No Job, No Kids, No Problem!

Journalism has demoralized me far past the point of ambition, of belief in hard work, of wanting anything out of life other than to escape from its grasp. Which is why I hate the women in the article linked to below. Since I don't have money to go back to school or pad my bank account while I try to get in on the ground floor of another profession, this seems like my new dream job.
Click below to read an article from CNN detailing the latest trend of women becoming housewives, even if they don't plan to become mothers:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/08/05/lw.nokids.nojob.wives/index.html

Some people might say that these women are a drain on society or uneducated.

As to the second claim, one of the women interviewed has her Masters in English (which, though probably not the smartest--read lucrative--field to specialize in, at least proves she is literate).
And as for the second claim, I feel that it's not as clear cut as it might seem. Many people who criticize such people are probably motivated by jealousy--they too hate their job, but don't have the option to just quit and rely on a spouse.

As for the rest, what is the problem? Americans are notoriously workaholic and disconnected from the way the rest of the world lives. While other developed nations have more vacation time and less possessions, we prefer to buy material trophies to signify success. Living well might be the best revenge in other parts of the world, but in the U.S. it's having the most stuff. So stepping out of our Puritan work ethic world for a moment, what is the problem with wanting to enjoy life and not spend it slaving away at a job that you hate?

Financial freedom for women is one of the best ways to promote equality, so feminists might not be quick to defend these women, but I think that's wrong. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote in "The Second Sex" one of the reasons that women are not equal is because their work is to maintain the status quo, while a man can make tangible strides toward improvement. For example, women were traditionally only allowed to be homemakers, and that job by definition is to maintain the status quo: no one notices that dinner is ready on time, that laundry is done, or that carpets are vacuumed until a woman falls behind, when the negative result is criticized. No matter how well a woman dusts her mantle she will never win acclaim from the neighbors--she can only hope to garner their scorn if she lets the dust sit. Meanwhile, men work outside the home in jobs that are structured with tangible milestones for success: As a man works hard and advances in his career, he earns raises and promotions and gets to exercise more control and responsibility, all of which are outward signs of success that are unmistakable to peers.

What does this have to do with stay-at-home wives? Well, because the domestic was (and the majority of the time, still is) the domain of women, it was belittled and trivialized. And it is not the only thing guilty by association with women. In a male-dominated world, feminine characteristics, like expressing emotion and compassion were looked down upon in favor of more masculine approaches. And despite strides forward, many things seen as 'feminine' are still looked down on. Therefore, it's no wonder that today, when people hear about women staying at home, they automatically trivialize the job of running a house because women's work has always been something to belittle.

Of course, there are exceptions. In today's world, where women can and do have careers outside the home, it seems unfair to me if a man was struggling to support a wife and she continued to be a fulltime homemaker. In such cases, a woman should go out to work like her husband to make ends meet so that the husband isn't unfairly stressed, effecting his health and happiness.

But if a man likes his job, makes enough money to support a stay-at-home wife, and both spouses like the arrangement, why not? If there are any men out there who feel that way too--especially if they look like Christian Bale--give me a call!

Another 'Startling' Journalism Truth

It's about time someone wised up. Or mustered up the courage to tell kids the sad truth.
http://www.observer.com/2008/media/cruel-cruel-summer
I'm just surprised it was the NYO.

Playing With Speak N’ Spell As Child Not Qualification for Journalism Job

This afternoon, as I was reading Gawker, I came across an amazing tidbit of news. And by amazing, I mean horrifying in a funny, man-the-world-of-journalism-is-messed-up kind of way. Some jokers in nowheresville, Ill., decided to make their own county magazine because the mainstream media was just too biased and negative for their county’s tastes. Hence, Cook County Magazine was born. Well, more like a stillbirth. The magazine will never be distributed because there were too many misspellings and omissions.
The Chicago Sun Times reports this:
“I was asked to review it and decided not to distribute it -- not because of content, but errors and omissions in the article" about John Stroger [the man featured in the cover story], Stoger Spokesman Eugene Mullins said. "Judging on grammatical stuff -- something misspelled or that's not a complete sentence -- falls back on the president. And this is a Cook County magazine. I have to find a way to get rid of them. I'm not distributing them.”
Sorry, Cook County. If you want positive news, go read some press releases.You can view the full story here http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/1076365,CST-NWS-mag27.article.

