I discovered a slough of unpublished post drafts, which I hope aren’t too incomplete and abrupt to hoist on my blog now, especially since some, like this one in particular, explain why I’m pursuing study of the media.
The idea to blog about the media “meltdown” nudged me when I read the news that the New York Times was planning 100 newsroom job cuts. Blogging, it dawned on me, would deepen my understanding of both the birth pangs of digital news and the simultaneous decay of journalism’s traditional practices, from which even the Times is not safe. The legendary paper, in its story on the downsizing, wrote about the on-line takeover,
There were scattered buyouts and job eliminations in The Times’ newsroom in recent years, but the overall number continued to rise, largely because of the growth of its Internet operations.
Having worked in newsrooms struggling with similar circumstances, I’ve also experienced rounds of buyouts, hiring freezes and restructurings that were necessitated on the print side by new positions created for the Web team.
When I was re-assigned from reporting community sports for a major daily paper to the parent company’s experimental five-days-a-week advertisement rag, I decided to cut my losses and run for it. I’d go back to school for a Master’s degree and wipe away that undergrad in print journalism. A prestigious copy-desk internship wouldn’t count against me and work experience is work experience for potential employers, so I knew a career shift wouldn’t be a difficult transition.
My plans to pursue international business lasted for less than two months. Very quickly I realized that I not only wanted to continue practicing journalism, but to help save it as well.
Filed under: Old journalism decay, Saving journalism
