If you left the journalism biz today ....

If I left journalism today I would be unemployed.

 

One of my former freelance coworkers is getting her masters in library science. She absolutely LOVES it. It's changed from the days of the little old lady. My buddy is about 24, a chain smoker, baseball fan and avid camper as well as biker.

Right now, she has two jobs: a library internship and freelance doing library research for some attorneys. She is the only one I can think of who loves her job, and she actually loves both of them. She goes on and on about how much she loves her job and I want to smack the cheerfulness out of her.

She doesn't miss the hassle of the sports world at all and laughs when I suggest maybe she work in a story or two.

 

Can't agree more. I left the biz two years ago, and I've spent a lot of time since then thinking about the work I did when I was in newspapers, and I miss it. I was more passionate about that work than what I've done since then, and it's not like I've had terrible jobs since then. But the business side of newspapers is what keeps me from even contemplating going back.

 

so ... what do you do now?

 

I handle PR for a school at my alma mater. Before that I did graphic design, first for a nonprofit and then for an ad agency. Probably will get back into graphic design at some point.

 

A happy librarian? Are you kidding me?

 

Problem is, if you stay in journalism you may be unemployed as well.

 

I am waiting for someone to say that they want to be reincarnated as Dr.Sue Johansson (the sex lady)...

 

That's my quandary. Journalism is all I know, all I've really wanted to know.

 

I shared this conversation with a couple of my news-side friends at other papers, other mid-20-somethings reporting in Cali and the East Coast. Both were in total agreement with most everything here, including one response: