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Are Journalists An Endangered Species?

Posted December 8, 2008

The Whiner has been giving a lot of thought to pterodactyls, recently. That’s because Whiner-in-Chief, Deputy Whiner, Marketing Genius, Greatest Web Designer The World Has Ever Known, Our Favorite Intern, and at least some other members of our happy little band of whiners have collectively spent many years working as journalists — a profession tottering on the verge of extinction.

Some mornings, we wish, we really wish, we weren’t a pundit. Then, The Whiner wouldn’t have an Industry Death Watch (currently populated by that Tragic Trio — retailers, car manufacturers, book publishers) and we wouldn’t be forced by all the EconoShit that’s hitting the fans all around us to add newspapers, magazines, radio stations, TV news shows, overseas news bureaus, freelance-and-would-be-freelance journalists, and the rest of our brethren to our list of the living dead. (Normally, this would be the moment where we’d run another zombie photo just because we like to run zombie photos. But we’re too damn sad.)

Who can keep up with all the layoffs, cutbacks, and other disastrous developments affecting the media these days? The debt-ridden Tribune Co., publisher of The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times, is apparently batting its eyes at a possible bankruptcy filing. Time Inc., the world’s largest magazine publisher, announced plans to cut about 600 jobs, or 6% of its workforce. Meanwhile, life at Gannett Company has begun to look more and more like a Greek tragedy, as one newspaper after another — The (Wilmington) News Journal, The Des Moines Register, The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, The Honolulu Advertiser, and on and on — wields a bloody ax throughout the newsroom. (Ok, sorry, what we mean to say is, they’re shedding staff in the interests of right-sizing themselves for the new economy.)

Fellow Whiners, if you’re also a member of an endangered species, then you know that it’s not really the headlines that send chills down your spines — it’s the phone calls and e-mails you get from friends.

There are endless variations but they’re all equally awful. The calls from people who survived earlier rounds of layoffs and now are plagued by the thought that it might just have been better to be the first out the door, when there were still a few, just a few, job possibilities. The resumes from the incredibly-talented-if-delusional, who mention that their salary ballpark is $200K-plus (at a time when we don’t even know of media jobs in the $20,000 salary range).

The new college graduates who call with networking requests, wanting to know which non-paying job we think would be best as they attempt to build their resumes for a future that we fear will only hold non-paying jobs. (Fortunately, we’re pulling down the big bucks at EconoWhiner.com. If somebody’s got to be rich and famous, at least it’s us.)

Let’s not forget all those conversations about the good old days. (Somehow, we have the feeling that right before the moment of actual wiped-off-the-planet extinction, the animal equivalents of today’s City Hall Correspondents and lifestyle columnists and copy editors and photo journalists were hugging each other and reminiscing about fine times roaming the rain forest or perched on that iceberg that melted a couple of years ago.)

The worst thing about being a member of an endangered species is you don’t really know what to do about it. Maybe there’s nothing you can do about it. You can listen to your friends and try not to get bogged down too much in remembering the way things used to be, because what’s the point of all that?

But somehow, at the same time, it seems very important (even if you don’t exactly know why) to hold onto the best things about the work life you used to have. If you don’t have that, then it’s very hard to find yourself smack in the midst of the end-of-life-as-we-now-know-it because all you’ll have is regrets. And those credit card bills.

As a society, we need journalists. But nobody’s exactly lining up to bail them out. And what happens if one day, they all disappear and the only thing we’ve got left is a giant global newsroom run by Fox-is-for-fairness or some other “f” word?

So, even though The Whiner knows that not all journalists are perfect (and, in fact, some are pretty piss-poor and others are talented-but-assholes), we suggest a moment of silence. Think about all those people who have spent days, nights, and weekends working like dogs at all the famous newspapers, magazines, TV and radio news shows — and all those other places most of us have never heard of. They did things that mattered. Not every day. Certainly not every day. But just enough to make a difference to somebody or other some of the time. And they’ve kept at it, even while salaries and benefits and career opportunities have been shrinking for years now, long before there ever was an EconoMeltdown.

Here at Whiner-in-Chief’s desk, we’ll be thinking about Brenda Starr, Star Reporter (Sunday mornings with Dad, reading comic strips, always saving Brenda’s adventures for last). And about Lois Lane (a newswoman who was certainly as heroic, possibly as influential, and infinitely brainier, than Superman ever could be). Tonight, we’ll go back to that pile of magazines and newspapers that sits by the bedside (because, yes, W-i-C has an obsessive love for anything in print, unless it’s filled with fat, naked, wrestling ladies who perspire much too much and look very creepy).

The Whiner wants to know: Are you a member of this, or any other endangered species? When you think about what’s happening to the news media, do you care?


Reader Comments

  1. Sasha

    I have been watching various friends and family members struggling for years to support themselves in the sinking media industry and it’s just gotten worse in the last few months. A cousin of mine and his wife, both freelance photojournalists for years have recently begun teaching photojournalism classes at a local university to help pay the bills. Another photojournalist friend has started getting into web design as a way of expanding his offerings. He’s also told me he’s considering shooting weddings, (god forbid!) as a desperate attempt to keep him afloat. Journalists are an essential part of the workings of this culture and the fact that they are now on the endangered species list is a red flag that cannot be ignored. Maybe we should send out postcards to upper class environmentalists with adorable pictures of starving writers and reporters asking for donations to keep this wonderful species from becoming extinct. Included in every donation of $50 or more is a stack of address labels with a photo of your favorite journalist!

  2. amy

    (sigh)

    Econowhiner, go read some Ben Hecht and Ben Bradlee.

    Journalists are not going away. Respectable-salary money for journalists is going away. The idea of journalism as a “profession” is relatively new, much newer than newspapers are, and are largely a result of polite scams put on by j-schools. It’s not such a great thing, either, having newspapers full of polite former college kids. Remember all the sententious nodding and agreeing after 9/11 as habeus corpus and a few other important things went away? And the applause after Colin Powell’s dog-and-pony show at the UN? You don’t get all that so much when journalists are a step up from bums. They don’t hope for invitations to the dinner parties anyhow, then.

    You seem to have this obsession with writers making money. This doesn’t usually happen, you know. The last decade has been — repeat after me — an aberration. Don’t take it as normal.

  3. CMP

    Whiner, you have voiced a concern I’ve felt for a long time now. I’m afraid we are doomed if journalism continues its decline.
    Sasha, I love your ideas in your comment. Just when I thought there was nothing funny going on here, you made me laugh out loud.
    What can we do to help stem the bleeding? Will subscribing to newspapaers help? Somehow I don’t think so, since it seems that advertising is the big moneymaker here. Without advertising, there are no papers online or offline.
    This one requires some serious thought.

  4. Ben

    Great post, Whiner. It’s very troubling to see newspapers shrinking or closing up. And some of my favorite magazines have folded up in recent years. Is there no end in sight to this? I’ve cut back on subscriptions because I don’t have a choice but to cut back. The situation is bad from all directions.

  5. Babs

    Actually, I’ve got some friends who are journalists and the situation seems to be brutal for them. Whiner, I’ve had the feeling for awhile, watching them, that if you lose your job now as a journalist you’re not going to get hired back again. It’s bad. Very bad. Some of them are really talented people. There should be some way for them to work at what they do best.

  6. PoorMe

    Good point about endangered species. Incredible to be thinking in these terms. And, Ben, you put it well: the situation IS bad from all directions.

  7. ED

    amy, why don’t you go read something else, somewhere else? I for one am pretty sick of your know-it-all and insulting attitude and your obvious insecurities. Some of your comments are almost interesting, but your creepiness keeps me from appreciating any point you might make.

    Clearly you only read mainstream Republican-owned U.S. media if you think that it was all nodding and applause in the press for the various Bush/Cheney/Powell prestidigitations. If I were you, I’d start reading The Nation, Mother Jones, The New Yorker, Common Dreams, and papers from outside the U.S.

  8. Dodsworth

    In the September 30 New York Times I read two of the laziest op-ed pieces I’ve ever seen. The first was Maureen Dowd’s remembrance of Paul Newman. The second was Thomas Friedman on the 800-point stock market collapse, including tidbits about his own CNBC-surfing and his rabbi’s Rosh Hashana sermon.

    There it was, in a nutshell: Two of the highest paid journalists in the country, both producing columns that didn’t require a single phone call.

    How much do Dowd and Friedman get paid? My point is only that if you sacked one of them and used it to pay the salaries of three or four go-getters who would actually do the legwork that journalism requires…you’d have a better newspaper, a better profession.

    So I think the newspapers need to redistribute whatever percentage of their revenues they’re devoting to the journalist payroll; and I also think that the top-of-the-food chain journalists need to do their homework more often. What I saw from Friedman and Dowd on September 30 would not have passed muster at my high school newspaper. It was pathetic.

    Finally, let me reply to poster Amy: Overall, I agree with you. But don’t throw all the journalists under the bus for post-9/11 napping. The record will show that the print guys at Knight Ridder were questioning the war from day 1.

    http://www.ajr.org/article_printable.asp?id=3725

  9. Justthefacts

    As a young journalist myself, I’m often very nervous about the future of the industry. This was a really good post, one that brings up a lot of important issues. Amy, you’re crazy if you think that writers made more money–discounting inflation–during the last decade than they did in previous eras when the newspaper and magazine industry wasn’t approaching armageddon (which isn’t a defense of sycophantic journalists who accepted and repeated the lies of the Bush administration). Show me the historical wage data to prove it. Otherwise, the very idea is ludicrous.

  10. Sara

    For the past 12 years I have been an Editorial Recruiter, finding top editors/writers for media worldwide…or at least that’s how my practice began, before print media went down the poop shoot. (I am an ex-journalist myself…. fondly remembering the long ago days when Time Magazine paid for my driving lessons…my MBA…when the “cocktail cart” came around on closing nights…drove us home in town cars…but I digress.) Now I try to get the best journalists out of journalism…problem is the top strategy firms and communications jobs are also shutting down, at least for now. It’s time for everyone to identify their other passions and try to creatively redirect your talents. Easier said than done, I know, but worth the time to think about, because most of these journalism jobs aren’t coming back, unless you are young and web-savvy. Norm Pearlstine,(ex-Head of WSJ & Time) predicted this in 2000. He said by mid-decade, 1/3rd of journalists will be gone. He got out…but ironically now he’s back…at Bloomberg, the one place that was ALWAYS hiring, but even now they have slowed down. Good luck to all those inside and outside of journalism. In your spare time if out of work, read all the back issues of publications that have stacked up, or use them as kindling to stay warm.

  11. amy

    ED, I first heard about the coming war in Iraq in Sept ‘02, when apparently it was already a done deal as far as the Pentagon was concerned. I heard about this in, of all places, Iowa, a thousand miles from the action. Back then I read the Nation (which I think was first to start warning about the prospect that other countries would stop buying our debt) and the Progressive, and got the NYer, which I’d stopped doing for a while when Tina ran it because I don’t care that much about the Kennedys, for God’s sake.

    I recall watching Powell’s loony presentation – I was sick at home, so I got to watch the whole thing. I remember looking forward to the slice & dice the next day in the papers, but when I read the reports in the major papers — the big-circ ones people pay attention to — I saw nothing but solemn nodding. I went from one paper to the next with a growing sense that we were in real serious trouble, because the journalists appeared to be AWOL. I’m glad Knight-Ridder was awake; I don’t recall reading any of those reports, though.

    As I recall, the only one making sense for a long time was Sy Hirsch, though Hendrik usually makes a good point. Greg Palast sounds like a nut when he talks, but he had some good reporting.

    Look, the main thing about journalism is that it’s all talk, and it’s seldom high-quality information. There are good reasons for this, but as far as I’ve seen, mostly it’s because the journalists are amateurs, visitors, in whatever they’re covering — this is why you hear people in every field talk about “how to handle the media”. It isn’t just about trying to get press releases into print. The journalists, even seasoned journalists, are likely to get things wrong in important ways if not handled carefully, and this can be damaging. This gets worse, of course, when reporters aren’t allowed to stay on a beat and take the time to get depth, but go talk to political aides, scientists, people in business — they get wary about what mistakes the reporters will make. You can find some real trade reporting, but as I recall from my industry/market-analyst days, a lot of the reports getting sold for big money were a lot of baloney — dead wrong, or not particularly meaningful.

    Anyway, at bottom there’s a limited market for info that kinda gets you into the right neighborhood but doesn’t hit the right address. There’s also a limited market for serious journalism, just as there is for any kind of serious writing. If the ad money and credit are good to the publishers — or in times of public emergency — then terrific, the paychecks will sprout in both areas. You’ve got to put something inbetween those ads, after all. But the whole idea of newspapers as a public trust went out years ago, so you can’t expect media corporations to keep reporters on when the ads and credit go. The only place where I see a consistent, non-polemical sense of public trust is CSPAN, and to a very limited extent the Times. CSPAN has what is, as far as I’m concerned, a brilliant funding scheme that’s not been reproduced anywhere else.

