Is it worth it?

OgCritty, I'd say think twice about deciding on print journalism for a career. The job is not held in as much regard as it was 20 years ago. That much is obvious.

But if you truly love the business and can hold up the digital end as well as print, I'm not going to be the one to tell you to run away screaming. I've been in the business for 35 years, and I still look forward to going to work. That's as much as you can ask for. (And this is in no way bragging, just factual: I am well-compensated for it. But it was a matter of climbing to that. You don't start out that way.)

One thing to take away from threads like this, too: Misery loves company.

 

But nowadays you don't end up that way either. Your 35-year window (much of it in boom times for newspapers and/or with a fairly strong union presence negotiating wages) is not in the same universe as what would become his 35-year window.

If he really really loves it, great. But "I did it, you can too" is false hope, unfortunately.

 

It's not false hope. You can't say he can't do it. Not anymore than I can't say he CAN do it.

And I just have the idea that

wasn't as sincere as it might be.

 

Well, your ideas are usually pretty off, so I expect you will delete that one and just put "." in there.

Regarding whether I can say he can't do it more than you can say he can ... based on percentages, hell yeah I can. I have about a 9-1 betting advantage on that. A person starting out in 1979 had a very good chance of making a strong living and getting to the career finish line. A person in 2014 has almost no chance.

 

And I see a lot of young people coming into our place out of college. I do not know what the pay is like, but I do know there are new faces all the time. It is for a digital-first operation, no doubt about it. But they're there. You have your experiences. I have mine.

And I'm not about to delete my assessment of your sincerity. That's been pretty much out there for awhile.

Misery. Loves. Company.

And that's all.

 

Check on what they're doing in five years. Check on what their pay is right now relative to household median income and the poverty line. Then check on what yours was against those numbers when you started.

There is no measure you can possibly come up with that shows these entry-level employees to be on anything close to the same ground you or I were on when our careers started. And it is an extreme disservice to these kids to pretend otherwise.

ETA: If you are so incurious as to not bother to find out what the pay is like, why would you be offering advice to anyone or opining on it at all?

 

No. Forget it. You're right. Whatever. :

You're a prime example of why people leave this board in droves.

 

To the OP -- please don't listen to idiots like jr/shotglass. He doesn't bother to understand the landscape.

My life is just fine, quite happy actually. A far sight better than it would be if I hadn't left newspapers five years ago. Which is the entire point of what I (and many others who have been through it) are saying.

(And sure enough he edited the post I was responding to. I don't exactly understand that game that you play with half your posts, but I guess not everybody knows what their words mean the first time through.)

 

OgCritty, you say you think you could work your way into a job in the financial field. Do you think you'd be happy doing that? Or, happy enough that the boost in pay and security would be worth it?

If so, I think it's a no-brainer -- I'd take the financial route. Money is being drained from the print journalism business model, and it's the "middle class" jobs that are dead. Even if you do well, there's a very small number of jobs that still pay a decent wage, and those are disappearing too.

If you love writing, you can always freelance on the side while pursuing a finance career.

I'm not a print guy - I'm in TV news, and the internet hasn't yet hosed my business like it has print. That's mostly dumb luck on my part, because I went through college fully expecting to go into print and it was just an odd series of events that led me away from it. I'm very glad it did. The stuff that's not important to you at 22 becomes a huge deal by 32 when you're married and want to buy a house.

 

OgCritty,

Only you can answer that question, because our perspectives are different from yours. We're coming at the question after already having been in jobs, after already having worked professionally, and, yes, many of us are coming at it after having been laid off or otherwise terminated.

That changes the perspective a bit, and any advice comes from hindsight, while you're still looking at it in the present, and can't know what might happen to you in the future in any case.

You need to look at and consider things from your current standpoint. Don't let us make you miserable if you're not feeling that way. Don't let us scare you off if you're confident you have the ability to operate in the electronically driven, 24/7, every-minute-is-a-deadline world of today's journalism, and if you're sure you want to be in it.

Because it was worth it for most, if not all, of us who did it -- while we were doing it. It was what came near the end of our journalism careers, or what happened after we left the business that changed our perspectives.

We can all only make the best decisions we can at the time.

That said, here's my take on what I can gather of your current "place" from your post: No, it's not worth it to you.

If you're already questioning your decision to work as a journalist, you're probably not going to be satisfied or happy. I'd say that's particularly true if you don't get something at a big-time paper/web site and/or work on a significant beat whenever you do get your first (and certainly your second) job. Be honest, that's what you want, especially as you've already done it. Once you have, it's hard to go backwards, or to feel as if you are, and, let's face it, despite the fact that you say you're not averse to paying dues and working your way up, you would feel that way if you were working on covering a couple high schools in Podunk.

Yes, you are kind of averse to "working your way up" because you are smart enough to realize that if you get trapped doing that for too long, you will never get to where you want to go. It has to happen quickly these days, or else, it doesn't happen at all.

You also are already considering another field -- another lucrative, secure and high-powered field -- in which you already know you have an in, and in which you already know you would probably have connections good enough to help you advance quickly/easily. Most of us didn't have that within months of graduating, and even if we did, we wouldn't have cared.

I'm guessing you are not long for this industry if you don't get an appealing enough job for yourself within the next couple of months.

 

Sara Ganim had a worthwhile career in newspapers, right? Did she even crack $30-$35K at the Patriot-News?

 

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