's actually a great time for journalists," says Brady.

Indeed, it's a great time for journalists -- mostly because the Internet can now help them find credible sources of information. In the days of early AOL chat rooms, the public saw the Internet as a strange, "Lord of the Flies"-type society, where anonymous creeps could not be trusted. Now, not only has the Internet become a place where people can trust each other, but professionals are actually learning to take it seriously. Twitter has proven to be a credible source for breaking news, real time, and it can help build a future where the reader and the reporter can trust each other again.

Good Journalism Still Deserves Praise

For Rachel Sklar, Twitter is a place where she can be herself and be open about her urges for sharing everything. She admits that it may have even saved her life. However, the thing she resents about the mobilization of citizen journalism is that many have lost respect for the actual means of production -- and have little appreciation for the work required to create a piece of good journalism.

"It's not just about 'What I had for lunch,'" said Sklar. "It's the actual time it takes to research context and [get] all the important elements that go into a story." Sklar, who (like Carvin) sent out tweets during the panel, finds herself more and more concerned by the fact that the pendulum of interest has swung toward more "fun, sassy content" and away from "long, boring, investigative stuff."

According to her, people are now used to getting content for free, making them progressively more apathetic to the people who created that content. Sure, Sklar loves tweeting just as much as the next "SNL"-loving journo, but as a self-described "ink-stained wretch," Sklar hopes that long-form investigative journalism lives on to get the recognition it deserves.

Show Me the Money!

"Right now there is no business model in news," said Jay Rosen. "We are between platforms. We understand the factors that are ending the current model, but nothing has changed yet." Rosen says that no one has yet found an answer to the problem of monetizing journalism online, but he does not sound too worried. He uses Twitter as a "giant tipster network" and his vision is one of intelligent filters that focus and tighten information through the human social network.

Undoubtedly, our press is at a very important moment -- moving to a new platform, a new form of news. For Rosen, it was the open source revolution, the birth of Wikipedia, that made him realize how people could collaborate to produce journalism online. "Right now, the way you make yourself valuable on the Internet is you edit the f***ing web for people," he exclaimed. Rosen doesn't just study journalists; he actually tries to make change himself by running projects such as NewAssignment.net and BeatBlogging.org.

"It's the simple idea that we ask a lot of people to help us with a task, and because the web has cut the costs to reach a lot of people, and cut the costs for those people to find each other and share information, we now have the resources to make things, build things, discover new opportunities," Rosen said.

For now, the most obvious, the most accessible, and the most exciting tool to accomplish those things -- or at least discuss them en masse -- has been Twitter. It's a place where journalists can think out loud. It's a place for journalists to live and breathe journalism. It's a breeding ground for new ideas. All it needs is seeds, water, and sunlight. Then wait.

*To watch what the panelists had to say over after-party drinks at the bar, check out this video:

Alana Taylor is a junior at New York University, double-majoring in journalism and history with a strong interest in film, entertainment, new media and technology. She currently manages her own blog, and works part-time as both a freelance social media consultant and a correspondent for Mashable, the world's most popular social networking blog.

The survey was then written up by fellow NYU student and journalist Lily Quateman who posted it online and watched it quickly gain widespread attention throughout the blogosphere.

"I came up with the survey, Lily wrote the story, and two hours later it was on the Drudge Report," says Brown as we sit in what he calls "the second best seat" at Think Coffee.
Upon meeting him for the first time I notice his unkempt blonde hair, and piercing blue eyes.

We relate on many levels. We are both juniors at NYU, we love journalism, and we embrace new media. Even the insanity of being written about all over the Internet is something we can laugh about.

"It was absurd, the survey story blew up around Politico, Fox, and CNN," he tells me. "The results were totally inconsequential, but the way that the news spread was really empowering.

Watching how fast the Internet moved was the inspiration for NYU Local, a blog magazine of sorts that mixes factual reporting, video, photos and opinion.

"I saw that it was a classic case of pack reporting, how easy it is to attach yourself," Brown adds. "Sure, they would each format their stories differently, but they ultimately attacked the same angle."

I could relate. The last time I wrote about new media and the journalism school at NYU, the reactions were loud and opinionated -- some positive, some negative. And bloggers, just as professional journalists have done for years, kept pack reporting the same ideas over and over.

It certainly wasn't the first time that I had experienced this sort of viral phenomenon either. Ever since I began blogging for Mashable I've noticed what I like to call "blog leeches." These are the people and bots who subscribe to a certain online publication and then either automatically feed it out through their own sites to get free views from content that they did not create, or re-blog the content with a tiny bit of spin or summary.

