So, I'm curious ...

[Dick Whitman]

I'm a few years removed now from the daily newspaper grind, though I dip my ink in the freelance well from time to time.

What is everyone's inside perception of the state of the business? Are people getting hired? Are people moving up? Or just out? Is it as bad as it was? Are people getting raises at all?

I'm genuinely curious.

 

[MisterCreosote]

I take it from these questions that today is the first time you've ever visited the "Journalism topics only" board.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I take it from these questions that today is the first time you've ever visited the "Journalism topics only" board.

Nah. But it's all piecemeal when it comes to this. Layoffs at this paper. Hirings at this Web site. Stock price down at this chain.

I'm asking everyone to stop and assess the state of the industry today, from their perspective.

 

[MisterCreosote]

Fair enough.

I've been out for almost five years, and in that time, I've not heard a single thing about the industry that has made me regret the decision to leave.

 

[Songbird]

I've been out 19 months after being in it 23 years.

I watch with great interest what's being put out there on what seems like 50 digital platforms. Facebook, Twitter, Upworthy, YouTube, BuzzFeed, Heavy.com, Snow Fall, Instagram, Tumblr, Vine blah-blah-blah. Click me! No, click me! Click Click Click Click Click Click Click! The clickification of digitalia.

That said, these are still the nascent years of New Journalism. Five years into the transformation, even guys like Paton struggles to deliver a coherent message: http://jxpaton.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/now-what/

And he was supposed to be one of the visionaries of the transformation.

Even Aaron Kushner smashed into a brick wall with Old Journalism 2.0.

Journalism is stuck at the intersection of Cluster and ****.

 

[YankeeFan]

Are people getting hired? Are people moving up? Or just out? Is it as bad as it was? Are people getting raises at all?

...economic inequality is a huge and growing problem for our

industry.

It's never been better for Bill Simmons, Nate Silver, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald and Ezra Klein.

 

[Big Circus]

Fair enough.

I've been out for almost five years, and in that time, I've not heard a single thing about the industry that has made me regret the decision to leave.

Ditto.

 

[User 11148]

Are people getting hired? Are people moving up? Or just out? Is it as bad as it was? Are people getting raises at all?

...economic inequality is a huge and growing problem for our

industry.

It's never been better for Bill Simmons, Nate Silver, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald and Ezra Klein.

McArdle's talking about academia and the performing arts, but what she writes could just as easily be applied to journalism (ESPECIALLY sports journalism):

The “tournament model” of employment, in which a lucky few win the lottery while most people scrape by on very little, is a cruel and unattractive way to run a business. But it is cruelest in glamour industries such as the arts. Growing up on the Upper West Side, before it became the exclusive province of the wealthy, I inevitably met a lot of the people this model destroyed. The worst off were the folks who’d kept getting just a taste of success -- a minor part in a Broadway show, a critically acclaimed performance at a second-tier festival. Those folks kept waiting until their late 30s or early 40s for success and security that never arrived. By the time it was clear it never would, they were broke, and trying to start another career at a time when most people are heading into their peak earnings years. And the slow crushing of hope over a process of decades often did something tragic to their souls.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-03/can-t-get-tenure-then-get-a-real-job.html

 

[TrooperBari]

I take it from these questions that today is the first time you've ever visited the "Journalism topics only" board.

Nah. But it's all piecemeal when it comes to this. Layoffs at this paper. Hirings at this Web site. Stock price down at this chain.

I'm asking everyone to stop and assess the state of the industry today, from their perspective.

Tried to get out – went unemployed for a year, couldn't get an interview for a non-newspaper job to save my life. The two newspaper interviews (small, nearby dailies) I managed came to naught as the positions were eliminated rather than filled. Ultimately decided to go back overseas where, depending on your destination, the job market is a bit better than the US – emphasis on "a bit". Even out here, though, papers are cutting back and the expats they hire are either already in country or fresh out of school.

Unless you're somewhere with low Internet penetration, a booming economy or a populace already conditioned to reading newspapers, there's not much refuge for newspaper types outside US borders. This won't matter to most of the posters here as mine is a peculiar way to go about having a career, of course, but that's been my experience thus far.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

I haven't done it full-time for almost 5-6 years, but I freelanced a lot until I got my latest job in 2010. Since then, I'll freelance if I get a lucrative offer and it stuns me that I still get them a couple times a year. I got a call to do radio a couple weeks ago and I said, "You must have a really old black book because I haven't covered that team since the 2008 season."

It stuns me that anybody goes to a newspaper for information anymore. I guess I understand if the reason you read is for HS coverage or obits or coupons or something like that, but sports sections are a third of the size they were 6-7 years ago and everything in there seems like old news. Columns seem like the only thing worth reading.

The exceptions seem to be the national papers.

If you're in the top 1 percent of the business, and you're willing to move around, you're never going to have a problem finding a job. Those people are fine and they'll always be fine. The other 99 percent are the ones who are ****ed.

 

[Lanky]

At the last paper where I worked (I left last summer), there's been a hemorrhaging of institutional knowledge in recent months. Some have left for other opportunities in the business, and a couple retired because they were fed up with the quarterly diminishing of the staff and the product. Among those who remain, there's been a lot of movement sideways rather than upward. Management roles have calcified, so people who might have looked at that track focus on different beats or different departments. That's nothing new, of course.

I get together occasionally with a colleague who, like me, left of his own volition to do something entrepreneurial. We still have to hustle, just in different ways and in service of our own businesses. The overriding theme in those coffee meetings is that we should have done this a long time ago.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

When I interviewed at my last job back in 2003, one of the guys who took me to lunch was a news editor. He was management, was smart, has a degree from a good school and was highly thought of in the chain where I worked. He was let go a couple rounds after I was.

