I get asked two questions several times a week, and I brush off both with a verbal swat.
One — because I’m in my late 20s, I suppose – is when are you getting married? And the other, because it seems like small talk, is why did you leave the newspaper?
I could answer both with a single word: Money.
But I usually deflect the marriage subject, wrongly justifying it as an acceptable passing question, with a practical reason: I’m not eager to have children. And I answer the news question with something to which my audience can nod along: “It didn’t seem like a sustainable career path.”
But that’s a cold and detached answer. I don’t feel cold and detached about news, and I only give that response under the assumption that people don’t want to hang around for the full story – ironically, the same reason newspapers aren’t really working anymore.
So here goes. This is the real reason why I left news: I finally came to accept that the vanity of a byline was keeping me in a job that left me physically and emotionally exhausted, yet supremely unsatisfied.
I started working at newspapers in 2005, the tail-end of the good days. During my first year of work, a Florida newspaper flew me down to the Mexican border to write about cocaine cartel murders back at home. We booked the first available flight, disregarding expense, and arrived before the investigators. That would not happen at a daily newspaper today.
I don’t think the Internet killed newspapers. Newspapers killed newspapers.
People like to say that print media didn’t adapt to online demand, but that’s only part of it. The corporate folks who manage newspapers tried to comply with the whims of a thankless audience with a microscopic attention span. And newspaper staffers tried to comply with the demands of a thankless establishment that often didn’t even read their work. Everyone lost.
People came to demand CNN’s 24-hour news format from every news outlet, including local newspapers. And the news outlets nodded their heads in response, scrambling into action without offering anything to the employees who were now expected to check their emails after hours and to stay connected with readers through social media in between stories.
There was never such a thing as an eight-hour workday at newspapers, but overtime became the stuff of legend. You knew better than to demand fair compensation. If any agency that a newspaper covered had refused to pay employees for their time, the front-page headlines wouldn’t cease. But when it came to watching out for themselves, the watchdogs kept their heads down.
A little more than a month after I left the newspaper, I went to Key West for a friend’s wedding. I realized on the drive home that I had never taken a vacation – aside from a few international trips – without some editor calling with a question about a story. I remember walking down Fifth Avenue in New York on my birthday a few years ago, my cell phone clutched to my ear and mascara running down my face, as an editor told me that he thought the way I had characterized a little girl with cancer needed to be sadder.
To many people, and even to me, part of the draw of news is that it never stops. You wholly invest yourself in a story – until something bigger happens. The only guarantee in any workday is the adrenaline rush. And even when the story isn’t terribly thrilling, you’ve still got a deadline to contend with, a finite amount of time to turn whatever mess you’ve got into 12 to 15 column inches that strangers would want to read.
The flip side to the excitement is the burnout. You’re exhausted, and you’re never really “off.” You get called out of a sound sleep to drive out to a crime scene and try to talk with surviving relatives. You wake up at 3 a.m. in a cold sweat, realizing you’ve misspelled a city councilman’s name. You spend nights and weekends chipping away at the enterprise stories that you never have time to write on the clock.
Everyone works so hard for so long and for such little compensation. The results are dangerous.
We saw it with the Supreme Court health care ruling, as our national news leaders reported the decision incorrectly. We saw it with the Newtown massacre, when initial reports named the suspect’s brother as the shooter. Major news outlets are no better than bloggers if they adopt a policy of getting it out first and correcting it later. They don’t have the money to fend off the resulting lawsuits, and they don’t have the circulation numbers to allow people to lose faith in their product.
Newspapers always have been liberal places where people work hard for little pay, because they believe in the job. They always could empathize with the poor. But pay continues to dwindle to the point that I wonder what kind of person, today, enrolls in journalism school?
I took a pay cut when I moved back from Florida to Charleston, expecting to make up the difference quickly. Instead, I quit my newspaper job at 28, making less money than earned when I was 22.
I can’t imagine anyone outside of an affluent family pursuing a career with so little room for financial growth. And I wonder: Would that well-to-do reporter shake hands with the homeless person she interviews? Would she walk into a ghetto and knock on a door to speak with the mother of a shooting victim? Or would she just post some really profound tweets with fantastic hash tags?
Maybe that’s what people – editors and readers – put at a premium now. Maybe a newsroom full of fresh-from-the-dorm reporters who stay at their desks, rehashing press releases and working on Storify instead of actual stories, is what will keep newspapers relevant.
But I doubt it.
