Advice For Those Starting Out

I thought that this was a forum for sports journalists, not people who think they're too good for the industry?

 

Have you met our Chicago bureau?

 

Because we get the "Wow, what an interesting resume you have!" line an awful lot, without the resulting job offer to go with it?

 

Do we?

 

Point of clarification: I don't just think I'm too good for the industry. I think everybody is too good for the industry.

 

Extremely well said.

 

That's not true at all. There have been/are plenty of people not good enough for this industry. Of course, some of them are still hanging around and may even hold positions of significant influence. But many of them are just bitter hacks, whether they're still part of the industry or not.

 

Why don't you take a look at the "Getting Out of the Business" thread.

 

I do agree that those familiar with a given profession are prone to complaining about it. Rarely is any job" as good as it used to be." Everyone thinks their jobs suck.

 

There is that ... but those jobs I listed are all similar to journalism in that the conditions have changed so dramatically that it isn't the career they got into anymore.

Doctors, for instance, no longer have the wealth payoff that will come down the road after eight years of schooling and all the residency. You do OK financially, but it's pretty rare to build a practice so you're probably going to end up working for the man anyway, at a fairly unremarkable salary. And that's why we have a doctor shortage and it will get worse in the coming years. Curiously, though, we have way too many journalists.

I've heard it from quite a few doctors, that they wouldn't go into medicine in today's world.

 

Low standards.

 

There's a difference between "not as good as it used to be" and "disappearing at an alarming rate."