MBAs for business journalists

Menachem Wecker of U.S. News & World Report writes Wednesday about how MBA students may be attracted to careers in business journalists.

Wecker writes, “An M.B.A. degree could also make a candidate more attractive to a business editor, but writing skills will always be the most important credential, Selvin says. ‘I’m a huge advocate for the idea that journalism students need to understand business and know how to use numbers—two areas of weakness for many journalists going back to the ’80s when I was in journalism school, and probably before that,’ she says.

“Matthew Borenstein, a former reporter and online producer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, says he will hunt for jobs on the business side of journalism after he graduates from the M.B.A. program at Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Management.

“‘I can see where having a business understanding is certainly something that will help newsroom managers in the future,’ he says. ‘Newspapers can’t just print the news anymore. They have to be looking at new channels, new apps, [and] new products.’

“Some business schools have joint M.B.A./journalism programs, but those programs don’t seem to be attracting much student interest. At the University of Texas—Austin‘s College of Communication, only one student had enrolled in the joint journalism and M.B.A. degree in the last five years. ‘Maybe this degree is becoming obsolete,’ admits Sharon Barrett, associate director of M.B.A. admissions at UT—Austin’s McCombs School of Business.”

Read more here.