Being dropped like a bad habit

After three and a half years in the industry, I'm going through my first layoff. And believe me, this is hard. The company provided a list of half-assed options for trying to stay employed, but the only real information they had was, 'you are being laid off.' As I try to save my job, my financial future, and my sanity, I'm realizing that what I'm fighting for might not even be worthwhile. I'm trying to hold onto a job that is a figment of my imagination. Journalism is dead. The dream I had of what journalism should and would be when I was in high school is no longer the reality of this profession. I dreamed I would write for Rolling Stone but in reality, I am not Kurt Cobain's daughter (did you hear she interns there? She is 15. Must be nice) so this will never happen. Even if I began writing features at the lowest local community paper and worked by way up the ranks for 10 horrifying years making less than 30k at most of those jobs, I would probably never be granted even an interview for a freelance post. The good jobs in journalism are few and far in between and the job security is even weaker. If you are reading this and you work at a newspaper follow this advice: Get out now!!!! But if you are reading this an you are an exec at a newspaper, I guess you are ok.

The Other Shoe Drops at WSJ

The Wall Street Journal just canned almost the entire South Brunswick office. The copy desk, pagination and monitor desks now cease to exist. But don’t worry. Everyone is encouraged to apply for the new news desk in New York. They plan to cut about 50 positions though, so some people are going to be out of a job.
From the official memo sent out to staffers:
“We will be posting the new editing desk jobs no later than Friday and genuinely encourage all staffers affected by this announcement to apply for these openings in New York. About 50 positions will be lost, but staffers with the highest skill levels and the enthusiasm to acquire new skills will have a distinct advantage during the selection process.”
Which really translates to if you sucked up enough to the right people then you will have a position reserved for you. As for the people we can’t keep, well, good luck trying to find a journalism job.
But at the end of the memo, something even more bizarre is said:
“Our new budget includes an ambitious expansion of our web and international operations, both for the Journal and for Newswires, where we are adding 95 journalists over coming months. We also have secured a generous investment in a state-of-the-art editing and publishing system. “
So they’re going to eliminate 50 jobs and then hire 95 people? What type of economy does News Corp. seem to think they’re floundering in? And hire a state-of-the-art editing system? So the computer will do the editing? I can imagine how that will look.
“JP Morgan investor see there stock sin.”

Bad Practice

Did you ever notice that people are always decrying the lack of ethics in the media or the slipshod reporting? Part of that might be due to the incredibly low wages that journalists are paid (see my previous post "A Lesson To Be Learned") .
But, what annoys me the most is the fact that most often it is other members of the media complaining about how the media has done a bad job. Yes, I think the media has screwed up in many ways--not questioning President Bush enough, devoting too much time to infotainment, etc. These are legitimate concerns. And as a journalist I do my best to not fall into that trap.
But what annoys me is that the people who complain loudest about this are talking heads who do nothing about it, and who actually contribute to the problem. Last time I checked Bill O'Reilly and the other commentators weren't doing anything to promote ethical reporting (in fact, they don't do any reporting at all--they're just reactionaries and its the purview of their assistants to sift through real news to find things for them to rail about). And the world of soundbites in which they live actually hurts the media and journalists' ability to do their job.

