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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Media Who Wants To Be A Journalist?

Posted by Eli Sanders on Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 10:09 AM

On Monday I kicked off this series with a letter from Clarissa León. She's one of the many people who continue to write us looking for journalism work despite news such as—to pick just three recent "death of journalism" stories—this and this and this.

I've begun writing nice notes back to the aspiring journalists with the following question included:

Given all that's going on—newspapers closing, magazines disappearing, writing staffs being downsized everywhere—why do you people still want to be journalists?

Here's an answer from an almost-30 Seattleite named Jamie:

I don't want to be a journalist.

My 9-5 job is working in corporate real estate, so I was just looking for an opportunity to 1) volunteer my time to an organization I value, and 2) be around creative people for a couple of hours a week. I was always the artsy-fartsy type in high school/college, but I've worked for "The Man" for 6+ years now. So, I was really just looking for something that would help me offset the I'm-on-the-verge-of-turning-30-and-I'm-a-total-yuppie panic that seems more frequent the closer I get to the big 3-0.

So...yeah. That's it. Journalism's dead, dude.

Comments (6) RSS

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So, Eli... Why don't you want to be in corporate real estate?

Posted by kitschnsync on October 21, 2009 at 10:14 AM

Some people find it difficult to work in a field they have zero interest in. I feel bad for the journalists who love their work, realize it's dying, and resign themselves to a career they hate or are indifferent to.

Posted by Urgutha Forka on October 21, 2009 at 10:26 AM

I think all the reports of journalism's death miss the mark. It's not journalism that's dying; it's print advertising that's on its death bed.

Much of the creativity in our culture has been underwritten by advertising dollars--and newspapers & magazines are no exception. The myth that "capturing eyes = product sales" sustained the inflated price of print advertising which in turn sustained newspapers and journalists of all stripes.

But with the advent of internet advertising and click-thru tracking, that myth has been dis-proven. We can now quantitatively measure the effects of advertising on product sales and it turns out it just isn't worth a much as the promoters of print media had led us to believe.

Newspapers and magazines are failing not so much because people don't want to read them, but because they can't sell advertising at inflated enough prices to support the words-on-dead-trees model any longer.

The real question is this: if the subsidized-by-inflated-advertising-rates model for paying journalist (and graphic designers and copy writers, etc) their salaries is failing--and it is--how will we underwrite our cultural development going forward?

Posted by Timrrr on October 21, 2009 at 10:36 AM

Why do people want to be journalists? Because J-schools so thoroughly pumped into our heads that the field was the last noble cause in America -- the pioneering career that you could feel good about. After school we found that, job after job, editors are overpaid dicks and the "news" is whatever fills a page before deadline.
So we keep looking, hoping to find that amazing job we were made to believe exists.

Posted by Shelby on October 21, 2009 at 10:42 AM

Well, there are jobs as MJ reviewers, just not for art reviewers ...

Posted by Will in Seattle

on October 21, 2009 at 10:56 AM

Um ... I'm not sure how interested I am in reading the work of someone who just wants to hang out with arty people because they think they are also a creative person and are having a end-of20s crisis. In fact, I think arty people themselves are boring to read about, it's the art that's interesting.

Posted by Just Not that Into You on October 21, 2009 at 4:22 PM