In some ways, you're preaching to the choir. I don't have any completed post-secondary, and I've been able to do pretty well for myself. It is absolutely possible to claw your way up in this business without it, and in my circles I'm famously critical of the value of a j-degree.

With that said, even I think you're discounting it too much. Every recent hire I know at the media outlets in my city has at least a journalism diploma; about half of them have journalism degrees; not one of them has no journalism-specific education.

Some of that is the way the hiring pool has changed, but not all. Back in the day (before my time), most reporters didn't have any post-secondary at all, but the steady trend has been to prefer journalism-specific post-secondary training, and often require it of new hires who don't have previous staff experience.

If anything, I'd say that given how competitive the job market is currently, showing that you have the dedication to the craft to have actually specialized in it is very attractive.

Building up freelance work outside of that is still critical, always has been. But among other things, interning at an outlet offers you a massive leg up on getting an actual job there; all of our recent non-management hires have been former interns, and j-specific interns are preferred. We would be very unlikely to take an ad major to intern in editorial.

The other thing I would add is that a journalism major doesn't only apply to a career journalism. Communications and public relations jobs typically view journalism degrees as appropriate education, and communications or PR is the most common route out for ex-journalists after a few years, or even right out of school. So you do have options there.

Beyond that... look, I realize this is r/personalfinance, so people are going to have a certain perspective on risk vs. reward. For most journalists who actually stay in this industry, that ship hasn't just sailed, it never really came into port... we are, for the most part, people who could not possibly do anything else. (If we could, we'd be doing it.)

So it's not really a matter of "what's a good choice for college," it's more of... if you absolutely must be a journalist to be okay with your life, what's your best path to get in this industry and survive in it?

That's where the college / no-college debate becomes interesting. But if someone was cool going to college and majoring in advertising, I'd frankly advise them to just go into advertising, and not waste time on something that is evidently less than all-consuming.