The day I announced my resignation, I had to cover the alcohol ban on Folly Beach. The photographer working the story with me said very little about my decision, except for one heartbreaking statement: “But you were made to do this.”
I had thought so, too. For so long, people had asked me what I would do if my name wound up on a future round of layoffs, if my paycheck were furloughed into oblivion.
I had spent countless hours late at night trolling online for something else that appealed to me. But covering news was the only thing I ever had wanted to do and the only thing I ever had imagined doing.
I started writing stories for my local newspaper when I was 16. I worked seven internships in college, eager to graduate and get into a newsroom. I left school early, school that was already paid for with enough scholarship money that I took home a check each semester, so that I could lug my 21-year-old life to West Palm Beach and work the Christmas crime shift alone in a bureau. And I wouldn’t change that decision for anything.
People in news like to describe a colleague’s departure, especially into a public relations or marketing job, as “going to the dark side.” When word of my resignation traveled through the newsroom, I heard “dark side” references over and over, always with a smile and a wink. I couldn’t help but resent them. But I looked over my cubicle each time and flashed my best Miss America grin instead of the middle finger poised over my keyboard.
I now write for the fundraising arm of a public hospital. Anyone who thinks that’s going to the dark side is delusional. And as my former coworkers ate farewell cake on my last day at the paper, a few of them whispered, “Do they have any other openings over there?”
I don’t know a single person who works in daily news today who doesn’t have her eyes trained on the exit signs. I’m not sure what that says about the industry, but I certainly don’t miss the insecurity.
Sure, it took me a while to get used to my new job. When I go to parties, I no longer can introduce myself as a reporter and watch people’s eyes light up. Instead, I hear how people miss seeing my byline. No one misses it more than I.
News was never this gray, aging entity to me. It was more like young love, that reckless attraction that consumes you entirely, until one day – suddenly — you snap out of feeling enamored and realize you’ve got to detach. I left news, not because I didn’t love it enough, but because I loved it too much – and I knew it was going to ruin me.
Sticky Valentines 
It’s not just print but also digital media. I write for a number of technology websites, trade magazines before that. There was a time when publishers would pay for articles from guest contributors, not a lot, usually a couple hundred dollars or something, enough to make the time required to research and write the piece worthwhile. Not any longer.
It’s not the publisher’s fault either. It’s the fault of an online society that expects every service and every piece of content to be free, but somehow is OK with paying for their high speed Internet connection and mobile phone.
Thank you for capturing exactly what was in my heart when I left my newspaper a year ago. I told my friends, “I love journalism but it doesn’t love me.”
That was exactly what I said to my boss when I left the newspaper I was at to go back to school to get my MLS.
Wow, great post. I’m a young reporter myself, but the stress of the job is just incompatible with the autoimmune disorder I was just diagnosed with (and which flares up when I’m stressed.) I relate a lot to your post. Thanks for sharing!
You are either an ink-stained wretch or your aren’t. I have been the former for 30 years. To each each his own.
I also spent 30 years in the biz. Which gives me the standing to point out that there’s no fool like an old fool, and you get no prize for being last to recognize when you’re being taken advantage of.
Fabulous comment.
This is all true, and testament as well to what a great writer you are, Ms. Allyson Bird. If you can’t do it for the clueless industry, please keep doing it for the rest of us.
–Roy Wenzl
Great comment, Roy. I agree.
ditto. Talent needs to speak ms Bird
Wow, Allyson, THIS IS MY LIFE! Lol I’m now working in public health after 5 years on the daily newspaper grind right after college. I also wrote for my local hometown newspaper starting a 16 and fed my journalism passion until I was 26. I still do freelance because I need to get my byline “fix” every now and then lol. But I agree with everything you said. That last graph got me a little teary, because being a hardcore journalist is definitely like a dysfunctional relationship and when you “break up” it’s indeed heartbreaking. Thank you for sharing this very true and relateable story.
And I’m glad I wasn’t the only one, re: You wake up at 3 a.m. in a cold sweat, realizing you’ve misspelled a city councilman’s name.
It’s terrifying! I will be eating dinner or doing something mundane and then my heart stops when I realized I added an extra ‘s’ in someone’s last name.
I understood and don’t disagree with anything in the original post. I just want to point out, though, that the years in which you were ages 22 to 28 were also the nadir of the recession. Should you wish to return to journalism in the future, you might find that the pay/conditions may have improved.
Not hardly.
Ha. That’s an adorable fantasy. Getting extra money to pay for a Netflix account isn’t an “improvement.”
No.. it’s
been going on in the biz for 20 years.
