Posted May 15 2012

With all due respect, shut the hell up. The journalism industry wasn't exactly plum with jobs when I left school either. So I got out for 12 years before I got back in.Then once I did get back in before long that negative 6 you talk about meant there was no more upward mobility. Life and business have cycles. You are early in yours and have gobs of options available. Try being in your 50s with three kids approaching college and then complain to me. By then I'll probably be retired or dead.

Good luck,

A Reporter

Posted May 15 2012

"gobs of options available" - A Reporter who's either ignorant about current events or in denial about them, or both. We've just been through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, unemployment (especially among the young) is through the roof, and you're telling this college student to "shut the hell up"? Please open your eyes and do your homework.

I feel bad for your kids.

Posted May 15 2012

I disagree with these students who graduate complaining that college is a waste of time because they can't find a job. College is not just about you getting a job, but about getting an education and having knowledge. Liz, college isn't the problem. The problem is the economy. If the economy were better, you would have that office desk job. And you should have done your homework on journalism before majoring in it. It's not a secret that journalism doesn't pay a lot in the beginning. Also journalism has been hit real hard by the recession.

We need students to continue attending college so that America will have it's next wave of homegrown, American scientists, engineers, philosophers, writers, doctors etc. We're so behind in education compared to other countries.

When I began journalism school the market was booming. A few years after my first journalism job, I couldn't pay anyone to hire me. Look for other jobs in media where you can apply your skills until you can work in journalism full time. I deep in loan debt too and it sucks, but my knowledge and intelligence are priceless.

Posted May 15 2012

Dear fellow Anonymous poster,

Feel bad for my kids? Why? They have a parent who is too busy making life work than whine about how sad it all is. Grow up. Life changes. I've got fresh college grads working next to me. How did they make it work? They saw the same reality this woman sees and found a way to make it work. I feel bad for any kids whose parents would do what you suggest, saying "Life sucks so we're stuck." What a crock, especially for someone in their 20s. She is right that a bachelor's degree doesn't mean what it used to, but a master's degree won't matter much either if all you can do is complain about reality.

A Reporter

Posted May 15 2012

Very good and sobering piece Liz -- and raspberries to A Reporter who seems to really want to vent about HIS problems.

The problem is that the jobs aren't in the dinosaur industry currently known as "journalism" - really corporate news content production to sell ads around. The growth is in hybrid media and marketing, where the demand for brand-focused "content creators" is skyrocketing. the difference between working for a so-called journalism company and any other kind of company is much much less than you would imagine, so the sooner you get the ivory tower concept of "journalism" out of your head, the sooner you will find a paying job.

- A Realist

Posted May 15 2012

Yes, you should have taken your chance with the stiffs. You have made it abundantly clear that you are just not cut out to be a journalist. The reason those internships are unpaid is because you are supposed to do them while you are in school, as part of your education, not wait until you graduate. The half of journalism grads who have jobs finished multiple internships, worked for university media and had their own websites. They are committed, not just looking for a job. If you had any potential as a journalist, you would have noticed that difference.

Posted May 15 2012

Dear Elizabeth,

I've had a chance to rethink my earlier criticism of you and I want to apologize for a couple of things. For one, I shouldn't have commented anonymously. My name is Steven Gardner and I am a reporter for the Kitsap Sun newspaper in Bremerton, Washington. You put your name out there. I should have, too.

Secondly, I was too harsh. I still have complaints about your piece, but in all honesty I could see myself writing something similar when I was facing a dismal job market when I graduated from college, which was a long time ago. My harshness, I believe, was probably as one commenter wrote, me wanting to vent MY problems. My frustrations today were over something unique to my job today, but I deserve that criticism.

All that said, I do have some issues with what you wrote. It grates at me, for one thing, that there are huge mistakes in the first and third paragraphs that no one has corrected. It's Associated Press, not Associate Press. And the television network is spelled Nickelodeon. Minor points, perhaps, but would someone please fix it? It certainly doesn't help your case.

