Placement crisis for students looking for TV jobs at J-schools

Top journalism schools are facing a crisis as television news channels pull back from campus placements, suggesting a turbulence in the Indian TV news industry. Students aspiring for TV jobs are left staring at unpaid internships, gig work, and career pivots – none of which match the expectation of high placement rates at such institutes.

At Chennai’s Asian College of Journalism, for instance, campus placements for the 2024–25 batch in its flagship multimedia journalism programme have dropped by 40 percent, according to sources. Not a single TV channel has visited the campus so far, even though the convocation was held over three weeks ago, according to a faculty member part of the placement cell.

During this year’s convocation ceremony on May 3, ACJ chairman Sashi Kumar had told the audience that there was a delay in placements because company hiring windows weren’t aligning. But for students who had enrolled at ACJ hoping to start a career in television news, the absence of recruiters has come as a shock, they told Newslaundry.

ACJ’s programme has historically maintained a strong placement record, particularly in its Bloomberg track, where students pay higher fees and typically secure jobs with financial newsrooms. But the integrated course, which covers TV journalism, is struggling. Student strength has dropped from around 120 in 2018 to 80 this year.

Placements, however, have been affected not just at ACJ. Xavier Institute of Communication in Mumbai and Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi have also reported a decline in TV news recruitment.

Only three TV jobs for 48 students

At XIC, only three of 48 students secured placements in television news, at Times Now, NDTV 360, and ET Now, according to Yogesh Kamdar, head of the journalism and mass communication course at XIC, who pointed to a “slump in the television job market”. The rest found work in print and digital outlets such as The Hindu, Reuters, and Bloomberg.

“In comparison to last year, there was a drop in jobs in broadcast channels but that was offset by new recruiters like Reuters and Bloomberg,” Kamdar said.

At Jamia’s AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, only three of 23 students from the MA Convergent Journalism programme have found jobs so far, all at News Mobile, a startup founded by journalist Saurabh Shukla.

Placement coordinator Syed Muskan said students had been reaching out to media houses since January but hadn’t received responses. “We’ve sent multiple emails, but there has been radio silence,” she claimed. Muskan also flagged concerns about the growing use of stipended internships instead of job offers. “The fee itself was over Rs 1.6 lakh, and for outsiders like me, it’s hard to survive in a city like this on just a stipend,” she said. “But given the current job market, we don’t have much of a choice.”

At the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, last year’s placement rate stood at 82 percent – but largely for roles in advertising, PR, and digital marketing rather than journalism, according to sources at the institute which has over 500 students across its six campuses.

Two TV channels – ETV and TV9 – have visited the campus this year. Last year, NDTV and Network18 were also part of the process. Republic and ABP News haven’t participated in years while India Today’s presence has become irregular, claimed a faculty member.

‘Preference’ for in-house institutes, varied pay

News networks also appear to be prioritising their own training institutes. Times Now, for instance, recruits externally only if suitable candidates aren’t found at Bennett University, according to an HR executive at the channel.

However, Pavel Chopra, HR manager at Zee Media Corporation Limited, denied these claims, saying the Zee Institute of Media Arts has “no connection” to Zee Media other than a shared brand name. “ZMCL has no preference to hire only from ZIMA. We hire from many colleges, and ZIMA is one of them. Also, other than the shared brand name ‘Zee’, there is no connection between ZIMA and ZMCL, as they are two separate and distinct entities.”

Meanwhile, NDTV has introduced a “pre-placement offer” model under which fresh graduates are given six-month internships with a stipend of Rs 15,000, replacing earlier full-time positions with probation periods. This aligns with hiring practices followed across other Adani Group companies, said Asif Alamgir, NDTV’s senior manager of talent acquisition.

Media jobs are also paying less than before, claim students.

Placement coordinators at ACJ and IIMC said that until last year, NDTV and Times Now were offering salaries of around Rs 5.5 lakh per annum, while Republic, India Today, and Wion offered between Rs 4 and Rs 5 lakh. Among newspapers, Times of India topped the list with Rs 6 lakh, followed by Hindustan Times, The Hindu, and Indian Express.

Revised salary figures for this year were not available at the time of writing this report.

Aniket Singh Chauhan, now with The Hindu and who graduated from Jamia in 2024, claimed many of his batchmates were reluctant to continue in journalism. “Even independent media outlets often didn’t pay for their work,” he said. “Only five people from my batch are in full-time journalism roles now, while three are freelancing.”

Hiring trends in other sectors

A report by Reuters Institute on the trends and predictions for the industry this year had suggested that television channels face downsizing in staff across the world as audiences are shifting their attention to streamlining platforms, and are struggling to attract audiences for its traditional news shows. 

A report from 2024 had suggested that only 7 percent of Indian colleges achieve full campus placement. Engineering graduates fared the worst with 83 percent of them without a job or internship offer, followed by graduates from arts and science stream (79 percent), and management graduates (46 percent). A parliamentary committee report suggests that a dip in campus placements has lately been observed at even premier institutes like the IITs.

According to the same report, 23 out of 25 IITs witnessed a drop of more than 10 percentage points in terms of placements of BTech graduates – from 90 percent in 2021 to 80 percent in 2023. The National Institute of Technology recorded a fall in average salary offered during the same period.

Newslaundry reached out to all the channels and heads of the institutes named in this report. This piece will be updated if a response is received.

Update at 1.20 pm on June 3: A quote from an ACJ student has been removed to protect his identity.

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