It's over. We're toast. The whole business is dead.
 
Each day brings more dire updates of downsized newsrooms. The entire newspaper industry is leading the way, with magazines following close behind. Broadcast networks aren't immune, either. You'd think this would be pretty nerve-racking to a group of budding journalists paying thousands of dollars to be in school.
 
When I was applying to journalism schools a year ago, plenty of people asked if knew I was getting into a dying industry (and this was before things got really dire). I had my speech all prepared: "I'm interested in online journalism," I would say. "That's where the growth is going to be. After all, people have to get their news somewhere."

I told myself that going to journalism school was the right move because I could finally learn how to be a competitive online journalist, not just an ink-stained wretch. Schools, however, have been slow to respond to the changing times (insert joke here about steering a battleship). Fortunately, journalism education is slowly adapting.

USC's Annenberg School of Journalism is doing its part. Today we launch Neon Tommy, the school's first student-run digital publication. How is Neon Tommy changing the game at Annenberg? First, students finally have a place where they can publish their work. Pieces written for investigative classes were graded and forgotten. Students covering local government had to tell their sources, "This is just for class. It won't get published." Second, there is now a clearinghouse where readers can find all of the school's publications. Want to listen to a report from Annenberg Radio? Simply click the link on your right. Third, the combination of students reporting for their classes, in addition to Neon Tommy's own staff of writers, means we can follow-up on stories, like any good journalist. Stories won't lie fallow any more.

It won't be easy to build the Neon Tommy brand - after all, we aren't the first journalism school to publish student work online. Columbia has The Columbia Journalist and Arizona State has cronkitezine. There are iStanford and Northwestern's Medill Reports. What's our advantage? Neon Tommy will have greater depth and breadth of coverage, as well as greater depth and breadth of content. We won't be a site that doesn't update for weeks at a time; we know frequent publishing is a must on the Web. We may focus on Southern California topics, but we'll constantly be looking to see how we can expand the scope of the stories to add to the national debate.

Even with newsroom cuts coming so fast and furious, there is still a place for Neon Tommy in the news arena.

The Huffington Post declared "media mayhem" on Jan. 30 after job cuts were announced throughout Disney's news holdings; one of Baltimore's daily papers shut down because it couldn't find a buyer; and the Los Angeles Times combined its state and local sections with its front section to save money.

Erica Smith, a graphics designer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch who was featured recently in the American Journalism Review, has done her best to keep track of the total number of newspaper jobs lost. By her count, more than 15,000 jobs were lost in 2008. The total for 2009 will be even higher if the current job-loss trend continues. More than 2,000 jobs have been lost this January alone.

The dire situation of the industry is hard to wrap your head around. Reach for a statistic or anecdote and you will easily find a horrible one that illustrates your point. The MediaNews chain of papers is telling its employees to take one week of unpaid leave. The Los Angeles Times will have a newsroom with less than half the staff it did at the start of the decade--dropping from approximately 1,200 people to 550 people.

As journalism students, we should see the collapse of our industry as a good thing (or at least look for the giant silver lining). With the launch of Neon Tommy, we now have a platform to publish our message and the fruits of our reporting. J-school administrators may speak in platitudes about training the next generation of journalists, but with Neon Tommy, we now have access to resources to train ourselves.

Frankly, our goal isn't to be the best journalism school Web site or to perpetuate any ivory tower stereotypes. Instead, we want to become a true player on the Southern California media stage. With so many papers cutting staff (alt-weeklies included) it's a guarantee there are stories that just aren't getting covered. Will Neon Tommy become the paper of record for Los Angeles? Probably not. But, Annenberg does have hundreds of students doing quality reporting who are yearning for an outlet.

We might be idealistic (after all, we're journalism students) and Neon Tommy won't be an overnight success, but the most important thing to do in this business is compete, and Annenberg is finally doing that.

Finally, remember this: With the economy in the tank and the journalism industry dead and buried, it's a good time to be in school. The L.A. Times might not be around much longer, but Neon Tommy will.