A few months after the survey incident, NYU Local was launched with funding by the Reynold's Program in Social Entrepreneurship and under the supervision of NYU journalism department head Brooke Kroeger and professor Adam Penenberg. Brown designed a Wordpress platform for the site, hired writers and editors (including Quateman), and said goodbye to the world of print.

College Newspapers Are Dying Too

Just as I mentioned in my last Mediashift post, journalism schools need to teach new media because print is dying.

To be at the forefront of this change, NYU Local has latched onto the unique nature of this untraditional metropolitan campus and given it a beat, a new edginess that the older school paper, Washington Square News, has not been able to do.

"NYU Local was started to try to stop this pattern of disunity on campus," explains Brown.

These days, not only do college students feel the need to report and receive their stories quicker, they're tired of bored, bland writing. The attitude on the web versus on print is very different. Everyone knows that you can "get away" with more on the web. Most college newspapers have advisors and editors working over the writers' shoulders, making sure they don't write anything too brash that will upset the dean of the school. But on the web, writers are posting straight from laptops in their dorm rooms or from iPhones as they stroll down the street.

According to Brown, there is just no way that print can compete. He said the New York Times can no longer claim to contain "all the news that's fit to print" with a straight face because that mantra isn't true anymore. They are not as quick as the blogs in covering breaking news nor do they have constant news reports coming in from amateur journalists.

Trash the Term 'Citizen Journalism'

"The idea of citizen journalism is a massive misnomer," says Brown. "Everyone is a citizen and anyone can be a reporter. The term is patronizing."

NYU Local hopes to let anyone and everyone contribute to the site and use it as a crowd-sourcing mechanism to allow naturally good and popular writers to rise to the top. The idea would be to remove the distinction of who is a professional and who is a citizen and let everyone contribute in the same way, using their real names and eventually building their own reputations.

NYU Local emphasizes the same motto that much of Web 2.0 and social media has been repeating for the last couple of years: a conversational approach. Brown hopes to open registration to everyone in the community and let them comment on the site, submit news tips, and even write their own articles.

This new-age platform is entirely inspired by "Rashomon," the Japanese film by Akira Kurosawa about the deconstruction of the singular perspective. Not only does NYU Local not claim to be the final word on any story, but they encourage users to generate every angle they can.

Say Goodbye to Objectivity

"Most people who want to be objective tend to disguise their opinions," Quateman says. As we speak over the phone, her voice sounds calm and collected. "Being objective treats readers like idiots and makes them guess." That said, Quateman added that she didn't want NYU Local to be completely one-sided. She noticed that the politics section was very liberal and had high hopes of finding "writers who like Sarah Palin." But as for reporting in general, she thinks it should stop trying to be objective.

Quateman, who is just shy of her 20th birthday, actually dropped out of the journalism major when she discovered that NYU journalism students were required to double major. Instead, she transferred to the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and created her own major in journalism and new media.

In fact, of the three editors that I interviewed, none are journalism majors.

Ned Resnikoff, the editor of the "National" section, is a philosophy major who loves to write about politics. He joined NYU Local after being underwhelmed by the Washington Square News. He said the paper's politics section was frustrating to read with its lecturing tone and frequent mishandling of the facts.

"The Washington Square News recently wrote that 'this election would be easier if McCain and Obama announced who they wanted in their cabinets.' And I'm like, yeah -- except that it's illegal," Resnikoff explains.

He decided to join NYU Local because he felt that he needed a better medium for his "niche of pugnacious, political commentary."

Since leaving WSN, Resnikoff has written various scathing attacks against their political writers, the latest being one in which he takes them to task for claiming that Gov. Sarah Palin represents the death of sexism in politics -- and for using poor metaphors.

"Sarah Palin has taken us across the Rubicon, and there's no going back," wrote Ann Friedman in WSN.

Resnikoff replied with: "Because Palin's ... Caesar? And Rome is, what, sexism? And the Rubicon is a glass ceiling. Made out of water. Or something."

Resnikoff, who is highly opinionated and wildly entertaining on NYU Local, began blogging about politics when he interned at Talking Points Memo.

"The greatest advantage [of blogging] is that we don't come out once a week or even once a day," he says. "We continually update all day."

Resnikoff recalls walking by CNN headquarters and seeing news about John McCain's "suspension" and quickly posting the story online five minutes later. "You just can't do that in print," he tells me.

Playford, who isn't a journalism major either, but rather studying journalism at Gallatin, claims to read NYU Local frequently but not pay attention to their page views. He is not even sure whether the new site is a competitor.

"When [NYU Local] first launched, they launched as a campus newspaper online, but then when they relaunched they launched as a blog," he says. "I really don't know if their aim is to compete with us. But if that is their aim, then I think competition is healthy." Playford says that for most newspapers, competition makes publications stronger, but he does not spend time thinking about NYU Local's strategy nor has he looked at their numbers.

