Paying dues

Looking around, I see many young people in great jobs. (Heck there's a 29 y/o publisher in Southern Newspapers). I see people like Angela Reid pretty much being night editor at The Red Star in Anniston, Ala. (much deserved by her, but she is young to prove the point).

I was hired by a weekly in January to be prepped as ME by June, but the paper was shut down in February. I'm sure they looked at me due to my youth and willingness to work for peanuts.

 

I think a lot of it depends on your personal situation. I'm still at the same paper where I started my career back in 1984, and I'll more than likely still be here when I retire or they close the doors (whichever comes first). I have the job I always wanted here and I'm happy with my situation.

When I was younger, I put some feelers out for other jobs, and even interviewed for a couple. But it never worked out. My wife had her career and an elderly mother here, my kids were happy in their school situations, and have settled in the area, and thus we ended up putting down roots.

 

I felt this way sometimes. I'm definitely not where I aimed to be when I began my newspaper career seven years ago. I paid my dues just in time for the business to collapse. Then I read here, watch the layoffs at the shop that I'm at, and am reminded I'm better off ten a lot of other people - and I still have a foot in the door. Not a lot of people can say that these days.

 

For a while, I was the pissy kid out of college wondering when i was going to get my chance.
I'm 29 now and things have changed. I know my talent, know that people at bigger papers know my talent and have had a few tell me I'm ready to get called up when there's a chance.
When will that be? Don't know, not worried.
For now, I'll be content with my insanely awesome job security, being my own boss and making my own hours - because right now, I couldn't imagine working more than four days a week.

 

Interesting topic and, yes, it does foster resentment on the part of some of us who have worked our butts off, done good work and never get the breaks to see someone 10 years younger get an opportunity at a job you know full well you could do and do just as well.

I don't for a second buy the idea that person A at a 100,000 paper is necessarily better than person B at a 10,000 paper. Some of the best writers, editors I've known are working their tails off at small shops. Why? It's a very inexact science and sometimes I wonder if it's more about who you know than what you can do.

I don't fancy myself as superior to the next guy or inferior. I've worked hard at every beat I've taken on, whether high school or the pros. I think often it has more to do with opportunity than ability.

 

So it begs the question..... is there a point where one becomes too old or too experienced to move into a bigger position?

If someone has aspirations of becoming, for example, a pro sports beat writer or a sports editor, or whatever. And that person accepts a lesser position, works hard at it for many years but doesn't seem to get a sniff of anything higher? Is there a point where one should say "this is all it's ever going to be"?

Or do we still believe that hard work and perserverance will be rewarded?

 

There's plenty of stupid hires out there. There's plenty of good ones.

There's eff'n studs in everything, but in our industry, I do think there's a few that got to where they were because they said "BLOG! Twitter, twitter. BLOG!" in their interviews.

A kid can say that, and the big dogs will eat it up. If you have a receding hairline and say Twitter, they just think you're trying to kiss up.

At the end of all of it, if you can write, you can write. I think some of it is taught, but most of it is a gift.

That being said ... reporters are made. Not born.

 

I love that you are making fun of people that recognize the need for Twitter and Blogs. The suits eat those words up for a reason.

 

Yes, as a 2010 grad without a full-time position, I'd like to know which of my compatriots have found this high level of success. Did these recent grads immediately start at said great jobs, or did they work at smaller papers (or magazines) in the 15 or 27 months between when many of them graduated and the present?

I'm also interested in what the general consensus is on the exact meaning of paying dues. Working for a very small remote paper? Working in a one- or two-person shop? Doing part time work for an extended period?

 

No doubt...we had a girl intern with us in college several years ago and her stuff was "okay", but on the boundary enough that I wasn't comfortable sending her to our bigger events. Now, three years later, she's landed a job with the state's big paper somehow and is covering a major college beat. Who knows? Are they willing to work cheap? Was she hired to fill some gender classification? I don't get it.

 

If you're going to go to all the trouble of paying your dues, make sure you get a receipt and remember to hang onto it.

That way, if some future boss gives you some crappy work assignment or duties that you believe are beneath your station in the profession, you can whip out the receipt and prove that you've already paid your dues.

In a career in which so many people come and go in jobs, sometimes these sorts of records can be lost in the shuffle.

 

I've seen that, too. It's kind of puzzling who ends up where and why.