Undergraduate Journalism Students Professionalism In Digital Era

The issue about whether journalism education in university is still necessary or not in this digital era is often being echoed. It would appear as unfinished debate with some fact of declination enrollment of journalism in the western countries. This study is trying to neutralize the trend problem by going beyond it and checking on those who experience the education which are the journalism students themselves.As the study about journalism students often rise in the western hemisphere and or focus on comparing western and eastern journalism students, less scholars had examine this typical study among Asian student's community. Therefore, this study pick China and Indonesia since both of the countries have large number of population which could affect on number of the student enroll in journalism major. In addition, both countries also have promising growth of media industry which made their education institutions are in race of providing numbers of qualified journalism graduates.By using nine hypotheses, this study is trying to make comparison between Chinese and Indonesian journalism students of their motivation, career choice and professional role conception. Data generated from 450 students of twelve universities in Indonesia and 486 students of nine universities in China, who had fill up and return the questionnaires. Data were organized and evaluated using statistical software to produce the written results.The result shows a big similarity of two countries students on the demographic, motivation and their career choice. Most of the enrollers are female and from middle up class. Similarity also shown on their motivation where internal factors play dominantly on their decision to enroll journalism education, even though the reason may different; Indonesia students tend to change society while Chinese students are regarding on future prospect. They experience up and down on their level of motivation while pursuing the education but it doesn't make them become less commitment to journalism field. I fact they forward straight to support that journalism education is still necessary for being a professional journalist. In the topic on career choice, there are such assumptions among these students that all careers using journalism capability is part of the journalism career itself. Meanwhile, even both countries students accept that online media institutions are have a promising prospect, they keep faithful on choosing conventional media institution in pursuing their career. In addition, it is quite clear that they intend more to be journalism practitioners than academician even a large number of them are still considering to do both. The significant differences between students in these two countries appear only on their professional role conception. Chinese students tend to play role of opportunist facilitator and populist disseminator while Indonesian students are tend to play role detached watchdog and populist mobilizer.