spiers:
bigcrush:
To me the writer wasn’t breaking news on the fact that the industry is changing/downsizing so much as he/she was explaining the odd limbo it has created for the late 20s, early 30s j-school grads. Those who spent their single digits of experience in the biz thinking they were creating a career that, a few years later, no longer exists (at least not in the same form). Sure, industries/businesses change and adapt and yes, that is normal. But the personal shift required for those fledgling journalists seemed to me point of interest. Anyway, that’s what I took away from it.
Yeah, I get what the writer was trying to articulate; the assumptions behind it just irritated me. It’s not that the writer doesn’t understand that the industry is adapting, it’s that it didn’t occur to him/her that this could happen during the period when he or she was making decisions about j-school, etc. The writer is 31, which is precisely the right age to have witnessed the dot com implosion during his/her decision making process. That implosion decimated the tech sector, and caused a recession that took an enormous chunk out of media in the early 00s. I’m not saying the writer should have anticipated that it would happen again, but that the thought doesn’t seem to have crossed the writer’s mind that it could, which strikes me as just not paying attention to anything that was going on in that period.
And I think any j-school grad who didn’t know media jobs were hard to come by, even when the industry was booming, probably didn’t think long and hard enough about the merits of j-school versus the costs. Even in a good market, there’s a risk that you won’t get a job when you get out because the industry is pretty small (relatively speaking) and the number of entry-level jobs are few.
I’ve done a pretty wide range of things to make money since college and as a result, my resume seems to be what some people would charitably call “unfocused.” But I made a point of learning how to do a lot of different things because I don’t ever want to be in a position where I have one skill set and demand for that skill completely dries up. If all of media implodes, I can still put together a financial model, make wireframes, etc. Which isn’t everything, but it makes me much less nervous about where media is going with respect to my ability to pay rent.
My dad’s a local lineman at Southern Company and he’s worked there for over 40 years, but also knows how to build houses and has built quite a few of them. He enjoys contracting work, but I don’t think he ever felt that his primary job was completely secure and wanted to be able to get work if he lost it. It might not have been necessary (he’s still employed) but I think it was a practical choice—and not terribly unusual for his generation.
My generation leans toward specialization, which partly a function of academia doing the same. And there’s nothing wrong with having a specific specialty, but I think assuming that specialty will always be in demand is an enormous risk, no matter what that specialty is. If nothing else, it’s just a matter of practicality to acquire a few skills beyond your primary. And if you are 31, as the writer of that article is, there’s no excuse for not doing it now. 31 isn’t 22, but it’s definitely young enough to learn new skill sets and diversify your resume. So on review, it also irritates me that the writer thinks he or she is doomed at a relatively young age when transitioning is still possible.
I agree with you about seeing indications of shift in the industry while in school, however, journalism school 7 years ago was still fighting hard not to adapt to these shifts and, good or bad, I think we were all susceptible to tasting a bit of the Kool Aid.
On varied skill-sets, I too was not overly specialized leaving school (something my parents encouraged and something that I thought was even ill-founded for a few years). I graduated with multiple degrees and ended up with a rather broad resume and varied interests — even in my relatively short time out of school. It seemed like the wrong move for a while, but ultimately it has served me well and made my career path adaptable during these transitional times. As Foster said, eventually people need to stop complaining about the dwindling number of old-style print positions and go get a job already — it’s true.
I just think the pill is a little harder to swallow than journos my age anticipated is all, and that part I can relate to.
But sure enough, be it through necessity or gumption (not sure which), when I saw the decline gaining momentum, I bucked up quickly and adapted…I just think that untethered feeling the writer conveyed was something that seemed familiar to me from when I made that move.