Thank you so much, Allyson, for finding the words I couldn’t muster when I left last year after 12 years in the news business. I, too, went to the “dark side,” and I’ve not regretted it for a single second. Every word of this piece is so very true. Keep being brave. Life is too short to be miserable.
Reblogged this on Keepkalm's Blog.
Just glad to know I’m not the only one! I have been out of the biz for three years and it’s still a rough transition. I fuel my craving for bylines by freelancing at times. Seriously, you summed up my last three years. Sometimes, I still feel like I have lost my identity.
You need to get a grip. You are in fact a very lucky person.
Quitting a job like journalism and putting up a long, solipsistic blog posting about it is the epitome of first world problemism.
I’m sure journalism in North America is tough going — but try assembling iPhones in China, or making t-shirts in Vietnam. Then you’ll understand the real meaning of being physically and emotionally exhausted, yet supremely unsatisfied.
Because you can’t be exhausted outside a sweatshop?
It sounds like you know the reality of being supremely unsatisfied.
John, you seem to be missing the point entirely. We could engage in a good old-fashioned game of cultural relativism and talk about how much better off Allyson and the rest of us former journos are than folks living in the developing world.
But the point is that the nature of the business and the diminishing willingness of the average reader to pay for good journalism is quickly driving talented reporters out of the industry. While you may shrug your shoulders at this notion, let me pose this question to you: who alerts us to abuses in iPhone assembly plants or sweat-shops in Vietnam?
Losing talented reporters from the field means that the abuses and the travails of the developing world stand less and less of a chance of being exposed to the light of day, and to the eyes of the world.
Please think about that next time before you wag a finger at someone for expressing an articulate, well-placed lamentation on the state of an industry that is foundational to democracy as we know it.
+10 million times what Leslie said.
Very good points.
You need to rinse the sand out of your vagina. Something tells me you’re not living with the filth of pigs beneath your feet in some grass hut in Zimbabwe either, bub.
When people ask me why I’m still not married at 34, I just tell them I decided to skip my first divorce. Works like a charm every time!
My grandfather was editor of the PB Post in the 60s and 70s – an uncompromisingly smart and tough “paper man,” as he called himself.. He died in 2003, but I am certain that, one, he would have enjoyed knowing someone so much younger and of a different background who felt the same passion he did for shining a light on stories of good and bad. Two, he’d believe right with you that the reasons you left news were the right ones — and that the right decisions are never the easiest choices to make.
Awesome story Allyson….I couldn’t have said it better myself. I don’t miss the tv news side of the business either, but what I miss the most was working side by side with awesome journalists like yourself and the friendly competition from the other reporters and photographers. It was a bond that other people just won’t understand how much work was put into our job and how little appreciation we received. I’m so happy for you that you’re living it up “on the dark side” 🙂
Honestly? I think if you’re that thin-skinned, you don’t belong in newspapers.
I hate that argument. Sensitive people are exactly what is missing in journalism. It takes all kinds of people to cover all aspects of a story or community.
Julie – you pig.
This is really, really well done. Relatable on so many levels, not the least of which is geographic. I hope you find peace/fulfillment at MUSC. And I hope they find ways to make the most of your undeniable talent.
I enjoyed this so much because it was as though you wrote it for me. I left news 2 years ago after working 20+ as a TV news anchor. I even had someone say to me yesterday, “Hey, didn’t you used to be… someone?” It is hard to see the expression of skepticism when you tell people you enjoy your life outside the news, but I do. I’m so glad to see I have a comrade.
I don’t know you or your work but followed the link from someone else here in Seattle. There is another path besides “old media or no media.” After more than 30 years in (mostly) old media, I cleared that path ahead of me, and followed it, quitting a secure, good-paying job five and a half years ago, and never looking back. I love news with all my heart and am serving my community reporting it through our commercial, professional, blog-format (no need to insult journalists who work in this format – many of us are more ethical and accurate than some old-media folks I’ve seen) neighborhood-news site. Yeah, it’s an around-the-clock job woven with my life as a wife of 28 years and a mom of a 17-year-old son. But so were all my old-media jobs (particularly as a TV news manager/producer), as you so accurately characterize in your story – the big difference, I wasn’t getting much satisfaction out of it, and was sitting in a TV-newsroom office with my soul dying day by day. Now, from breaking big stories (most recently, we were the first to report on a surveillance-camera system that the city police department was installing without telling the public about it) to helping reunite lost pets and their owners (a sideline we never expected), it’s a daily joy as well as challenge. If you miss news – and live in a neighborhood without its own hub of community news and discussion – it’s a path to consider. Whatever you choose to continue being a professional communicator, though, I wish you luck, and joy.