A Lesson To Be Learned

How many times have you heard that teachers aren't paid enough? It seems these days that it's a known fact, so much so that it's bandied about without any supporting evidence--sort of like an accepted truth like the earth's roundness or the certainty of taxes.
Now, I'm not here to get into a debate about how much teachers should be paid. But I would ask people to keep in mind that there are other professionals who get the same or even less pay than teachers, but they are never given the same attention. For instance, when was the last time you heard politicians railing for the need to increase the pay of social workers?
Not to mention that in a 2007 report done by the endowed chair for educational reform at the University of Arkansas found that the average public school teacher makes $34.06 an hour.
See the article in The February 2, 2007 edition of The Wall Street Journal: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009612
The article makes the point that it's only fair to compare teachers' salaries on an hourly basis because they work significantly fewer hours than other professionals (and nearly all professionals, like teachers, bring work home with them, so it's not fair to argue teacher work secret untold hours on that basis). Of course a teacher's salary looks paltry next a white collar worker's until you realize that teacher gets upwards of three months in holiday and summer breaks, the authors argue.
Except, it doesn't look paltry compared to the salaries of journalists I know. First year teachers make more than journalists with three to five years' experience, and not just on a $/hour basis. They make more money flat out for 9 months of work than these journalists do for 12. I know this from painful first hand experience. I'm not saying they're not doing an important job, but what are we, chopped liver? And let's be honest--something's not going well since the U.S. is slipping behind nearly all other developed countries when it comes to their students' grasp of core subjects like science and history.
Yes, educating children is important for our future, but isn't free speech and a free press important for the future and the present? I've heard enough about teachers' salaries being too low. There are plenty of other professions, including journalism, that deserve a boost before they do.

Recycling Murdoch’s Reject

The Washington Post is looking to downsize their newsroom. At least they must be since they’re hiring WSJ’s ex-managing editor Marcus Brauchli to head up the newsroom. If I were looking for a toolish neo-con to fire a bunch of people I had working for me, he’d be top on the list.

Brauchli’s biggest impact on The Wall Street Journal was helping facilitate a buyout by News Corp and then get left in the dust when Murdoch didn’t view him as essential to production. Oh, and he helped establish WSJ. (note the period), a so-called luxury magazine, since the world obviously needs more of those.

I don’t doubt the man’s journalistic skills, but I do doubt his managing ones. Some might say he was caught between a rock and a hard place at WSJ, trying to appease Murdoch’s demands for altering the paper to be less of a niche publication while trying to assure the staff that they would still have jobs in the New Corp. era. But as an ex-staffer, I can't say that he ever made me feel anything but irritated.

Salaries Can Buy a Lot of Supplies

Foul-mouthed billionaire turned Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell is tightening the belt on finances in the newspaper offices, according to The Chicago Sun-Times. Gerald Spector, the company's chief administration officer, said the office supply budget needed to be hacked by $500,000.

They can probably get about $100K back if employees stole fewer supplies. I can’t say for Tribune, but I remember watching an employee at an internship I had at a nonprofit loot the supplies cabinet once a week. He took folders, markers, pens, and reams and reams of computer paper. Maybe he sold it back to OfficeMax.

The seedy side of the Tribune cutback is that Spector drives a 2007 Lamborghini. Clearly the budget cuts aren’t affecting the administration too much. You could probably pay five reporters or editors for a year with the estimated cost of that car: $235,000. But Tribune won’t be doing that either. Layoffs are set to hit the company this summer.

What Are You Working For?

So we've done a lot of complaining (after all, that's what this blog is for and what journalists do best) about what's wrong with the industry and how it's lost it's way. But what about when journalism is done right?
A couple of years ago, The Wall Street Journal did an expose on options backdating at major companies, where executives awarded themselves options, then dated them to when the stock was trading at or near lows. (The whole point of options is that they are granted on a date, and from then onward the exec has an incentive for the stock to go up, so that the options are "in the money.")
Well the practice was identified at more than one hundred companies and many investigations were begun by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department. However, most companies settled the charges "without admitting or denying wrongdoing". And while the money often had to be returned or paid in settlement, in many cases the companies shouldered as much if not more of the burden than the execs. Even those that stepped down in the wake of the scandal did so with the help of their golden parachutes. The Journal lists only one criminal trial as a result of options backdating. And then there is Steve Jobs, whom the government did not want to tangle with since he's the most popular CEO in America, father of the iPhone and iPod.
Behold the power of journalism.