Although WSN and NYU Local may look similar online, the two publications function differently. Where NYU Local publishes spontaneously throughout the day, WSN posts one time at night.

According to Playford, this is a result of most of the staff spending their day in class. "It's complicated to have a daytime web-first mentality because you want to make sure articles are done right, written engagingly, subtly edited," he explains. 

While Playford mentioned that his staff will post directly online if the content will lose value otherwise (as in the case of the election), he says that WSN will continue to be a print newspaper.

"Our business model would not particularly accommodate becoming an online-only paper," he says. "The reason for that, which is very simple and true just about for any paper, is that our print edition is making more money than the online edition."

Playford claims that for WSN to continue, it needs the revenue from the print edition to fuel fifty paid editorial staffers, another twenty paid business staffers, and various unpaid writers and photographers. This year the paper was able to fly a reporter to the Democratic National Convention. "We wouldn't be able to fund that kind of operation if we were just online," says Playford, adding that "this is not to say that we won't be online-only some day."

Another key difference between the two publications is that WSN does not take the "objectivity is null" approach. Playford clearly believes that the web allows for more multimedia, like video, but that WSN won't change the way it reports in different mediums because they pride themselves in providing reporting that is objective, complete, and well-researched.

For the editors, this is still only the beginning.

They hope to create a conversational platform that allows everyone inside it to join, contribute, and influence what it calls news. Their goal is to leave Wordpress and to invent a platform that makes breaking, sorting, and reviewing news as simple as using Facebook.

So what's their challenge?

All three editors agree that it will be about identity, trying to find out who and what they are. They aren't Gawker and they aren't the New York Times. With a staff of 20 writers, they're not a puny blog either.

The other challenging part of NYU Local won't be coding the new platform, but instead creating a user interface that transforms the thousands of ways users could capture their beat into something simple, aesthetically pleasing, and in line with the publication's values.

In Brown's eyes, they are a news brand. What makes them innovative is that they cover their beat from a thousand different perspectives, elevate online discussion through accountability, and get the majority of their content for free. NYU Local wants to define the massive space in between both tiers of media (blogs and traditional newspapers), fusing the best parts of each. 

As Brown puts it: "It's time to start rejecting the tribe-like closed door behavior of most major media and imagine a news organization that evolves into a republic."

Alana Taylor is a junior at New York University, double-majoring in journalism and history with a strong interest in film, entertainment, new media and technology. She currently manages her own blog, and works part-time for both Classic Media Inc. -- a production company/distributor of family programming -- and Mashable, the world's most popular social networking blog.

"Nowadays it's essential for journalists to blog," says Professor Mary Quigley to a class of 16 NYU journalism students. The class is titled "Reporting Gen Y (a.k.a. Quarterlifers)," and it's one of the few NYU undergrad journalism classes that focuses on new media.

I sit in Professor Quigley's class unsure of what to expect. As a member of Generation Y, I am in touch with what my peers find popular -- the Internet, iPods, flip-flops, cell phones, etc. -- but as a social media maven on the Internet I am an exception to the other 15 students in the class.

I am not a typical Quarterlifer. Yes, I have a Facebook account. But I also do so much more. I have a personal blog (which includes videos), I use the popular microblogging service Twitter, I am a blogger and web video correspondent part-time for Mashable (one of the top blogs on social media), and I assist heavily with the social media/marketing department for Classic Media, Inc. (a family programming company). I am deeply involved in social media, new media, technology, "the move to digital" -- whatever you want to call it.

Over the past two years I have been watching as magazines and other publications have taken hard hits economically while trying to migrate online. I have heard Jay Rosen speak about blogs and how important they are for citizen journalism. And in 2008 I made a decision to try to stay ahead of the game by joining the "early adopters" of the digital era.

Disappointment at NYU

What is so fascinating about the move from print to digital is the freedom to be your own publisher, editor, marketer, and brand. But, surprisingly, NYU does not offer the kinds of classes I want. It continues to focus its core requirements around learning how to work your way up the traditional journalism ladder. Here is the thinking I find here:

1. Get an internship at a magazine or newspaper. "This is good for your resume."
2. Bring the New York Times to class. The hard copy. "It's the only way to get the news."
3. Learn how to write for a magazine or newspaper. "Writing for blogs or websites is not journalism."
4. Become an editor at a magazine or newspaper. "This is the only respectable position."

Obviously, I am being a bit facetious here, but the truth of the matter is that by the time my generation, Gen Y, gets into the real world there will be a much higher demand for web-savvy writers and thinkers than traditional Woodwards and Bernsteins.

