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 
I lived this. Eight years ago. The engines had stopped, the steam had gone and the bow had plunged underwater. I was adrift, alone and scared.
I worked for my ex-wife, who’d just had a baby with another man. I spent my weeks covering three unfilled news desk positions, then came in on my weekends to cover health and medicine. I drank and smoked too much and ate too little. I got so sick, I went to hospital and stayed in bed for a week. While convalescing, I heard how pissed my editor was that I hadn’t turned in my 35″ health cover before illness overtook me completely. How dare I make her run wire? Neither the fact that I had called Sunday to warn her I hadn’t finished my piece while completely delusional with fever and on the way to the ER, nor the fact she had two weeks to find a health story to run made a tinker’s damn to her. I had failed. I was broken. And the coolness in the air when I returned felt like the beating wasn’t over yet. I had yet to complete my full penance.
That first day back, I took a long look at the faces around me. Those longest among us weren’t people anymore. They’d become clay gargoyles cast in the sickly glow of fluorescent light banks reflecting off urinal-water-yellow, windowless walls. That was going to be me. A minion of hell chained to a notepad, forever chasing after the lives of others while disregarding my own. A dust-eater in a crypt. Just news machinery, destined one day like a broken chair or an obscure IBM Selectric for the surplus closet when I no longer fulfilled my duties.
After a whole year of comparing the, as you put it, vanity of a byline to the greener pastures/soiled-dove-status of the “dark side,” I’d made my decision. That day, I would board the lifeboat and start again. I would sail now to work PR for a major university — the very place where I’d gotten my cherished print journalism degree. No more flagellating myself for the sins of the world. No more “truth, justice and the American way” and all that “Fourth Estate” horsepucky you tell yourself to endure the sting of the lash.
Looking back, I’m surprised at my reluctance to leave. What the hell was wrong with me? Perhaps that reluctance is the same as an Indonesian child laborer paid in table scraps and iodine tablets, though. Survival is so meager that you can’t look up from your sewing machine to see the world of opportunities outside. Now, every time I think “boy, I miss that adrenaline rush of news,” I look out my office window onto a beautiful campus and realize just how good I have it. Then I leave at 5 p.m. to enjoy the company of my new wife.
P.S. The last year I was there, I got an 82-cent-an-hour raise. That was success.
As a retired (bought out) reporter of 30 years you have nailed it. With your permission I would like to link this to my blog – freefromeditors.blogspot.com – so my readers can also chime in. I have spent five years on my blog trying to sum up what you did so eloquently in just one post. I also went to the “dark side” when I left the newspaper business but just for two years until I could draw my Social Security. Good luck in your new career.
“vanity of a byline”
“I no longer can introduce myself as a reporter and watch people’s eyes light up”
I was a TV producer and can relate. Part of the attraction was to be where the action is, but increasingly main stream media is not that place. A byline does not necessarily equal impact.
I quit and co-founded a startup that will do more for journalism than my work in TV, but in a less public way that people can’t relate to. It’s called Media Spot Me (www.mediaspotme.com), for journalists to discover people to interview. Something that was a central pain-point of mine.
I still appreciate the possibility of the media but like you said it is not as sexy inside as it sounds when talking about it to others.
I’m a reporter. I never once got into news reporting for vanity and I doubt many to most of my male peers never did either. Women get into professions for all the wrong reasons and news reporting is no different.
Why she left the news | Spring '13 Advanced Reporting
I saw this coming in 1993 when me, with my newly-minted grad degree, one colleague with his ivy league under and grad degrees and and a third with a grad degree from the nation’s top journalism school were making a combined salary of <$75 working in the suburbs of a big-city newspaper. Twenty years later, newspapers still struggle with making their websites profitable via subscription, while all media continues to cut staff. So, I hear you, sister!
when “I”, with my newly-minted grad degree, not when “me” with my newly minted grad degree. Me talk pretty someday…
You’re among friends, keys. We leave the proofreading to the REAL experts; cranky letter writers enraged over misused semicolons and all caps.
Go edit yourself inconsequential grammar Nazi.
Your correction would not have been half as funny were it not for the fact that you are the one who is incorrect; pres’ statement may have been inelegant – and, indeed, his or her parenthetical statements were downright lopsided – but the use of “me” prior to the inclusion of two other individuals was accurate. Had it followed their invocation or stood alone, then “I” would have been the correct pronoun. If you’re going to correct someone, I would make two suggestions; first, try to make sure your statement is the least bit accurate, and second, learn how to use punctuation. Your sentence structure is far more painful to read than pres’.
