Experience vs. youth: An academic opinion

Journalism prof sounds off on the youth movement in newsrooms. My position on this is documented (experience is undervalued).

Discuss:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/14902106.htm

 

Unfortunately, the vast majority of publishers don't give a shit.

 

Interesting read. I know both young and veteran writers who are very computer savvy. But just from a wisdom standpoint, thank goodness some old-school fellas are still around. I've learned a ton from them, and had my ass bailed out a few times, too. I appreciate all of them.

 

We all know that the best sports teams strive for a balance of experience and youth on their rosters. I fail to see why newspapers should be any different.

 

Because youth costs less than experience, perhaps?

 

That's garbage. I've commented on this many times before and I'm sure I'll do it again. You're unfairly discounting people.

The big papers, in general, pay their rookie reporters more right out of school than small and midsized pay their SEs and veterans of several decades. They'll pay everything to relocate a talented and high-potential grad who knows nothing about the area from 3,000 miles away instead of hiring a 15-year reporter from a local suburban paper who knows the area by heart. They pay their entry level preps guys more than a 75K-circ paper pays their top beat writer.

I can assure you of this by many cases I know. Experience is great, but it pales in comparison to talent and potential.

 

Somebody's gotta figure out how to use the computers.

 

When I got rejected for about the first 10,000 jobs I applied to out of college, it had nothing to do with my skill, but it was because I didn't have enough experience, or so the rejection letters said. My resume must have gone to the wrong people then. Although now that I'm a couple years into it, I do agree that experience is indisposable.

 

When I used to do the hiring, almost always the best hires were young people with passion, intelligence, the willingness to do whatever it took to succeed and plenty of fire in the belly.

There are lots of great experienced people who can hit the ground running faster than a rookie can. But if you can get the rooks to hang in for a year or two to learn the beat and the business, they have a lot more upside.

 

So somebody with talent and experience isn't better than somebody with talent and no experience?
Yeah, you guys go with that.

 

There are two sides to this argument . . . but you've NEVER seen more factual errors in major dailies than you do, today . . .
and it's because of the pennywise attitude of papers being led by the nose by Wall Street.

 

Most all the people I work with are really good at what they do, and they've of all ages and experience levels. Learn a lot from all of them, but there's just something different about hearing/learning it from veterans of the business. Not sure if I can put my finger on what it is though. I guess it's good to have both.