Losing young employees

Wow, look at that, Google loses young employees as well!

http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/09/technology/where_does_google_go.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008051205

 

It's obvious those guys had nothing to offer Google ... Google is better off.

 

Dear young journalist,

We're proud of you. Money is bad! Noble is good! Don't just work for the paycheck (and certainly not the raises).

Your pals,
Dean Singleton, Sam Zell, Rupert Murdoch and the gang at Gannett

 

The problem with all of this stuff is that the issues are so inter-related, and all need to be addressed.

I'm not so sure there's reason to over sympathize with the young ones' plights, or to think that newspapers are losing their young.

While this industry does generally pay poorly, those who get into also usually know this. And there are now plenty of young, 30-and-under employees being hired into -- or moved into -- what would seem to be pretty good Web-related production and management positions, in which they are training tables full of 35-, 45- and 55-plus co-workers, many of whom they have, or soon will, leap-frog in their climbs up the ladder.

And, as Night Owl's design desk shows, layout/graphics positions and the like, even at major-metros, are also now going almost exclusively to young employees.

I guess my point is, these employees are, more and more often, starting nowhere near the bottom _ and their years of paying dues are generally nowhere near 15 or 20 anymore.

Because of the fact that more and more younger/cheaper employees are, indeed, being brought in, and also because papers are having to go with what staffing they have as a result of budget constraints -- even reporters really starting at the bottom happens less and less often as opportunities to earn, or be put onto, a major beat come much more quickly and easily these days than they did, say, 10 or 15 years ago.

If some younger people do leave, there will always be other ones who are even more tech-savvy to follow in after them, as other posters have pointed out. There really isn't much of a squeeze on young people here. On the contrary, opportunities abound, for them more than anyone else.

For newspapers, the problem with the younger set has more to do with the fact that, typically, such employees are more computer- and tech-savvy than they are journalists. There is a difference, and the two aspects, so far, are rarely combined as they ideally should be in one neatly packaged person.

The real difficulties are being experienced by the 35-50 set. These people will find it extremely hard to go through an entire mid-life career change, if they have to, in order to get hired again. But they also are still much too young to retire. If they are not trained up and included in papers' future plans, they will be lost as journalists and leaders.

And yes, I believe there are still a few such people out there who could be leaders in our industry.

To borrow from captzulu, skipping over that generation and its knowledge and experience also will not really help, any more than skipping over anything that the younger ones have to contribute.

 

*smirk*

I'm 26 and got hired by the local small daily rag straight out of high school. I was cheap and available and in the right place at the right time. About four months into the formally fulltime gig I get sent to this writing seminar put on by the paper company where the guy who was essentially our Dean Singleton informed us we were "privileged to work in community journalism" for what we get. I can dig honesty at least. And speaking of honesty, I feel like I did a pretty good job and all, even got namechecked a couple times by Texas APME, but I sure as hell wasn't revolutionizing anything. The newspaper business doesn't know what a revolution is. And yes, my sympathy is for the over-35-but-not-old-enough-to-retire set, where I know some newspaper lifers who have never really done anything else. I guess my decision to start moving away from the biz really rooted in not wanting to become like them. I have no reason to assume that it's going to change by the time I get that old.

I worked full-time until 2005. Took a year off completely and then started stringing again. Doing what I miss without really putting up with what I don't. It wasn't money. It was the slide in quality and knowing that I was busting my ass to put out a product that sucks because of incompetent management, lack of investment in the product or a combination of both. The writing was as plainly on the wall as it is for just about everyone on this forum. Other than that, I got into high school sports which is what I mostly covered, and for the most part enjoyed working with the coaches and kids and even the parents.

I don't necessarily recommend that anyone do what I did, although a good bit of it was fun and an experience I couldn't imagine living without.

 

That's a red herring, and a popular one in this business - and any low-paying profession (teaching especially).

Just because someone feels they should be better compensated and have some advancement opportunities doesn't mean they are making money the "end all, be all."

It's not either/or.

 

Hammer, this is the head of the nail. Head of the nail, hammer. Now y'all are acquainted thanks to Mr. Jennings.

It's definitely not the end-all, be-all, and I don't need a 10,000 square foot home with two Porsches in the garage, but I think we'd all like to be able to do more than barely get by.

 

My shop has this habit of targeting a few youngsters for stardom, and as mentioned above then simply use the opportunity to eventually get bigger, better gigs elsewhere.

Apparently their strategy has now changed. To combat the young stars leaving they have now targeted a lesser-talented individual for stardom. He writes like crap, so his clips won't get him a job elsewhere. And the only ones who suffer for it are the readers and the deskers, two groups the bosses here don't give a shit about.

 

I've seen papers lose generations of very strong young reporters who would have liked to stay in an area, but felt pushed out. At some point, the readership of a paper is going to be better informed than the staff giving them the information. Some turnover is healthy, but papers are living a hand to mouth existence these days, and if they're not showing the public they plan to be around beyond the next quarterly reports, why should someone invest in a six-month subscription?

 

Old Tony, it's a miserable thing, a real morale killer, when so-called stars aren't very good. It happens with bosses, too, who get hired for the wrong reasons by management that doesn't know its collective ass from a hole in the ground. Then the inept department head gets such a bad reputation in the business that no one else ever hires him away. Schmuck stays stuck, and so then do his troops.

 

one of the most demoralizing aspects of the paper i work at is that the "management identifying young stars to keep around" is an absolute pipe dream. at least 80% of the newsroom is hometown folks (100k metro area) and i'd say at least 50% have been there 12+ years. unless there is some serious hoarding going on among certain positions, people are willing to put up with the crappy wages because it is home, thus, no need to promote anybody.

 

Just curious, who's the youngest one of the local bunch?

From what I can see there aren't a whole lot of kids coming out of school wanting to do this kind of stuff for a living anymore.