In the end, we all learn that our love of journalism is largely unrequited.
I have a different reaction to this young woman’s story. I never expected to write news. I wanted to write literature. But in my late 30’s, I found myself working in a public radio newsroom. I was there for the great years and got up every day excited to go to work. I was doing something important, something valuable, something meaningful. I thought it would be my last job. Then I got laid off, after 12 years of NPR reports and stories and thousands and thousands of local stories. And I couldn’t let go. I’ve been freelancing for the past three years. I’m making a bare living, but the daily newsroom stress and long hours are gone. It wouldn’t be a good career choice for a young person, but for me, nearing retirement age, it’s perfect. I still miss the daily grind – and I don’t miss it at all. And I’m still doing what I love.
Oh, Journalism | Let's Get Creative!
Reblogged this on This is MY Soapbox and commented:
This is something I wish I read before I took my journalism degree. I don’t regret doing it, but I completely understand this blogger’s feelings. I quit journalism 3/4 into the program when I realized that I just didn’t have the strength to go up to a family that has just lost a son or daughter. Ironically, 3/4 into my program, I lost an acquaintance who was close to good friends of mine. I realized the day the news broke that he had died that as a journalist, I would be responsible for drafting a story and approaching my friends for comments. I couldn’t do it.
This is one of the best pieces I’ve read on the “why” of failed newspapers. I am a journalist from the so-called “good days,” retiring (bought out in a downsizing, actually) in 2007. The list of issues in your piece are long-standing, systemic and pernicious and, I think, spelled the demise of the “news” business long ago. They simply became more pronounced as an ossified and too often smug institution found itself unable to respond to the galloping changes in information dissemination over the last 50 years.
Nailed it. You should consider writing for a living.
I feel like you read my mind — I relate to every word, every sentence in this post. It’s nice to know someone else feels the same way I did when I chose to stop pursuing journalism. I have a master’s in journalism (it was free, thank goodness) but now help run the family business instead of scrapping it out for $27k a year in a newsroom. I’m much happier, and hope you are too.
I worked in newspapers from 2000 through 2006. What stands out most was each time I would return home to my apartment in NYC, the doorman would say “Look who’s coming, it’s yesterdays news”. He was spot on… the newspaper was always 24 hours behind the story. Broadcast and the web had us outgunned every time.
I’ll be honest, I’m glad the newspapers are on their way out.
Not every newspaper is bad, but they’re all out to make money, pander to society’s whims and sell opinions.
It always annoyed me that if anyone was on the wrong side of public’s sense of right or wrong, then the papers would follow. It’s wrong to generalise, so I’m only doing this to put my point across, but an editor’s/owner’s agenda was often the direction a story would go.
Fox is the same, even BBC and SKY, but in general I trust 24 hour news stations more than newspapers.
I reiterate, I’m very glad the power of the popular press is about to be broken and though I don’t trust everything I see on the news chanels, I think it’s easier to hold them to account.
BTW, I always read about four newspapers online, I’m such a hypocrite…
You’re a fool. Good luck
Not sure what I should say to that, to be honest.
I’m a fool because I don’ trust the gutter press? I don’t trust any news corporation full stop, but the newspapers have abused their power for far too long and I’m happy that slowly they’re grasp on the public psyche, their monopoly on what Joe Public is told is melting.
Thanks for the good luck though… I think. 😀
This comment is the best defense of the press that I’ve read in a long time. It demonstrates that even the woefully misinformed obviously get their news from somewhere.
There is no defence for the press. There is no free press, well not on a national level in Britain anyway.Nearly every story is opinionated or bent to suit that paper’s political/financial slant. Of course, there are well meaning individuals out there who want to be honest, fair, unbiased blah blah blah, but the need for circulation often inhibits that pursuit. If it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t see print.
Yes, yes you are. And you’re a cheapskate.
I read the papers online for the footy results. I live in Germany, I want to read English football stories and seeing as I have no access to buy English newspapers, and that I don’t want to pay extortionate prices to have them delivered to me for just the football section, I read it online. I feel slightly aggrieved that you’re calling me names actually 😦
You can tell she really likes saying that her blog “went viral.” I don’t think this quite constitutes ‘going viral’ by today’s standards.