I was hoping that NYU would offer more classes where I could understand the importance of digital media, what it means, how to adapt to the new way of reporting, and learn from a professor who understands not only where the Internet is, but where it's going.

This class, "Reporting Gen Y," focuses more on how to write for "the book" (i.e., a magazine). It looks at whether Generation Y is really unique and distinct, and if so, in what ways. This semester my class will examine various aspects of Gen Y life from "emerging adulthood," to relationships, technology, work, and politics.

In defense of my professor (who is very talented and has written two books, which include extensive research on generational issues), this course does not claim to be a new media class or to teach about digital or citizen journalism. So I am in no position to complain. But in defense of my peers at NYU, I think that such a modern and open-minded school such as ours should give us more options.

The Only Blogger in the Room

The first thing I notice when I walk into the class is that there are 14 girls and two boys. Already NYU is dominated by females, but the journalism department is exceptionally estrogen-infested. Professor Quigley begins by explaining how blogs are becoming more important and asks if any of us have a blog.

One hand slowly rises. It's mine. None of the other students in the class have a blog. It comes as a shock to me that the students in a class about "how our generation is very much invested in the Internet" are not actually as involved. Again, perhaps I am an exception to the norm, but I like to think that having a blog is as normal as having a car.

What surprises me further is when Professor Quigley informs us that people actually get paid to blog. That they make a living off of this. For me this was very much a "duh" moment and I thought that it would be for the rest of the students as well. They should be fully aware at this point that blogging has become a very serious form of journalism. Furthermore, they should be aware that it is the one journalistic venture that requires little or no ladder-climbing. You can start at any age, with almost no experience, and actually get published instead of fetch coffee. Luckily, Quigley is one of the few NYU professors who understands this in some way.

On other subjects, however, I found Quigley lacking in understanding. Again, I don't expect her to be an expert on the world of social media, but for some reason I am unsettled at the thought of having a teacher who is teaching me about the culture of my generation. For example, she said one of the character traits of our generation was an unwillingness to interact with people face to face because we "spend so much time online."

In my experience, the Baby Boomers often think the Quarterlifers are anti-social because they socialize on Facebook and MySpace. I would argue that we actually spend more time interacting with others than the previous generation who didn’t have many forms of communication and typically spent more time sitting in front of the television or with a couple of the same old friends. For our generation it’s easier to get in touch, organize a meetup, throw together a party, ask someone out on a date.

At the halfway point in the class, Quigley lets us go on a break. In the bathroom I run into an old classmate who asks me if I am going to stay in the class. I ask her if she doesn't like it and she responds that she is worried of it being too "all-over the place" or "disorganized" or "confusing."

I immediately get what she means. This is the first time that Professor Quigley or anyone in the undergrad journalism department at NYU has taught a class on this subject. And we all know that first-time classes are "test runs." They don't follow the syllabus too closely and they don't grade too fairly because assignments are based on different levels of creativity and experience.

My classmate and I had gone through a similar situation just last semester when our professor had experimented with creating a class blog. It failed miserably because the teacher figured that we could be editors and writers as in a magazine. Blogs don't really work the same way and the articles are certainly not written the same way. This is the same class in which I decided to write a paper on women in technology and how easy and important it is for more girls to get involved in new media. When I pitched this story my teacher wasn't very convinced that my topic mattered. I ended up publishing it on my personal blog and landing my first job. I got a B on the paper.

Getting Beyond Print

Back in class, Quigley tells us we have to remember to bring in the hard copy of the New York Times every week. I take a deep sigh. Every single journalism class at NYU has required me to bring the bulky newspaper. I don't understand why they don't let us access the online version, get our current events news from other outlets, or even use our NYTimes app on the iPhone. Bringing the New York Times pains me because I refuse to believe that it's the only source for credible news or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and it's a big waste of trees.

At least I had hoped that this class would be more advanced. I hoped that perhaps my teacher would be open to the idea of investigating other sources of news from the Internet and discussing how they are reliable or not. I hoped that she wouldn't refer to podcasts as "being a pain to download" and that being aware of and involved in the digital era wasn't just a "generational" thing.

I am convinced that I am taking the only old-but-new-but-still-old media class in the country. At this point I may not learn too much I don't already know about my generation and where it's taking journalism. But one thing's for sure -- I'm certainly going to gain some insight into what exactly they mean by generation gap.

Alana Taylor is a junior at New York University, double-majoring in journalism and history with a strong interest in film, entertainment, new media and technology. She currently manages her own blog, and works part-time for both Classic Media Inc. -- a production company/distributor of family programming -- and Mashable, the world's most popular social networking blog.