    Anyway — if you’re committed to serious journalism, I think you have to accept that there isn’t going to be consistent money in it, and that it can get you in real trouble. If you’re willing to go live like that, I have real respect for you. But it’s a life, a calling, not a road to financial security. If what you’ve really got is a comfortable salaried job that lets you make some calls and write some news, you have to keep in mind that what you make has limited salability. So it’s a tenuous position, and you really need something else in your pocket.

    Justthefacts, I didn’t say that individual reporters made more money. But there was more money for writers — that is, more people were able to go out and make a living, or part of a living, writing. Some of that started in the 90s, with media corps taking over publishers and discovering that books genuinely do not make much money, and can’t be rationalized well, so the hunt for blockbusters was on — esp. once they found out they couldn’t sell off the damn publishing companies. You started seeing crazy advances then – I mean some lunatic numbers. But as it became clear that the internet was going to be a popular thing, and that it was going to shake up publishing, you saw the media/comm corps throwing money at all kinds of stuff just so they wouldn’t risk getting left behind. Nobody knew what was going to emerge as a winning format or a winning kind of content, and forms got old pretty fast. It’s been a crazy time in a pretty good stretch of publishing, and the media corps have been able to get away with it, I’m guessing because credit’s been so loose. But — well — that’s stopped now. There’s still money in some industries for writers, but again, there’s ebb and flow, and the safest jobs are the ones requiring technical or insider knowledge.

    Sorry about the megapost. But JTF, you have to realize that publishing and broadcasting have undergone some profound transformations in the last 20 years, and the lack of corporate control over media is unprecedented. I don’t think we’re done with the weirdness, but I also don’t think you should take the recent money-flinging as a normal thing.

  12. oliver

    One of the worst things about watching what’s happening to the media? The feeling that your whole rolodex is “worthless” — because you don’t know anybody who can help you out of the mess that your own career is in. You don’t know what to do or who to call. Actually, that’s not just a problem for journalists. I’ve seen comments on other EconoWhiner posts that show that many people are feeling exactly the same way.

  13. Sara

    Amy is right about the last decade in terms of escalating salaries for writers and editors…not necessarily lower level reporters. The salaries were driven up by numerous factors as she mentions and — the raiding of staff among the competition — the dot.com bubble that elevated young staff writers with limited experience to top editors/writers overnight at 3 times their salary to fuel the ad/edit ratios when magazines were as big as phone books. And if younger people were getting paid that much, of course the older journalists with more experience should be given their due. Then the investment into the online properties, bumbling around to find the right model with rotating staff further upping the ante. So the past 10 years have been a boon to the salaries of journalists in MSM…not necessarily local papers or smaller pubs. But unfortunately for many, those salaries have now come back to bite them as the pink slips get passed out.

  14. Carolyn W.

    Did anyone read Maureen Dowd’s piece in the NYT, “A Penny for My Thoughts?” here, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/opinion/30dowd.html about outsourcing news writing to India?

    The internet community first seriously wounded the music industry with all the file sharing run amok and then almost all intellectual property owners have been under assault (such as owners of the game Scrabble/P.K. Rowling and other authors/the movie industries etc.) from the collective users taking and posting (selling) other’s IP online without permission. The internet has speeded up so much of what we all do, it has undermined just about every profession….in the sense that technology created the means for almost all white collar and manufacturing jobs to now be done by the lowest bidder, including journalism. It’s like the Industrial Revolution on steroids, change is taking place so rapidly.

  15. cod

    Carolyn,

    –The internet community first seriously wounded the music industry with all the file sharing run amok–

    Well, that’s a grievous oversimplification of the consumer reaction to an industry whose greed and self-importance is longer-lived and, if anything, far in excess of our recent Wall Street Wonders.

    When I say “music industry” I don’t mean the artists and performers.

    I mean (1) record labels, whose route to riches is to control (and limit) distribution, raise prices, enagage in outright fraud on top of creative accounting of artist royalties … abetted by

    (2) formula-driven radio stations with a corporate outlook and agenda …

    and (3) agents and managers whose allegiace to “winner-take-all economics” means you’ll get endless Michael Jackson, followed by endless New Kids on the Block, not forgetting endless Madonna … because 20 percent of $50 million from one artist is a lot easier than making your $10 million for ten, or 100, artists.

    I’m sorry: this is offtopic in a way, but the point is simple. The organization and business leadership of an industry plays a giant role in whether it fades away or not.

    Print journalism has been fading because it tried to compete with the 24-hour TV news cycle on TV’s terms.

    TV “journalism” is and has been for decades a race to the bottom.

    Once your corporate ownership defines profitability as the main point, and “entertainment” as the most efficient way to create profit centers, it’s over.