I feel like you broke into my heart and stole it, as if you somehow knew my thoughts and translated them into this blog. Thank you for this.
After 15 years in the newsroom, I made the leap to the dark side in the early ’90s – which truly was the modern golden age of newspapers. I still love journalism and writing, but there are so many more opportunities to do it today in work environments where you’re appreciated and compensated. It gets better every day and the feelings become less raw. Congrats on new beginnings and thanks for this terrific piece.
Il suicidio del giornalismo Usa | LetteraPolitica.it
I did the same, and I feel happy for that desition. I’ve been living in hell since I quit my job, but I won’t change it for what I had: a desk and a chair and a computer and a borken soul. Being a reporter is not that. Anyone who loves news should hate how they work now in newsrooms. At least in almost all of them.
Cheers
Allyson
As a journalist, I read your blog with interest. I respect your opinion, but I also want you to know that I’ve met a lot of news reporters who are happy, love their job, get paid well, and make it a long life career. So maybe being a news reporter isn’t your passion.
I write for a trade magazine, and believe me, I understand your frustation. But you see, being a magazine journalist was my dream and I worked hard to get to where I am. The money is not great, I know, but the reward is big and it makes up for the undesirable parts of the job. More importantly, I am living my dream and loving it.
My point is, every job has its goods and bads; but when you pursue your dream and passion, you will love it so much that you will focus on the goods, not the bads – and it can never ruin you.
All the best in your career!
A magazine reporter comparing her situation to a daily. That’s rich! Yeah. Totally comparable.
I’ve done magazine work, and I mean no disrespect, but you do not do the same thing as a newspaper reporter. Not even close. Pretending they are equivalent is just plain inaccurate, and lecturing a newspaper reporter on commitment based on your magazine experience is frankly misguided at best.
When you’re on the hook for two print stories, by-the-minute online updates to five different half-developed stories, hourly tweets and three Facebook posts – and that’s a slow day – just keeping up at a basic level can require a “Devil Wears Prada” level of commitment.
Trying for enterprise work? Investigations with less-than-instant results? Tracking down the less-than-obvious source? Making time for editing back-and-forth? It can all but kill you.
When news reporting is your passion, you’ll try anyway. After a while, you just physically, mentally, emotionally, will not be able to do it anymore. The trouble is, it’s getting harder and harder to find a daily paper where you don’t end up in that situation. I know plenty of very talented, dedicated journalists to quit the biz not because they didn’t care enough, but because they cared too much.
I haven’t been a reporter, except for the occasional free-lance gig, since 1988, but I still miss the adrenaline rush of deadline. I do not miss the constant, unrelieved state of alertness, or the phone calls, or the restrictions on my personal life to avoid the appearance of bias, or the jerks in management.
As millions watch March Madness online today, I hope newspaper owners notice something: commercials. Lots and lots of TV commercials.
Newspapers should require readers to sit through a 30-second TV commercial before granting free access to an online article. For the first time in history, newspapers can pursue TV advertising, but they’re not doing it. Why?
Going over the dark side is only true if you’re working for a politician or political institution. Then you’re paid to obfuscate and outright lie. Corporate PR should be what newspapers used to be for — disseminating information not disinformation.
Ha! Corporate PR would NEVER lie about anything.
Why Allyson Left the News Biz and My Memories of a Duopoly : MikeShaw.tv
With three decades in as a reporter, I understand your feeling. This business is eating its “young” as I watch the next gen journalists leave the business altogether.
However, the business side of journalism bears a lot of blame.
What other business gives away its primary product for years? Not banks? That gave a way free ATM service for a few months, to get customers used to the idea and quickly introduced a nominal fee. News media companies should have done the same for on-line news, instead an entire generation came of age expecting new to be free on line.
Where was the innovation on the business side to replace the print product? Answer, no place. For years we all sat in meeting being dazzled with figures of million of page views for our websites. No one ever said (or asked) how that turns in to revenue. No one figured out a business model to get on line ads to replace those money making double page ads in the paper.
Corporate greed decimated newsroom staffs, but instead of reinvesting in the company (or rewarding the hard working survivors in the trenches) that money went in to the pockets of corporate executives who drove down stock prices and had a lack of vision to try and compete. Forbes magazine actually knocked Gannett’s decision to pay out $28 million of 33 million saved through staff cuts, to executive compensation, arguing that money should have been reinvested in the company.