We don’t know each other, but we are of the same mind. I left newspapers in 2009 and am now on the other side of the fence, working for a local non-profit. Why those in power– and with such power — at our shops couldn’t see the forest for the trees is beyond me. If we approached a story the way they approached the future, it never would have never hit a doorstep.
Jerry
Allyson:
Spot on writing here. As a journalist who has been in the business for more than a decade and was recently laid off by an online media company, I’ve seen a lot of what you’ve written here. I will definitely share this and hope that many of my non-journalist friends understand what we go through.
Great writing. Thanks for telling us your story.
I plan to pass this on, but had a problem — I kept thinking I’d found the quote to attach as a teaser, but then kept finding another. It’s all true, it’s all wonderfully written.
It’s all too depressing.
I got my first byline in 1974 as a freelancer and entered the newsroom as a reporter in ’87. I don’t mind being one of the shoulders your generation stands on, except that we’re in quicksand and it’s even up to your chin. I kept quitting corporate papers and joining family-owned papers that then got sold to corporations. It’s like jumping from ice floe to ice floe and, yes, the warming trend is real.
The newspapers did this to themselves, overdosing on a combination of beancounting on the management side and a rhapsodic belief in the beauty of the Emperor’s New Clothes in editorial. The good part of getting higher on the ladder was getting to read the ridiculous memos from corporate verbatim, since you wouldn’t believe them secondhand.
Unfortunately, the people who get it are the ones who get out. This does not improve things.
“Why I left news” is a great story! Very well written. Many people will read and continue reading you when you go on writing like this!! The talent is there, now just do not give up.
Thank you for this excellent post.
As a mid-level editor over 20 years ago, I remember counseling a young reporter by pointing at the newsroom and telling her: Look at how few people here are over 40, and of those, who do you consider a role model? Even before the internet accelerated newspapers’ downward spiral, it was a tough career path. Back then, the biggest negative impact on good journalism was media acquisitions. Ownership changes almost always led to cost cutting to increase, or at least maintain, profit margins. The internet’s fragmentation of media news since then has gored ad revenues for many newspapers, forcing even bloodier rounds of cost-cutting — and amping up the pressure to compete with online media.
The fundamental problem in my mind is that people expect their news for free, or at least, for a price that doesn’t come close to the cost of producing quality journalism. Even in the best of days, daily newspapers received well over half their income from advertising. If people actually valued news and were willing to pay, then there would be lots of opportunities for journalism careers, whether in traditional or new media.
Very interesting post, thank you for sharing your thoughts and perspective. You didn’t answer the question on why you didn’t get married yet? 🙂
Good on you. Except that the Internet DID kill newspapers… it was just in a suicide-by-cop kind of way.
Allyson:
This is an interesting read. I can relate. Worked in non-daily community newspapers for over 30 years in the suburban Detroit market. Plenty of awards. Named the state’s newspaper of the year 21 straight times. I was even the Michigan Press Association president.
It was a fabulous experience — very, very fulfilling. Started as a beat reporter and quickly became the sports editor for over a decade, then finished up with over 20 years as exec editor of the chain (and ME for the largest paper in the group).
Many, many “kids” just like you came through our newsroom. We always felt that the dedication and depth of our local stories was better than anything anyone else could do.
The model was simple: Create a core of veteran journalists (who were paid OK, but not well by any means) and surround them with a bevy of young, energized talent (that was paid poorly, but was looking for a stepping stone to be better future). We made it a fun place to work. Enjoyed each other’s company and worked like hell.
But, as the economy waned corporate newspapering came more and more into play (originally, we were privately owned), the entire model just fell apart. Chasing profit margins that couldn’t be accomplished anyway meant laying off more and more bodies. Those left behind did more and more work (for no better pay). Community focus gave way to gimmicks.
It became more important to post anything than to post something good. And it became paramount to post something fast instead of accurately (mistakes, in fact, were viewed as OK just as long as the story went up quickly). Corporate wanted more “citizen journalists” (i.e. someone you don’t have to pay), more video and more bloggers (didn’t matter whether they were good, bad or ugly).
You’re lucky though, because you made your own decision. For me, eventually the corporate just chopped off the entire top of the newspapers’ administrative structure (publisher, ME, etc.) and handed off “responsibility” to someone a hour away from the office.