Secondly, I want to know who told you, "College was supposed to be the golden ticket to a successful job and middle class life?" I do agree with your later point that college students today take on more debt, face a tougher job market and a bachelor's degree doesn't mean as much as it once did. But all a bachelor's degree ever did was open doors that would have been closed to you until you walked that stage. It was never a "golden ticket" to anything.

In fact, when the editors or, if there are any left, HR pros at most newspapers are looking at the stack of resumes they get for every job opening, the first thing they're looking for are reasons to disqualify you. Now that you have a degree that's one less reason for your resume to get tossed in the trash right away. It will still probably get tossed at most places, just as mine was after I graduated with two years of college newspaper experience and two Washington, D.C. internships.

It took me five months to get a job after I graduated, and it wasn't in what I considered "real" journalism. Eventually I went with my head instead of my heart and decided to abandon the field completely. It turned out that for me my heart was smarter all along, and I was fortunate enough to get back in. Ironically, one of the main reasons I was able to get back in was because of the Internet, which actually created more journalism jobs for a while before it started erasing them.

Yes, the economy sucks right now. And it sucks much worse than it did when I got out of school. And sorry, even if you do get in, I don't know many reporters who can afford the "picket-fenced house," unless they were in a dual-income household with someone else fortunate enough to not be smitten by this industry.

I am so grateful to have the work I do. Journalists far better than I have been pushed out.
This is great work. And it's necessary work. But it's not for anyone who bemoans the missing "golden ticket." Frankly, I was that person for a while, pissed that I wasn't getting the job I thought I deserved. It took me 12 years to grow up.

Again, please accept my apologies for my harsh tone and for going anon at first. That was a bonehead play on my part. If you decide you do want to get into this business, other reporters and I are more than willing to offer whatever guidance we can.

Best of luck,

Steven Gardner
Kitsap Sun

Posted May 15 2012

Liz, this is the way I see it. I was once told by a famous author who was my creative writing teacher that a writer "needs to write," that a writer has no choice but to write. There's some truth to it. But writing is not a particularly well-paid profession. If you're lucky enough to be able to write for a living, you'll probably work in marketing or PR...areas which are easier to make a living in than journalism. Sometimes, one has to cut corners and be a writer on the side. I got my first job at CBS about 30 years ago...but it didn't involve writing...so I wrote articles on the side and sold them to magazines...it was just great to see my name in print.
It is also true that today there is less and less appetite for in-depth stories...most of the writing is regurgitation, fluff.... I mean, back in the 50's there were 7 or 8 daily papers here in NYC. Today there are 3, if you count the NY Post.
And it's sad to see an outfit like Pro-Publica begging for funding because no one really cares that much about investigative journalism, everything has been so corrupted by the consumer culture. If you're making money, that's good enough for me!
good luck, keep writing.

Alan Saly

Posted May 16 2012

No you may not be handed your writing job on a silver platter, but you've acquired the skills and a to innovate in journalism, marketing and mass communications. So get off your bum and do it. Write an e-book and have Smashwords.com distribute it to the world. Your percentage as a writer will be higher than a traditional book. Innovate. Start an internet business and have people subscribe to your service. Be creative. Up and down business cycles are nothing new.

Posted May 16 2012

Okay, first of all, you misspelled "Nickelodeon".

Secondly, I share your frustration with journalism education. I'm doing a fairly high-profile news job now -- a plum assignment, really, for my industry -- and I'm still struggling financially. My degree in 2002 did not really prepare me for the "new media" journalism revolution, and I refuse to donate to my university for leading me down a primrose path. (And the WRONG one, at that!)

But you know what? I could've gone to medical school. I changed my mind and stopped working toward medical school, because journalism was in my heart. It's my passion. It's a way of improving democracy and helping people navigate the world. I consider this an extremely noble profession, and I'm honored to do it, even at a time when the economy does not fully support it. I've worked my ass off, and now I'm doing okay. Getting better day by day, little by little. If you hang tough, so will you.

