Forbes Magazine recently posted a list of the Ten Best and Worst Jobsfor 2014.
Newspaper Journalist came in 2nd.
Second worst job you can have. Lumberjack was first.
Of course, as a lumberjack you get to spend a lot of time outdoors, amongst the trees.
As a journalist you also get to spend a lot of time outdoors. But that’s because you are going to be unemployed.
The world of journalism is in free fall.
As newspapers and magazines become the next in a long list of victims of the Internet, once safe and secure careers,
like reporter, are evaporating faster than a glacier in global warming.
It seems a bit unfair, at least to me (and on doubt to my fellow classmates at The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism,
class of 1983).
We were the children of Watergate.
Being a reporter was cool.
And prestigious.
And it paid a lot.
And you got to travel around the world.
I myself had gotten the journalism bug when I read Teddy White’s book “In Search of History”.
White graduated from Harvard as a Chinese major and went to China just in time to start writing for Henry Luce, the founder and publisher of
Time Magazine.
As a Time correspondent (a dream job if ever there was one), White traveled the world, first class I might add, and was present at pretty much every
major event there was. His work was read weekly by millions.
What a life.
What a career.
Today, if you want to be a journalsit – good luck.
There isn’t a job to be had.. hardly.
And if you are lucky, you can probably work for free, or a pittance, for some online news service that will probably fold in a week or a month.
This is no way to pay off your astronomical J-School debts, by the way.
But… but… there is hope.
There is.
But it might not be what you had in mind when you first thought about journalism.
The days of pounding out a story on a typewriter for a newspaper (or a website.. or a typewriter in general) are over.
The New York Times newsroom in 1942. By Marjory Collins [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
But… there is an explosive appetite, need, demand.. call it what you will, for video.
NOT for cameramen.
But for finished product.
Every website, every business, every transaction, every publication that is online (every product), is going to need video.
Lots of video.
Becasue online is on screens.
iPhones, Tablets, Computers, TV, Elevators, Gas Stations.. you name it.
A hundred millions screens.
And who is going to fill them?
It could be you.
It should be you.
But you’re not going to fill them with that typerwriter.
Copyright Michael Rosenblum 2014