Denzel Made the Right Call

I remember reading once that the undeniably dreamy Denzel Washington considered a career in journalism before becoming an actor. And while I wish, for the sake of some eye candy in a perennially mutant-strewn profession, that he had stuck with it, I think it's safe to say he made the right choice.
I bring this up because more often than not journalism reminds me of acting, in how ridiculous it is. Hollywood is one of the most vain, nepotistic and cruel industries in the world, and journalism isn't far behind.
For example, people often mock aspiring actors, telling them that they're wasting their time chasing after bit parts trying to make it big. But people should really be directing this advice toward journalists. Because while in Hollywood you can break through and start making millions of dollars, that's never going to happen in journalism, yet people still suffer through incredibly sought-after and low-paying jobs in the industry.
Sure there are a few journalists making millions, but the vast majority (even for men, these days) is based on looks (Maria Bartolomeo, Matt Lauer) or who you know, and often once these journalists take the anchor chair, they delegate all the actual journalism to underlings. (You don't see Christiana Amanpour with her own show, since she's still out in the field, doing actual reporting. And while Anderson Cooper may be pointed to as a rare exception, it helps to remember that anyone who is fantastically independently wealthy can succeed in nearly any passion they indulge.) Even when someone does rise to the top on merit, they can get caught up in their new fame and abandon the ethics that got them there (I'm talking to you, Dan Rather).
But of course those are the stars, while the rest of us are down in the trenches, fighting with one another for low-paying, soul-crushing overnight shifts, many of us without even the hope of rising to the six- or seven-figure top.
Clearly show business is the better option. And you don't need to pay for four years of college to chase your dreams in Hollywood. You just need to be able to face rejection, low pay, fierce competition and cynicism as well as a journalist, with the hope of a better payout.

Anyone Can Write and Edit

I’ve been giving a meager amount of power at my job: Hiring the new part-time copy editor is all me. (OK, the person still has to be approved by the EIC, but it’s something.) Now I see why hiring someone takes so long. About 1 of every 5 people is actually qualified to interview for the job.

One of the applicants writes in her cover letter that she has no editorial experience. Another woman’s previous experience was working at two different Denny’s. I just don’t understand why people with no skills are applying to these jobs when there are about a million communications grads who want them. You don’t see me at the corner diner trying to pick up a late shift waitressing. I know I can’t carry a huge tray and be polite to customers, so I don’t try to get those jobs.

This brings me to a huge pet peeve of mine. It seems everyone in life thinks they can write. Whenever someone asks what I do, and I say, “journalism,” that person almost always tells me that he or she has always wanted to write, too. Sometimes a book, sometimes short stories, but they all want to write. This doesn’t happen in any other profession. I don’t go up to surgeons and say, “Oh yes, I have always wanted to perform an appendectomy. I didn’t attend medical school or have any training whatsoever, but it has always been an interest of mine.”

Take my dentist. When he found out my profession, he immediately showed me his column in the local newspaper and declared that we were both writers. I clean my cat’s teeth. Does that make us both dentists?

Journalism is a major?

The only possible career move that seems left is for me to go on the lecture circuit to as many high schools and colleges as possible, warning people not to make journalism their major.
Why? Because it is completely pointless. The most you want to do is make it a minor.
Say you want to be a financial, medical or political writer. The best thing you can do is major in one of those areas, and minor in journalism and do a few internships on the side (that is until you realize that there is no money in journalism, at which point you can drop the minor and make good living actually working in finance, medicine or politics). And if you want to be a music or travel journalist -- see my previous post about how if you ever want to get there you will have to work for years and years at jobs for no money that you'd be lucky to get, and eventually work your way up to making the same amount of money as the store manager at Home Depot.
Unfortunately, no one came to my school and warned me about this, so I was a journalism major. Hence, I have no other skills to fall back on, no area of expertise to parlay my way into a viable career.

