I’m supposed to talk with a journalism class on Monday at the University of South Florida, my alma mater. Knowing what I know about how frustrated young graduates become when they hit the wall that is newspaper culture, what should I tell them?
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune recently participated in the Learning Newsroom program. Among the study’s findings, compiled from an analysis of several newsrooms, was a revelation that young people are on the verge of leaving each of the newspapers. What’s sad is that so few people in the newsroom believed the study’s results, which is based on reports in hundreds of surveys.
People in the newsroom rationalized that it’s normal for young people to expect to leave their current newspaper. After all, they’re at the beginning of their careers. But the Learning Newsroom facilitators repeatedly tried to explain that young people weren’t just thinking about leaving the newspaper; they were considering leaving the entire industry out of sheer frustration with the very slow pace of change.
So when I talk to these future college graduates, I’ve decided against advising them to go into newspapers. Online media isn't limited to newspapers. AOL, Yahoo and Ask all have news sites that need journalists. Micro-local start-ups such as PegasusNews.com are viable alternatives. The truth is that if you’re looking to make progress, these competitors might be more productive places to spin your wheels.
Comments (2)
This doesn't surprise me. And there is a related problem, which is that older staff are not having the time to mentor younger ones, or that younger ones don't stay around long enough to pass on their experience. Pay is a big factor in the UK - you can earn more working in McDonalds.
Posted by Paul Bradshaw | October 1, 2007 3:25 AM
Posted on October 1, 2007 03:25
Currently the pace of change is glacial. The best the Old Guard has been able to do is hop on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. Large media companies are too worried about the bottom line to invest in risky new ventures. There WILL eventually be a Google of the news media. (Perhaps it will even be Google.) And I will wager it will not be created by a newspaper company.
I think there are a few things young people can focus on these days:
1. Creating great content. Reporters may have to replace their notebooks with video cameras and digital recorders, but digging up the story will always take skill and craftsmanship. In this age off information overload, the best content rises to the top.
2. Learning to recognize and edit great content. Even with the rise of community journalism and the blog model, there will always be a need for human oversight. Newspapers everywhere are hiring copy editors, positions that often graduate into news editors.
3. Learn database management. With projects like Google Books and the Universal Library, soon the entire recorded knowledge of mankind will become digitized. That's great, but what can we do with all that information? Finding ways to sort it, distribute it and organize it are key. If newspapers can't even get their calendar listings working well, we're doomed.
Posted by Adam Newman | October 1, 2007 10:40 AM
Posted on October 1, 2007 10:40