If, on the other hand, your passion lies elsewhere, then by all means go do the thing you're passionate about. Your problem is internal, not external. You messed up because you didn't follow the thing your gut said was the right thing to follow.

Don't blame journalism for your predicament. That's a cop-out, and you know it. You should've done your research and made a smarter decision... but it's not too late to do that now.

Posted May 16 2012

In the first two grafs, you misspell "Associated" and misreport the story's findings. The story found half of recent graduated are either jobless or underemployed, not unemployed. Elementary errors such as these don't make you competitive in a tight market.

Posted May 16 2012

Not too long ago, a local high school asked me to address its journalism class. I am a magazine publisher, and the teacher wanted me to give the kids an honest look at the journalism industry. I essentially told them to avoid it like the plague. When I graduated with a Master's degree in journalism from an elite university 25 years ago, the average starting salary for our class was $18K/year; today, the starting salary is only slightly higher (this was for television journalists, of which I was one; print journalists had a slightly higher starting income, which is not the case today). I appreciate A Reporter's passion for journalism, which I share, but the honest response to this essay is to affirm what Ms. Ireland is saying: journalism is not a viable profession in terms of a stable income in the 21st century. Sadly, Ms. Ireland and her fellow graduates do not have "gobs of options available" -- that is, unless one considers getting paid 10-cents per hit for a blog post or $200 for a 1,500 word article "options". I, too, have kids approaching college and I have admonished them not to choose journalism as a career -- not only because it is terribly unstable and low-paying, but also because what passes for "journalism" these days often is nothing more than salacious entertainment. I am proud of what I have achieved, not to mention the stories on which I have reported, but I recognize that the profession has changed markedly since I entered it. Waxing poetic about the good old days or, worse, telling kids that there are myriad paying opportunities available in journalism if they just look hard enough, does an injustice to their intelligence. As reporters, we are called to report the facts. And the hard fact is that the journalism industry not only doesn't pay a lot in the beginning, with the advent of the Internet and social media, it also doesn't pay a lot in the end.

Posted May 16 2012

To be clear, what I meant by "gobs of opportunities" was life opportunities, not high-paying journalism gigs. I thought the writer was pretty much saying her life was ruined. Someone younger than 30 just has too many opportunities to change directions to bemoan some big mistake. And even in journalism I am optimistic the industry will improve. I feel lucky to have a regular journalism job, which gives me a base to launch side projects.

Steven Gardner
aka "A Reporter"

Posted May 17 2012

The fact that none of the professional journalists who have commented here have offered Liz a job, or even offered to mentor her, only confirms her thesis that she made the wrong choice. Why is that the best that journalists can offer to support each other is to say "shut up" and "get busy"??? Talk is cheap. How about doing something to foster the next generation of journalists.

Posted May 17 2012

You seem to have a skewed view of the funeral industry. Had you chosen to be a funeral director ("mortician" is an antiquated term), you'd likely face the same impediments: lack of employment opportunity and --if you can find a job--low pay. Many out-of-work funeral directors are unemployable in other fields because of the bare bones education--two years of college or less.

Posted May 17 2012

You seem to have a skewed view of the funeral industry. Had you chosen to be a funeral director ("mortician" is an antiquated term), you'd likely face the same impediments: lack of employment opportunity and --if you can find a job--low pay. Many out-of-work funeral directors are unemployable in other fields because of the bare bones education--two years of college or less.

Posted May 17 2012

You seem to have a skewed view of the funeral industry. Had you chosen to be a funeral director ("mortician" is an antiquated term), you'd likely face the same impediments: lack of employment opportunity and --if you can find a job--low pay. Many out-of-work funeral directors are unemployable in other fields because of their bare bones education--two years of college or less. Be grateful that you have an education!

Posted May 17 2012

You seem to have a skewed view of the funeral industry. Had you chosen to be a funeral director ("mortician" is an antiquated term), you'd likely face the same impediments: lack of employment opportunity and --if you can find a job--low pay. Many out-of-work funeral directors are unemployable in other fields because of the bare bones education--two years of college or less. Be grateful that you have an education and, therefore, choices!