There are just over two months remaining until the beginning of the fall semester at Hofstra University.

Some 70 days until classes start.

I expect to have approximately 24 undergraduate and graduate journalism students there for my classes in online journalism.

For me, teaching this is an audacious challenge in a time of change and FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in our industry.

This week, I saw an acquaintance who told me of recently being laid off as a reporter for a prominent business publication. Rent, insurance, and the first job search since teenage years awaits.

This person is not alone, a lot of journalists are fearing becoming irrelevant and attempting to embrace multimedia skills, while traditional employment opportunities shrink.

And, the rise of citizen journalism begs the question: If anyone can publish whatever, whenever, do we really need journalists? I give you http://www.haitianite.com/, a grassroots' portal. I know one young correspondent for the site, he videos, he writes, he chats and texts and he Googles. He has passion for what he does. Is he a journalist?

We, as professional journalists, need to think we can continue to be relevant in the global conversation and continue to ask questions that need to be asked and try our best to seek and publish the truth and to engage the readers.

12 years ago, when I was interviewed to work at nytimes.com I was asked to talk about 'interactivity,' which I considered an important part of early web journalism. I must have answered that question correctly. I got the job.

The clincher question at today's job interview would likely still be about interactivity, but now it is under rubric of social and web 2.0. And, I think those that recognize this, on both sides of the desk, will find jobs available.

Online, change is constant, and a stream of digital twists can seem daunting.

But, that is what makes doing journalism in these times so much fun.

I'm hearing a lot of pain in the journalism business, the dead-tree kind, as it moves forward into a time of Internet first, and bottom's up, the world is flat and proprietary is dead sort of way.

Technology changes and new online applications blossom every quarter, enhancing the information available online for a journalist to use, as well as anyone else with a itch to scratch and an online connection.

Using the emerging tools of the Internet, and really cheap technology, my students Twittered, Tumblr'd, and blogged. They shot video with a $100 camera, wrote wikis, vlogged, critiqued, and published some serious hyperlocal, multimedia local journalism. They reported and published on deadline and were hugely productive.

Judge for yourself at http://hofstrajournalism80.blogspot.com, or at http://nassaunews.org/news.

If you want to read what I'm reading, go to krochmal.tumblr.com.

There you might read a pull quote attributed to Boyce Rensberger, the head of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at M.I.T., who told The New York Times: “I feel a little queasy encouraging young people into journalism. It’s such a precarious industry right now.”

I do hope Boyce Rensberger meant that he is encouraging young people into journalism, but with some consideration.

The Angel Jennings-bylined article, in The Times on June 11, reported a decrease in the number of applications of American journalists for the John S. Knight Fellowships Program at Stanford.

Some 83 Americans applied for the 12 one-year golden tickets to academe, down from 101 in 2006, and Jennings reported there were no applicants from The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and "some other large newspapers" and then asked experts if that might be due to uncertainty in the big organizations.

Apparently, there might be a risk of being out of sight, out of mind and journalists at the big orgs can not be seduced by a $55K stipend over 10 months, as well as a housing supplement, and health insurance supplement and $1K for books.

It's still a tremendous deal and hopefully journalists will give the Knight committee a lot more work to do next year.