Is it worth it?

Too bad the third member of the chorus pussed out. You kids had so much more gravitas when he was around.

 

My resume should look better than most coming out of college. I've done three internships (two at major metro newspapers) and ran the sports section at my school paper while being the football and men's basketball beat writer at a Div. 1 school. Maybe I'm naive, but I'd guess that stacks up better than most aspiring sports journalists my age. In my extremely biased opinion, my clips are good (I'd say a select few of them are great). That's just me though. I've also written some garbage, but hopefully most of that has been buried in the abyss of the internet by now.

I'm not questioning my career path because I don't love journalism. I do love it. I can honestly say I don't have a passion for any other profession than journalism, although I haven't really had time to try anything else. But I grew up in an upper-middle class household in a family of stockbrokers and bond traders. My mom hasn't worked a day in her life since I was two. When I was deciding on colleges, tuition was a secondary concern.

I don't say any of that to be pompous, it's just that I would feel genuinely guilty to pursue a career path that virtually assures I wouldn't be able to provide for my own family the way my father has for me. I also don't see a reason to decrease my standard of living so I can walk into the office everyday praying nobody taps me on the shoulder and tells me to have my stuff cleared out by 5pm. That's terrifying, not to mention unfair to anyone who relies on me to put food on the table, especially when it doesn't have to be that way. Working in finance could be mundane at times, but in 5-7 years I could take over my father's business in a field that is projected to grow steadily over the next two decades. I could get laid off in finance too, but at least I'd have some savings to hold me over until I find something else.

I wasn't questioning myself until I started reading some of the horror stories on this site and then heard about the layoffs happening around the country that made me take a step back and think. I'm not giving up on journalism yet. But it's going to take a good job to keep me in the business, and it's going to have to come within the next few months.

Lastly, I want to thank everyone who read my original post and provided thoughtful advice. Nobody had to take time out of their day to do that, and I really appreciate it.

 

Og, don't give your heart to this business. It will break it and then grind the remaining shards under its heel.

http://gigaom.com/2013/04/11/two-charts-that-tell-you-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-future-of-newspapers/

 

You could try it and then if you don't like it in in a few years, you're probably 25-26, which is a fine age to change direction.

It's interesting two major metro internships isn't getting much interest. But job applications are weird. I was unemployed for a good bit before my first gig, and the one I got was better than two-thirds or three-fourths of the positions I applied for.

 

There's 340 division I colleges. Every one of them has a kid graduating every year who had the best internships and best beats of any prospective sports journalist there. Plus all the non D-I colleges out there. Plus all the second-, third- and fourth-best aspiring sports journalists in their graduating classes.

And that's pumping new graduates into an already oversaturated market every single year, while the number of jobs shrinks.

Will you find one if you really want one? Probably. But the odds of you both wanting one and being able to find one in 10 years are pretty slim.

 

On the one hand, I want to congratulate you for having these thoughts now and not five years from now when real damage has been done and inertia makes it harder to change course (although at that age, I get that it's really hard to imagine that changing life trajectory would ever be difficult). It shows some impressive foresight.

On the other hand, I really wonder how an in-the-process-of-being-educated person could just now be reading the horror stories and hearing about the extreme oversaturation of the labor market in the industry. I mean I know a) College journalism departments do everything they can to whitewash over this b) college kids aren't by nature the most aware of folks and c) sports journalists are in the toy department for a good reason. But did you really wait until now to stick your head up and look around, and how did you not hear the bombs going off all around you even while your head was down?


And get off my lawn.

 

Some very well-considered thoughts in reply to the original post.

I’ll mention (or second the validity of) this: Although living on pauper’s wages might not bother you now, think about a few years down the line … seeing college friends vacationing in Mexico or Europe every year while you take a “stay-cation,” wearing your kicks for another three months after their smell started to make even you vomit, basing your beer consumption on what's in your wallet instead of your thirst, etc. It gets worse when you have a family. Even before considering the possibility of being laid off, do you want to be able to barely provide for the wife and kids?

Think about this also: Should you pursue journalism, there’s a lot about the quality of life you can’t control. I don’t mean the long hours, the weekends, the travel. What if in trying to get your Destination Job, you take a job at some rat-hole of a town as a steppingstone? A lot of things in life you can’t control (your penis size, your hair color, etc.); do you want to add “Living in a place of my choosing” to that list? I used to think I’d go ANYWHERE to further my journalism career. Eventually, I found out how bad ANYWHERE can be. Made me rethink decisions I’d made years earlier.