In the newsroom I see too much top down management from people who haven’t been on the street in 20 plus years who haven’t seen the changes in how the media is “handled by sources. They are slow to listen to the front line workers and depend on ficus groups when we have the best focus group every day, what is the most read story on our own websites.
On one said. I can’t blame you for leaving a business which will tax your fiscal and emotional health. But you’ll miss people waving your article in the air when ass-ripping public officials at a meeting or hearing or doing good like writing article after article to get clean water for 400 families or guardrails in the medians of dangerous highways which make this job worth it. Good luck.
The fact is that someone will always offer the news for “free.” In todays environment we pay monthly fees for the connection to news sources and then shop for sources that fit what remains of our budget. Avoiding ATM fees and advertising is just part of the budgeting process.
I left my newspaper job of four years because it was the biggest disappointment of my adult life. I expected that daily adrenaline rush the writer mentioned, but instead sat through agonizing city council and school board meetings. I sat through arguments about zoning laws, listened to grouchy moms and dads, and talked to blowhards on the phone. To be happy, I need a sense of importance, and news reporting didn’t do that for me. The money was decent (by newspaper standards), and my co-workers were amazing, but the job wasn’t worth the fuss. I’m in the healthcare field now. Much better.
Your essay gives a thought-provoking dash of reality about the newsroom. I have many comments in response but little time. I did want to address the question of the well-to-do reporter shaking hands with the homeless. I come from a family considered in the top 10 percent tax bracket of earners, grew up very sheltered and had a nice private Jesuit college degree essentially “bought” for me, and I was not blind to the limited earning potential of this career. But would I avoid shaking hands with a homeless person? No. I was uncomfortable at first but I invariably shake hands with the down-and-out every month for stories. This job opened my eyes to many realities. On the whole, though, I share your frustrations.
Clarifying on that comment about my journalism degree being essentially “bought”: The family paid a susbtantial amount for my tuition, to avoid me being saddled with student loans.
Thank you for this. I graduated with my journalism degree in May, and I’m working as a reporter for a newspaper conglomerate. It’s a weekly, so it’s nowhere near as demanding as a daily, but the things I’ve had to cover and the people I’ve had to work with has already made me reconsider my career. I’ve done internships in PR, so here’s hoping I can cross over soon.
I really co’lundt ask for more from this article.
This post captivated every thought my mind has produced. I too graduated quickly and submerged myself in to a world of reporting, only to find that it was not what I was grasping for. Great piece!
so right on so many counts, especially social media bs … yep, ‘newspapers killed newspapers.’ i’ve been saying for years that newspaper owners are killing newspapers… good stuff.
Amen!! As a former photojournalist, I left for many of the same reasons. It pains me to see what happened to the profession I loved and the people in it.
I was laid off from photojournalism in 2008, six months after stepping down to a smaller,twice weekly from a more secure daily of a larger chain. Since then, an average of 2 photo shoots (freelancing) per year, a security officer job at $8 an hour and a physically hurting custodial job at $8.50 an hour, that caused three ruptured discs in my neck and insomnia. Message here is to be careful what you wish for. Don’t leave the newspaper business without a secure plan in place, or an educational pursuit you can handle and afford. Listen to yourself, not your friends, or former coworkers in directing your future path. As I see it, news media still has a future, it WILL be around, newspapers ARE still hiring as I see fewer laying off and shutting down – and I look at the job ads every day. The blog author here had a plan it seems and seems to be doing well. That didn’t happen with me. Again, plan and think hard about what you need to do with yourself
People still ask women why they aren’t married?
I worked in the graphics department of two newspapers run by two different, large companies. Not surprisingly, I have a lot of reporters, editors, photographers and editors as friends. I met my wife at a newspaper where she was a reporter so the news business has special memories for me. The description given above of the “daily miracle” of putting out a newspaper is 100% accurate. Last year, I was laid off with my work actually going to India. My wife had a sad situation. She loved the news and reporting but getting out and walking away became her only choice. Since then, she has taught a few journalism classes just to be near it. Sadly, kids today do not read or write and have no interest in journalism – saying that they will work for magazines, blogs or one hundred different answers than working for a newspaper. It sickens me how this has changed in my lifetime.
On a positive note, my health has greatly improved as layer after layer of stress has left my body. My wife has new work in another field and is very good at it. I can see her get the itch to write from time to time, however. Good luck to all.
