Want a career in the exciting, fast-paced world of 21st century journalism?

Get an MBA.

Don't go to journalism school. You can learn to write anywhere. The way to write better is to practice. If you love writing you can pick up the rest on-the-fly.

Instead, go to business school. Why? Because the only way you're going to have a good career in this business is to have the skills of a publisher. And those are the skills taught in business school.

In my first lecture at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, in 1977, we were told firmly that if you wanted to make a good living there was a fine businesss school on campus, the Kellogg School, and we should go there. So I've got their logo at the top of this item. I should have taken the advice.

More on why you should go to business school to learn journalism after the break.

What has happened in our time is that most publishing has lost its business model. So going to school in order to get a job -- and journalists define themselves by having jobs -- is a sure route to heartache.

What journalism needs right now, more than anything, are people who can create jobs. We need new business models that will pay writers, for blogs, for news, for books, for articles. The old models don't work anymore.

When looking at business schools, look for those that teach entrepreneurship, not just management. It's important to keep the accounts balanced. It's more important to know how to turn niches into profit, again-and-again. Not every business school teaches that.

If one school's literature brags about how many Fortune 500 CEOs it turns out and a rival school's literature brags about how many entrepreneurs went there, go to the latter.

Then, when you get out, and you create these business models, hire me. I went to the Medill School, I have nearly 30 years' experience in journalism, but while I write about marketing and business all the time I hate actually doing it -- marketing and business. (I'd rather write.)

But if you've reached the bottom of this item you know I write well.