Rem Rieder

USA TODAY

It's a question I get all the time. It was particularly true when I was running a journalism magazine based at the University of Maryland's J-school, but I hear it to this day: Why in the world would anyone want to go into journalism now?

There's no doubt the field faces an enormous array of challenges. Legacy journalism institutions, especially those in the newspaper business, have been battered by the advent of the digital age. Vitally needed advertising revenue and circulation continue to plummet. Newsroom staffs continue to shrink.

Yet at the same time, the digital world has brought with it exhilarating opportunities, a wide new array of ways to tell stories, a chance for intimacy with the audience unimaginable just years ago, an opportunity for real-time news delivery and instant response.

Not long ago I met Alysha Webb and Sasha Pezenik, newly minted graduates of the master's program at Columbia Journalism School, at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in New Orleans, As we talked, their excitement over the prospect of plunging into a journalism career in the digital era was palpable. In telephone interviews, I asked them to elaborate on why they are so pumped. And they truly are.

"I don't think there has ever been a more exciting time to be in journalism," says Pezenik, 23, a native New Yorker.

What the Sarah Lawrence grad finds particularly stimulating is combining new storytelling tools with the intensity of the stories to be told. Pezenik is finishing up a documentary on New York City's transgender community. She finds the transgender story particularly compelling.

At the same time, the budding journalists are well aware of the massive headwinds buffeting their chosen field.

"This is obviously a very turbulent time in journalism," Webb says. "The career path is unpromising in some ways."

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But Webb, 26, whose passion is video, sees a huge upside. She likes the wide variety of story forms and senses more opportunity for young journalists to plunge right in.

"You have a lot more freedom to contribute," she says. "It's a great time for a creative personality. There are different ways you can go in reporting stories. It's a very collaborative process. If you embrace it, it is very exciting."

In the past, she feels, the field was much more constricted. Now, she likes the fact that she can grab her phone and shoot photos and video and conduct interviews. And she senses much more acceptance of a new way of doing business.

Before, "there really wasn't an openness to the new," she says. Now, she says, news outlets must embrace it. "You don't really have a choice anymore," she says. "You move forward or you fall behind."

Webb, who grew up in Santa Rosa, Calif., graduated from the University of Oregon and worked as a Web assistant for Oprah.com and as an executive assistant at Hearst Digital Media before Columbia. Her next gig: digital video producer for a women's publication based in New York.

In the future, she'd like to report on camera, whether that means via phone on social platforms or for a local TV station. And she plans to launch her own digital brand, which might be a blog or an aggregation site.

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Pezenik, who has written forGothamist.com and the West Side Rag, loves the modern techniques, but she sounds decidedly old school when she talks about why she does what she does.

"I see myself telling truth to power," she says. "I want my work to make a difference. I want to make people feel things with human stories."

Her mission: "Global stories personally told."

And she takes issue with the phrase "giving voice to the voiceless." She says, "Our job is giving other people the mic."

Pezenik has had some job feelers and plans to shop her documentary at film festivals.

"This is what I'm meant to be, talking to interesting people about interesting things," she says.

Says Webb: "It's a great, creative time for young minds with rich ideas."

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rem Rieder on Twitter @remrieder