So much for sense of community, eh?
You sound like a dedicated soul. Remember your colleagues and the fun you had on the job. Keep the faith, because you’ll do well. Don’t get hung up in the newspaper industry’s problems — because, in many ways, those problems are self-inflicted. An industry that has forgotten its roots is lost in the forest.
Karl Ziomek
I left newspapers in 1999 for all those reasons and more. I agree the problem wasn’t the Internet or Craigslist, fall-back excuses given today. Those are just platforms for publishing content. Arrogance and greed killed them. Newspapers saw technology changes as a way to make life easier for themselves, not customers. They had ample warning and have no excuses
I remember sitting in my Ethics in Journalism class my senior year of college in 1993. My wise old professor told us that if newspapers didn’t change their ways, they’d be obsolete in 30 years. None of us believed it. Couldn’t happen. It’s been 20 years, and newspapers as I knew them and worked in them are disappearing quickly. My fear is that good journalists will disappear, too.
Not only do I love what you have to say, it is something I have been thinking about for the past few years. When did it become so acceptable to get a news story so wrong and just say “sorry” later? So many people don’t do the follow up and don’t hear the retraction that it perpetuates bad information and leaves to an even less informed public/voter.
Thoughtful piece. The daily treadmill is brutal–the belt never stops spinning. But with your graceful storytelling style, you should consider freelancing long-form pieces for city, regional and national magazines, provided you can find time with your new job. (Congrats on that, and good for you for dismissing the dark-side buzzkillers.) It’s a way to transition from the “young love” of newspapers into a kind of writing that is (on balance) more nuanced, less rushed and longer lasting. I would guess most any glossy would welcome your byline.
Also: cool turtle.
I used to be a dedicated consumer of newspapers. I grew up in a 2-paper town (Minneapolis) and loved getting my fingers dirty every morning — and then again every afternoon. The stories that were told, the information that I got, and the changes that happened in my community because of those papers were amazing.
I’m not sure that there’s a a paper now where any of that happens. Certainly not there — or in LA, or Seattle, or Boston, or New York. I read their papers online and they’re simply a recounting of current events, usually with an obvious bias and few details. The news hole is tiny. The quality of the writing is poor.
Some of the best writing I see is in alternative weeklies. Or online, in blogs and other new media. While newspapers erect paywalls to block me out.
When I was in school back in the 70’s, I wanted to be Woodward or Burnstien — thank goodness I didn’t achieve my dream.
I was a local tv news photographer for a little over a decade, working at four different stations in two cities. It was always exciting and fulfilling – a different adventure every day. Until I married. Then the weird hours and no holidays off became a burden and an inconvenience for planning anything with my wife or family. When I had kids it didn’t take long for me to resent the job entirely. Getting out became the only option if I wanted to be a family man, which I did.
You realized where this was heading before you even took those steps in your life. News is a young persons game, best played by those with fluid lives and small connections outside of work. It sounds like you understand that already. Most don’t until it is too late.
What an enjoyable and insightful read Allyson. Thank you for that.
What killed newspapers was MBA’s and trust fund babies buying them up, squeezing them for margin, then looking to sell the now-inferior product for a profit while expecting them to pay back the ridiculous loans taken out to buy them in the first place.
Our paper is on its third owner in a decade, all of whom asked us to make sacrifices because we weren’t paying back enough of our debt – debt that we didn’t have before these guys came along.
In fact, we’re profitable. Just not profitable enough for their repayment schedules, so they cut back on staff, the tools needed to do the job, and the overtime and staff that get you the big story that people buy the paper for.
If you do to any industry what was done to newspapers in the 90’s and 00’s, you’ll find a decrepit money pit at the end of it.
Excellent points. I worked for a Gannett paper, and in the department where I was (features), we had 12 people when I was hired in 1998. When I left in 2012, there was one other person besides me (and I was part time). Almost 100 percent of our content was wire. Who’s going to buy that?
Local features. Yeah. They were fun. Kind of like rides in your Granddad’s old De Soto.
Almost my story. But I was in television news and it was a mad, mad world that I was insanely in love with. That is probably why its degradation and decline into mediocrity hurt me so much. It has been 18 months since I quit. But I have not found ‘my thing’ yet. I guess television was and will always be ‘my thing’. Everything else will be a compromise. I am married and earning almost as much as I did before is a sad necessity.
Great post. I wish I could write something like that. Good luck to you!
You get asked multiple times every week why you’re not married and why you left newspapers? People care?
