The Tampa Tribune is laying off 70 employees and has announced that its circulation area will shrink, according to EditorandPublisher.com.

The Tampa-Bay-based publication isn’t alone, either. Newspaper readership across the country has been declining since 1990, and print publications have been downsizing over the years to deal with it. Before you aspiring journalists start curling into the fetal position and frantically calling your advisors to change majors, here’s one tidbit to keep in mind: despite shriveling staffs around the nation, one section of the media has been expanding each year.

Yes, that’s right — there’s still hope for anyone searching for a job in journalism, and it’s online. And that’s where information architecture comes in. As journalism schools nationwide turn out more and more graduates each year while the number of reporting and editing jobs grow scarce, you need skills beyond that of the average reporter to stand out to employers. Having great clips and knowing the difference between “leading” and “kerning” doesn’t cut it anymore — if you want a job at a major paper, chances are you’ll need to know how to maintain a blog, create and upload photo slideshows and use the web to fact-check your sources.

I remember my shock during the summer of 2005 when I picked up an issue of Seventeen magazine — then my guidebook for all things trendy — and found their forecast for the realm of reporting: tomorrow’s Lois Lane couldn’t just interview people who’d seen Superman and write about it anymore. She had to have  streaming videos of his sightings posted online, as well as a podcast featuring sound bites of those involved, and an interactive web site so that the citizens of Metropolis could access this information at any given time. Though Seventeen didn’t use the kitschy Superman analogy, they essentially said the same thing — the modern staff writer was being replaced by the multimedia journalist.

By harnessing and organizing new technology and forms of communication, the multimedia journalist becomes a sort of information architect — one that writes the rough draft of history as he or she presents it in the most widely accessible format(s) available. Today’s correspondent makes information instantaneous, but not overwhelming. Interactive, but not imposing. The facts are still presented, but they come in a greater range of perspectives, now that we have the resources to connect the farthest reaching places on the globe.