The news industry is like dating an abusive boyfriend. You keep hoping it will change and learn to love you, but in the end it just sucks you dry and leaves you wounded. Everyone I know is sick and tired of fearing they’ll not have a job next year, or heck even next month. It’s emotionally exhausting and leaves little room to plan and dream about your future. I left the news industry this past year, after dedicating my life to it for 18 years, sacrificing having a family because the career was more important. Now I realize my mistake. Bottom line, if your job is destroying the core person you are (and only you can recognize that), then it’s time to leave.
This is exactly how I felt upon leaving journalism after 17 years. Thank you for the post.
Wow, this really resonates with me. It was a hard break-up, but I did it too. Thanks for posting your feelings that so many of us share, but no one really understands until you BECOME part of the “dark side.”
Reblogged this on Steven Rosenberg.
March Madness | Debbi Mack's Blog
I was a reporter for 40 years. Deliberately chose never to be an editor. I loved the job for 40 years. Sure I didn’t get paid what I was worth, but I did get paid enough to survive and raise two kids. So for all that time, I had a career that was fun, satisfying, worthwhile and put me throughout the spectrum of society. Money can’t buy that kind of happiness.
Steve E.
You were paid enough to raise a family? Then you were paid more than what the new journos are making today.
Reblogged this on Upside Down and commented:
This blog struck a chord. I relate to a lot of it, although I never worked for a newspaper, I think the same can be said of many news organisations these days, sadly. Paragraphs 9-11 are the pertinent ones for me and one reason why I ended up leaving my job in the newsroom a few year’s a go. Newspapers, radio stations, TV, ‘digital content providers’, many seem to fall victim to the lure of ‘more hits, more clicks’ rather than investing in a real story.
I really needed this. Thanks. I wrote for ten years (more PR), but I dove right in for a year as a GA reporter after getting a J degree. I really feel like I was BORN to write, but not born to write what they were asking me. It was a business and not always really about the PEOPLE or the STORY. My friend, an editor, described it perfectly, “I love my job but it doesn’t love me back.” We get into this job because we’d do it for free, but then, it slowly frays away our lives.. Every year I have to watch The Paper or Broadcast News to remember the bad that came with the good.
Dream of the ’90s is alive | famousmen
The good news (ha) is we’ll always have the movies – like “The Front Page” (1931 or 1974 version), “All The President’s Men” (1976), “State of Play” (2009) “Zodiac” (2007), “The Paper” (1994), Holly Hunter in “Broadcast News” or Bogie in “Deadline USA” (1952). And of course on TV – The Lou Grant Show (a paper with apparently only one photographer – named “Animal”) and my current favorite – “The Newsroom” on HBO. News is not dead, it’s just fiction.
I can’t believe some of these crap movies and shows you mention and no reference to The Wire?
The Paper – awful. Really idealistic BS
The Newsroom – awful. Sorkin…enough
State of Play – weird. Cry me a river with the closing credits sequence.
Season 5 of The Wire. Watch it again.
I recall reading in the late 90s when I was finishing my undergrad that journalism was the lowest paid profession for anyone with a BA. That was well before anyone could claim the internet changed anything. My dream was to become an international correspondent. Problem is, in the US, no one cares about international news so it was too competitive. Needless to say, I gave it up after a few years of trying.
It’s probably fun to be a whore until you realize you are one. Enjoy your corporate spin morning coffee meets. No one will miss you, wanker.
Wow. I hope that’s not an example of your golden prose, Jim.
Jim Guy. Company man. To the grave. Which for-profit news org are you still wasting away with?
First and foremost, the picture on the upper left side is quite amusing. Is she sitting on a turtle? Second, I like her heartfelt confession. Freelancing on the side is not the same as reporting full-time, but it helps to keep your passion for reporting alive and sustain an income.
“Newspapers killed newspapers” | Jon Christian
Reblogged this on find good stories and tell them and commented:
A must-read
I love the article! Keep writing! 🙂
Reblogged this on CREATIVE MINDS EXPOSED and commented:
Thank you for speaking out and being honest and humble about why you left your job as a reporter at the newspaper. I ponder almost daily why writers are paid so little, if anything sometimes. Their jobs are more time consuming than the two seconds it takes you to read a sentence or the two minutes it takes you to read the entire article. There will always be a replacement, but you only have one life to live and you had the courage to make a change that will forever make you blissful regardless of the naysayers. Applaud!
What It’s Like To Work In News | Knight Stivender's life in full