Other veterans might also second what I call the Mark Twain-as-riverboat captain effect. If you’ve read “Life on the Mississippi,” you’ll understand. Once someone is a riverboat captain (or, a sports journalist), it can become impossible to enjoy taking a river cruise (or, covering a sporting event). So much attention has to be paid to getting the job done, the allure of cruising a river (covering an event) is crushed under the pressure of performing. I enjoyed sports a lot more before I worked in sports. They call it work for a reason. Although I’ve landed in a great spot that probably far outstrips what I’ve had any right to expect (for which I’m extremely grateful), looking back, I think I should have done what an earlier post suggested. Which is ...

I would recommend you consider taking the finance route and freelance. If you work NYSE hours, you should have nights free, right?

I see some advantages to this:

Your assignments will probably be more rewarding than many of the assignments you might receive at an entry-level job. Instead of entering scores from the local golf club’s Shits-and-Giggles Scramble, you might have a reasonably exciting prep/college basketball game to cover every few nights.

You will feed your sportswriting rat and simultaneously discover if you really want those hours and conditions. Missing a few weddings (or nights out with the boys) because you have a game to cover might change your mind about things. Also, most small–town sports events are much more difficult to cover from a logistics standpoint (from parking to recording stats to having a reliable filing site) than you’re used to. How many times in college did you have to write by the light of your dome light or find a Starbucks with Wi-Fi to file?

If you decide that journalism IS the way to go, the clips you create as a professional (rather than as a college student) might have enough weight for you to bypass the lowest of the entry-level jobs. A freelancer I used frequently – he had no daily journalism experience that I know of before our arrangement – leveraged his work for me as a springboard into a sturdy gig with a major website. So, it can be done.

Last point: I might be alone (or just jaded), but part of what got me into this business (craving THE job at THE outlet in THE market) is no longer a factor in how and why I approach things. I like what I do. I do my best. I'm grateful my company treats me very well. But it's a career. It's not my life.

 

I think most college kids these days feel like they are invincible and can beat the odds. I knew the realities of the business, but I ignored them because I honestly believed with a strong resume and good clips that I'd be able to bypass most of those hardships. WhenI started to apply for jobs, I was quickly thrusted into reality. And like you said, my college journalism department never really gave me an honest assessment of the job market (or lack thereof).

When I was finishing up my third internship and couldn't even get a response for a job opening at a paper that was smaller than either of the three places I've interned, that hit me hard and got me to start thinking about how prepared I really am to be underpaid and undervalued the rest of my professional life.

 

A lot don't, but that's more out of their own ignorance about what we do/did than anything else.

I interviewed at a lot of places where, when they asked what my degree is, made a face when I said journalism.

It helped at my current job, where I've been for four years. The hiring manager had a relative who had worked in journalism, so they knew the state of the business and knew I would have good written communication skills and would be good on deadlines.

A few tips... Don't romanticize the job. You may get a comment like, "Wow, that sounds like a dream job..." If you say anything like, "Yeah, it was..." they immediately assume you can't wait to go back. Most don't understand the hours/travel/pay etc... They think you were paid to go to games and that it was all one big party.

I got better responses when I answered something like, "I'm ready to move on to something more stable." or "The lack of job security got to be tough."

Don't bitch and moan about it, but let them know it's not something you miss. If you do miss it, keep that to yourself.

I have a friend who used to work in TV. He was let go a couple years ago and has worked "normal" jobs on and off since. Every time there is a big sporting event, he's moaning on social media about how much he misses it and he wonders why he keeps getting fired.

 

Wait a second. To hear some people on here tell it, kids right out of college cover pro sports at major metros as their first jobs all the time.

 

What type of feedback are you getting from the editors at the major metros you interned at?

 

Both my editors at the major metro's have told me not to hesitate to use them for references. The first editor's recommendation is the reason I got my second internship at a major metro. The first major metro I interned at still asks me to freelance for them here and there, which I doubt they'd do if they had a poor opinion of me. And to be honest, my internship at the second major metro went much smoother than the first, so I can't imagine my editor there has anything negative to say about me.

I don't really have any way of knowing for sure, but I've gotten no feedback that suggests that anyone I've ever worked/interned for before has been unsatisfied with my performance.