Very well-said Allyson — congrats on making the transition out of news. It’s not the dark side at all. So many of the things you said here, I can’t help but agree with, from personal experience.
I can’t go. I’m 50 years old and it’s too late. I’ve bounced from bureau to bureau to a mobile status to the city room. I want a raise. I want to know why I can’t ever please one particular editor. I’d like a call-free vacation day and it’s my own fault I don’t get one. I want someone to take down the readers’ comments section. Some of the changes to journalism are good, most are not. You were smart to go and yet, how sad to see someone made for the job have to go and sadder still that some of us just can’t.
I can identify with most of this post. But you’re wrong about this: “I don’t know a single person who works in daily news today who doesn’t have her eyes trained on the exit signs.” I don’t. I love what I do most days and get paid enough to live pretty well (no help from a wealthy family here). I know I’m in the minority — and I got a few lucky breaks along the way — but there’s hope out there for young journalists.
Why I left news | Blog With MARKIT Group
Your blogpost touched me deeply. I was one of the lucky ones — I spent 39 years as an editor and writer at five newspapers, including the South Florida Sun Sentinel and the Baltimore Sun. We cared. We wanted to change the world and we didn’t mind the low pay or the extra hours. But the last few years I worked at newspapers (I left in 2009) were so different. I was a section editor who had to blog daily, write headlines and cutlines, write and edit stories, supervise freelancers and go on photo assignments. The final straw came when I asked at a meeting what were all priorities. The editor said: “You have to do it all and accept good enough.” I came home and told my husband I would volunteer for the next layoff. “I never accepted good enough in my life and I am not about to start now,” I told him. My section was killed six months after I left. Newspaper owners thought they could fool the readers by giving them less and pretending it was more. Readers knew they were getting less and fled. One of my favorite editors said it best: “Newspapers aren’t dying. They are committing suicide.”
I bet every journalist 30 or younger who reads this blog post spends the whole time nodding their heads « Talk Wordy to Me
Thank you for writing this. As a young photojournalist who is also working with a non-profit, I am really struggling with where I want to focus my energy career wise. It is reassuring to be reminded that I am not the only one with this confusion over a passion.
Odds are good you’ll be back. I’ve done this a few times over the years.
It’s not vanity. It’s altruism 😉
I think you can insert ______________ for “writer” and a lot of people would feel similarly. I happened to stumble across this blog and wanted to just say how much I enjoy your writing – please keep it up!
Aren’t weekends great when they’re actually Friday-Saturday-Sunday (and the occasional Monday)? … Start planning now — next stop academia! Christmas off! Spring break off! Summers off! … Get a master’s in literature and you can teach English, Humanities, Mass Communications and — gasp! — Journalism!!
Hm, don’t think it is necessary to get kids if you marry. O the other hand i dont think it is necessary to marry some one either 🙂 .
You know, I’ve been in newspapers for 15 years, and I’m now a columnist and editorial writer with Newsday. I mostly agreed with, or at least empathized with, your piece. But your assertion that people who grew up in upper-middle class or wealthy families wouldn’t be truly willing to do the job, go to poor neighborhoods, shake the hands, was unjustified crap. You quit. Fine. You’re reasons are justifiable, for you. But I’ve known journalists at plenty of the papers I’ve been at (not me, I wish) who grew up with money and went after stories in the gutters, in the dive bars and in Iraq, like rabid bulldogs. You don’t need to sling an attack at people you’ve never met on your way out the door.
Reblogged this on Sonya Chudgar and commented:
What’s the value of news now, even to reporters? Allyson Bird takes a look at the little compensation and low expectations of news value in news rooms across the countries these days. I especially like her thoughts on the unnecessary breakneck pace:
“We saw it with the Supreme Court health care ruling, as our national news leaders reported the decision incorrectly. We saw it with the Newtown massacre, when initial reports named the suspect’s brother as the shooter. Major news outlets are no better than bloggers if they adopt a policy of getting it out first and correcting it later. They don’t have the money to fend off the resulting lawsuits, and they don’t have the circulation numbers to allow people to lose faith in their product.”
If I could describe the futility of the 24-hour news obsession, I would do it with math, ie the graph of y=(-1)/x https://twitter.com/pattanzola/status/292074977715441664/photo/1 – chasing nothing down to infinity.
Ten years in the newspaper industry, and now I sell steel and aluminum grating for industrial and commercial use. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss the newspaper, and not a day that goes by that I don’t thank God that I’m not in journalism anymore. Thank you for putting into words what I have thought for so long.