Losing young employees

But technological advances may leave the current crop of young talent in the dust five or 10 years hence, too. What do you offer today? The departing veterans mean a loss of local knowledge and journalism skills. A departing 25-year-old may or may not offer that, too, if they grew up in that market and have exceptional ability. But their new-media skills do not currently translate to much profit, and the likelihood is those skills will soon be obsolete and they will need to "play catchup," as you phrase it, soon enough. I've read articles -- NY Mag a couple years ago comes to mind -- that people now stay younger longer as far as keeping up with what's new. But my observations tell me the opposite, that most people get old pretty fucking fast once they start to have kids. By the time the industry finds an answer to making money online -- it's not gonna be next year or the year after that -- there will be younger, cheaper and even more tech-savvy people to replace today's 25-year-olds. It's always that way. You're probably not the future, either. The wave after you may be.

 

Addressing your argument....."It's not going to be next year or the year after that"
You could look at it that way, but isn't that a bit pessimistic and based heavily on speculation? Who's to say when the answer for making profit in digital media will come?

I guess I don't see your point about how today's 25-year-olds will be left behind when the future generation changes the entire industry. I'd love to see your crystal ball you have there.
And yeah, the industry isn't making any money online right now. But neither is anyone else anymore.
Hell, even online pornography, one of the first industries to make money online, is suffering according to a few articles I've seen. I think the LA Daily news did something on it a few years ago.
I just found this one but there's others I'm sure.
http://www.dailynews.com/ci_6059391

In my opinion the only way for anyone to make money online is to start restricting access. As it is right now anyone can post a video, a blog, a picture, music, whatever they want and it's available worldwide, instantly.
But there will be a day when that's not going to be possible anymore, sadly, but the flip side of that is there'll be more profits being made, and I could see media corporations being one of the leaders, if they're smart. But who knows. It's all still very speculative.

 

We're losing the young ones because they look around and see the older ones getting screwed. They're not stupid, either, so they know they got hired because they're young and cheap and can be pushed hard.

Then they look around and say, "Hey, this is bullshit. I'm not sticking around for this crap."

My paper is forcing out the veteran talent, and the young ones come in with great talent, but they take a look around and leave as soon as they can.

So we're stuck with average talent, the few good veterans who still have their jobs, three levels of mid-level management that could be stripped to one level if anyone really wants to make some good cuts......and this revolving door of young, cheap talent that we keep having to replace because they come in for six months and realize that they can make more money and work less by doing something else.

Scary time to be in newspapers. They wanna push the veterans out the door, and they wanna push the new kids so hard that they'll give up pretty quick and just go after the money in a better environment.

The older/younger balance is best. Now, though, it's all about cheap labor.

The three designers on my staff are all young, and they're all very talented also. But they're all talking about going off to do something else and have a better lifestyle, and I can't argue against that. I'd throw more money at them to keep them around for a while, but they know I'm not allowed to throw any more money around.

I'm sure I'll be training newbies by football season, if not by the Olympics. Not good for the sports section, but the standard message is this: "It's the sports section. Anyone can do sports."

I can't wait to see how that goes.

 

If you're dismissing young journalists' new media skills because they aren't making much profit, then why not apply that same criterion to veterans' experience and local knowledge, which have been producing less and less revenue every year. Does that show a decreasing value for those attributes? In fact, if I were to follow along that line of over-simplistic logic, I could argue that we need to get rid of all the veterans since their way of doing things, their slowness to change and their lack of true understanding about the technology they are trying to adopt are what have landed newspapers in the mess they are in now. Of course, how much sense would that argument make?

And yes, technology is always evolving. If that's going to leave the current crop of 25-year-olds in the dust in 5-10 years, where will it leave the current crop of 35- and 45-year-olds? There will always be more techno-savvy youngsters entering the biz, but they will entering at the bottom, and they need management that's at least atuned to what the technology can do and is receptive to it if the young journalists' skills are to be of any use in revolutionizing the industry. So in 10 years, who do you think is more likely to be that kind of a manager? A 35-year-old who grew up in the Internet age and understands how quickly technology changes in this arena and the importance of being able to change with it, or a 45- or 55-year-old who didn't grow up with that and doesn't really have that mindset, who gripe about readers' short attention spans and complain that no one takes the time to read a print product anymore? We are already witnessing a lot of that now, with younger journalists being frustrated by some of their management's embarrassing displays of ignorance about the online product. Missing a generation of experience and knowledge will not make the transition any easier.

Absolutely agreed. If you're a young journalist now and you have good enough non-print-journalism-specific skills that would allow you to go into other fields, newspapers are offering you fewer and fewer reasons to stay. You can stay in this biz, "pay your dues" for 20 years, banging your head against established dogma that rebuffs your attempts to make meaningful changes to help save the industry, and by the time you're 45, if you're mediocre/unlucky, you'll still be making squat; if you're good/lucky, you might be making good money, and that'll make you a target for the next round of layoffs/buyouts.

 

The new managers will be fat, bald guys who can talk a good game and can convince even older senior management that they are the lone 45-year-olds who "get it." Just like today's version who can bark, "Podcasts! Social Networking!" like trained seals without knowing how to set up one, tomorrow's version will be able to turn off the oldies station broadcast of Pearl Jam just long enough to assert, "The wave of the future is Intergallactic Turbo Reality!" Technical skill will have nothing to do with it. The ability to bullshit will always be primary.

 

Thank God for Bullshit.

 

I think any industry that wants to survive needs the right mix of veteran knowledge and experience and youthful enthusiasm and ingenuity. To dismiss the absence of one or the other is short-sighted.

 

We need more people like this guy:

 

"I finished my work a month ago."

 

As a young employee (under-25) who feels like they have a lot to contribute to the future of the business, I have to say I have thought about what else might be out there that would give me a better quality of life (more important) and possibly better pay (still pretty important). But the one thing that keeps me going is I still really like what I do, putting out a product that a lot of people (though not as many as used to) care about. Who knows how long I'll have that feeling, and seeing what's happening in the business definitely makes me keep my head on a swivel, but there are still some of us young folk who feel like this is a noble profession and that money isn't the be all, end all.