Young journalists: skip big media; go solo
Young journalists: don't waste your time trying to work for these artifacts. (Image by Getty Images via Daylife)
Even though I was a magazine staff writer with no hiring authority, I often got queried by bright young things looking to break into journalism.
Like many pathologically gabby reporters, I was delighted to talk. A lot of these young folks followed the path laid out by generations before them: hit HR; nab internships; score interviews; and, if they were lucky, connected or damn good, they’d land the brass ring — a job as a cub reporter, which was Time Inc. euphemism for fact-checker.
Something changed the last few years. The young people were more ambitious, more — I don’t know — independent. If they wanted to talk to me, it wasn’t to squirrel a connection to a higher-up. It was to find out how old media works — and then to forge a different path.
David Carr’s sort-of rant in the New York Times against old media comes to one conclusion: go west, young folks. At least, west of Manhattan. Or north. Or south.
For every kid that I bump into who is wandering the media industry looking for an entrance that closed some time ago, I come across another who is a bundle of ideas, energy and technological mastery. The next wave is not just knocking on doors, but seeking to knock them down.
Somewhere down in the Flatiron, out in Brooklyn, over in Queens or up in Harlem, cabals of bright young things are watching all the disruption with more than an academic interest. Their tiny netbooks and iPhones, which serve as portals to the cloud, contain more informational firepower than entire newsrooms possessed just two decades ago. And they are ginning content from their audiences in the form of social media or finding ways of making ambient information more useful. They are jaded in the way youth requires, but have the confidence that is a gift of their age as well.
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You know, I’ve got to agree. An intrepid reporter today can make more money going solo and chasing their passion than trying to find a staff job somewhere. It just takes time, sacrifice and a good lead or three. Once they can start hitting Digg, Twitter and other social media networks really hard, Google Ads and a common sense approach to self-marketing can truly pay off.
I think I mean even more than that. If I had it to do all over again — even back in the ’90s — I woulda taken a deep breath and said NO to the (very few) old media job offers. I woulda dove (dived? diven?) into this new Internet thing. Because what I notice among my set is that many of us DID take the detour (what we thought of as a detour — ha!) into new media, but ONLY TO ENHANCE our attractiveness to old media hirers. (Why am I shouting so much this morning? What’s in my tea?)
In response to another comment. See in context »Good point.
I feel like one of those polar bears caught on shrinking ice floes…whatever chunk floats by that can support me, new or old media or some combo of both, would be most welcome by now.