A comparison of teenage views on journalism as a career in Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

Australian and New Zealand journalism programmes report a disproportionate number of female students and the industry in both countries is becoming increasingly feminised. Densem (2006) explored the reasons for the popularity of journalism as a career among young New Zealand women and the relative lack of appeal for young men. This article reports upon preliminary results from an Australian study convering some common ground and offers some comparisons and contrasts with the New Zealand findings. This article uses the high school student responses from a larger study as the basis of comparison with similar data in the Densem (2006) study.

Keywords

• cadetships
• credibility
• gender
• journalism education
• role models