Media In Praise of Older Journalists Taking Buyouts
posted by on April 8 at 12:25 PM
The “retirement” of the buyout brigade has the added benefit of loosening the ugly stranglehold the boomers have over the press. I may be risking self-extermination by advocating wholesale boomer expulsion, but there are just too many of us—especially the older variety—in top slots for journalism’s good. The sheer weight of our presence blocks the promotion of the next generation of talented journalists to the most desirable beats.We like our nice salaries, we enjoy our benefits and vacation time, we dig our place in the pecking order, and we expect to live forever. So why should we leave? Our intransigence not only gives our product a rancid boomer tang—who can blame nonboomers for being repulsed?—it tends to stifle innovation.
Meanwhile, over on the Web, where news staffs tend to be younger and less tradition-bound, the sort of experimentation newspapers and magazines should be engaging in is a part of the daily routine. If not for age-discrimination legislation and other statutes, our bosses would have cleared us out with sharp-bladed bulldozers long ago and replaced us with younger, more-adaptable, and less-expensive minds. Yes, you heard right. Newsrooms must cut their budgets to survive, and the high-salaried boomers (and pre-boomers) are liabilities.
Fortunately, the one thing boomers understand is money, and the offer of a couple of years’ salary in the form of a buyout has been too great a temptation for many of them to resist. Whenever a journalism vet boards the SS Buyout—no matter how good he is—his departure initiates a series of reassignments that help replenish a news organization’s juices by bringing down the median age of reporters and editors and making it possible for his publication to add a lower-paying entry-level slot.
Slate is *still* online? Why?
When's old Jack taking his buyout?
The author is very, uhh, optimistic there. The only thing reducing salaries of higher-level positions by hiring less experienced, allegedly "innovative" youngsters is going to do is increase corporate profits (or, decrease losses). I am quite certain that no "lower-paying entry-level slot" will be added, although if that is how the author must rationalize his long-overdue departure, so be it.
I'm all for new blood, but it's got to be balanced with some institutional memory. A paper can't do a very good job of covering its community when no one on staff knows the histories/connections/obligations of the community's elected officials, activists, and other people in power.
As a fellow boomer, Jack, fuck you. I worked hard and long to get what I have. Don't even pretend to speak for me.
@4: Yeah there is no way anyone under the age of 50 could possibly know or learn about the "histories/connections/obligations of the community's elected officials, activists, and other people in power."
Because this isn't the information age or anything.
Ah, we're entering the era of bitter Boomer entitlement, with a presidential candidate as advance guard.
Bitter Boomer retirement, my ass. If people want to keep working because they enjoy their work, and can keep working, who the hell is anybody else to tell them they shouldn't?
DUH! I meant bitter Boomer entitlement, my ass.
I hate this ageist crap anyway, no matter who it comes from. And I am not a Boomer.
I agree with Spoogie @5, even if I'm edge gen.
America: the only society where the phrase, "That's history" is a pejorative.
Boomers: The people who bought us "Human Resources" and killed pensions in favor of the greatest ponzi scheme of all, the 401k.
Don't just retire. Die already.
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