The Beginning of the End

While working in journalism is depressing, finding a job is even more so. This is because of the unique factors of the industry that come together to create a vortex of suck.
First of all, nearly every important journalistic company is headquartered in New York, one of the world's most expensive cities. But once you move there for the opportunities, don't expect them to pay you a living wage.
That's because journalism jobs never, ever carry a salary range. Instead of naming the sad amount that they are wiling to pay, companies instead prefer to put the onus on the jobseeker, requiring a salary range in the cover letter, or letting the topic slide all together. And since salary ranges can start anywhere from $22,000 a year, you might get through three rounds of interviews with a company before realizing that they're willing to pay you less per hour than you made when you worked as a cashier at Home Depot one summer.
Of course to get to that point, you have to have someone call you back, which is nearly impossible. Despite having an impeccable college record, a job with one of the world's most well-known newspapers, clips that were published online and in print on four continents, 99% of my resumes go out without so much as a whisper in return.
Of course, this has a lot to do that media companies are notorious for posting jobs that they never actually intend to fill, getting your hopes up that an interesting job that you're actually qualified for exists, when in fact the posting was only put up to be taken down two weeks later and reposted next month.
But most of the time even applying for a job is an insult. Many jobs will require up to three years experience, yet still list clerical and administrative duties in the job description. What other field can you work for three years, and only then be qualified to get someone coffee and answer the phone?
And while you think you may be working toward a dream job by slogging through your current one, you're probably drifting farther away. That's because all the interesting jobs that people get into journalism for -- music reviewer, travel writer, arts editor -- all require years of experience in that field. So while you might take a boring business reporting job or copy-editing assignment hoping that you'll work your way up, you never will. The industry is so specialized today that it's almost impossible to move around. Fall into political reporting by accident and you're stuck there unless you're willing to start all the way at the bottom again with the fresh college graduates. And if you stick to your guns and miraculously find a job in the journalism field you want, the jobs are so scarce and coveted, employers can lower the already pathetic salary and benefits available.
Still, come back in five years and I may be pining for the days when dozens of nonexistent jobs were posted, interspersed with a few genuine openings for anyone with 3 years experience willing to work the night shift for $22k and make coffee and Kinkos runs. Print journalism is dying, television journalism is a 24/7 parody of itself and online journalism is slowly melting into blogs, vlogs and other peripheral, trendier outlets.
In conclusion, looking for a job in journalism, much like shopping for your own tombstone or researching cancer treatments, is one of the most depressing activities in the universe. Every job you see will fall into one of the following categories: 1. fake 2. with pay under $25,000 3. requires experience, clips and computer skills, yet still puts you half a step above a receptionist 4. is awesome, but requires so many years of specialized experience that they are nearly impossible to land, and if you do, you will find out that it still only pays what you would be making if you had stuck it out at the Home Depot all those years ago and became store manager.
Hope you never planned to retire, have a savings account or buy a house.

Journalism Broke My Heart

2003 was probably the last time I loved journalism.
The late nights at the school newspaper, editing an article for local and AP style, writing a feature story – those things rocked my world (in a good way).
But anymore, I could take them or leave them. I just want to go home and watch TV.
I’m not quite sure why my passion ended. Maybe the low salary, the annoying schedule and the lack of jobs were factors. But the sick thing of all is that I am employed as a professional journalist, make decent money and work a fairly normal schedule, so it’s got to be more than that. If I had to try and put my finger on it, I would think it was just the cold reality of the industry. Print is being phased out, fewer and fewer people are needed at news organizations as companies scale back their budgets, celebrity magazines have taken hold of a core of readership (yeah, I read that junk, too, but I don’t need five publications telling me the exact same news in the exact same way) and television hammers the news into your head 24/7.
There won’t be a return to simpler print times, I’m certain. But maybe there will be a return to ethical reporting and editing. Until then, we’ll be complaining about the irritations of the industry.