He works as a grocery clerk now.

One of the high school writers when I was there now works at Chipotle.

 

[User 11148]

When I interviewed at my last job back in 2003, one of the guys who took me to lunch was a news editor. He was management, was smart, has a degree from a good school and was highly thought of in the chain where I worked. He was let go a couple rounds after I was.

He works as a grocery clerk now.

One of the high school writers when I was there now works at Chipotle.

This was a helluva long time ago, but the managing editor at my first paper was shown the door a couple years after I got out of business. His next gig was working in the meat market at a grocery store.

 

[BTExpress]

It stuns me that anybody goes to a newspaper for information anymore.

That depends on what you mean by "going to a newspaper for information."

Yes, it's silly to "go" to a newspaper to see who won the football game.

But the newspaper is still a good place to see things --- and find out things --- that you weren't necessarily looking for.

Publix will open its first store in my city in late February. Found that out in the paper today. Wasn't looking for it; just happened to notice it while looking at the headlines.

There's a festival downtown this weekend. What streets are closed and will it affect my drive into work? Found that out, too. All while sitting at the table over a leisurely breakfast.

I suppose that information was all somewhere on the web. But as I said, I didn't do looking for it. I "go" to the paper as a means to basically see "what's going on around me that maybe will be of interest to me." The local newspaper is still a pretty good place for that.

 

[Versatile]

You dip your ink? You're doing it wrong.

 

[YankeeFan]

McArdle's talking about academia and the performing arts, but what she writes could just as easily be applied to journalism (ESPECIALLY sports journalism):

The “tournament model” of employment, in which a lucky few win the lottery while most people scrape by on very little, is a cruel and unattractive way to run a business. But it is cruelest in glamour industries such as the arts.

How far off is higher education from this model.

Seems like Universities have some rock star professors. They have those who have achieved tenure, or are on tenure track.

And, then you have the folks working part-time, for little pay, without benefits.

 

[User 11148]

McArdle's talking about academia and the performing arts, but what she writes could just as easily be applied to journalism (ESPECIALLY sports journalism):

The “tournament model” of employment, in which a lucky few win the lottery while most people scrape by on very little, is a cruel and unattractive way to run a business. But it is cruelest in glamour industries such as the arts.

How far off is higher education from this model.

Seems like Universities have some rock star professors. They have those who have achieved tenure, or are on tenure track.

And, then you have the folks working part-time, for little pay, without benefits.

In the humanities and the arts, a rock star is someone with tenure. He/she may not make much more than an experienced public school teacher, but he/she has a helluva lot better gig than your run-of-the-mill adjunct or temporary lecturer.

In my neck of the woods (business), it's not quite like that. Our PhD grads aren't up against quite so daunting odds. Both of my doctoral students managed to nail down tenure-track jobs (with good salaries), and neither would be considered an exceptional candidate.

 

[Morris816]

Commenting generally, the problem with most papers these days is they are owned by corporations who tend to think everything at each paper is interchangeable, with publishers who still have the old-school mentality that the paper is the business of competing for readers who want national news as much as they want local news.

The truth is, newspapers need to get back to focusing on local communities and figuring out the best way to utilize technology to their advantage, rather than just thinking, "Well, the problem was we gave away our information for free." Or just thinking, "If we change our product from printed paper to PDF, the readers will come."

As long as corporations keep thinking there's no difference between Podunk and Metropolis, and publishers don't think more about the readership that needs to be the focus and how to draw it in, newspapers are, at best, going to just spin on their wheels.

I still believe people will pay for good writing, especially information of great importance... but only if they can't get it anywhere else.

 

[Here me roar]

What I've seen is that as the older generation of newspaper journalists exit, be it fired or forced out the door or for another profession, positions are being merged and manipulated so that old job description don't really fit. The end being that there are far fewer people trying to turn out the same out of information - in addition to being hooked into social media AT ALL TIMES. So, veterans who understand labor laws are walking out the door and 20somethings who have no clue are hiring on and working 60, 70 hours a week, but getting paid for 40.

 

[Rhody31]

Next Thursday is my one-year anniversary of being canned.
I did unemployment as long as I could; I've freelanced for a couple papers and I started caddying again, which is an awesome way to make some extra cash. I'm extremely fortunate to have a wife who chose to take a job where she gets paid enough for the both of us, so it hasn't been a grind on the pockets. If anything, I'm still getting used to being home taking care of a 2-year old all the time and that will chance when baby No. 2 comes in two months.
The job front here is bleak. There are three dailies in the state; the ProJo is the biggest and they have two columnists, one prep reporter and one NFL guy who are nearing retirement age. That's pretty much the golden ticket all the younger guys in the state are waiting on.
Another one of the dailies has a two-man staff and didn't fill a position after a long-term guy retired; those are good jobs for what seems like a good company, but both guys working are young. The state's other daily got gutted and they're down to three, but none of those guys are leaving. Plus that paper is owned by morons, so that would be a "only if I needed to" type thing for me.
The weeklies are booked. My old position is a revolving door; my former competitor is down to a one-man staff (with freelance help and I've been grateful for the work). If he ever left, I'd jump on that gig in a second. There's a weekly chain in the center of the state that I'd work for if the pay was right, because they seem interested in doing things the right way. There is another chain of weeklies in the northern half that has a guy retiring next year and I'd love to step in there, but from what I've heard the publisher wants to eliminate sports altogether.
We have a couple online entities, but their "reporting" is laughable. They're hit machines and care zero about actual journalism.
There are times when I wonder if my life is going to the way I want. I figured by this point I'd be at a metro paper somewhere, on my way to big things. I get a little depressed that I don't have a job and I can't really up and move on somewhere.
But then I look at my daughter. And I can't imagine working at a 100K circ paper beats what I get to do every day.