Ever since the world of newspaper journalism began collapsing, I've been on the hunt for the next stage of media. I read all the media sites- journalismjobs.com, mediabistro.com, Poynter, etc. You would think that 15+ years of writing and editing for respected newspapers would bring me closer to the answers. But apparently, between Sam Zell's hatchet job on the Tribune Company and the general decline of newspaper readers in this country, we're sinking deeper and deeper into the conclusion that news as we've known it for more than a century, is over. Experts seem convinced that there will always be a need for journalists but what do we do in the mean time? To put it lightly, it's been a rough road since I left my last newspaper job in 2004...
The Web seems to be the next big medium. At least, that's what everyone has said. Yet, it doesn't matter if you are a star print reporter with killer Web skills...Potential employers may pay lip service to your news judgement and other abilities but can't spend more than $35K on your salary. The one Web site/newspaper which began making noise in the last year is Phil Anschutz's Examiner.com, which purports to be re-inventing the news wheel by having an edition in more than 60 cities. The plan is that each section (Politics, Health, Entertainment...) will have one content manager directing it and there will be national and local "examiners" covering the news in that specific section via blogging (although they don't like to call it that). The catch? The examiners are not reporters. They don't necessarily have any journalism background, although many are recently displaced reporters of local and nation repute. They don't even get paid because they're not technically employees of the Examiner. If their writing generates enough page views, THEN they get paid.
I went up for one of these content management positions at the Examiner. I felt really comfortable with my background and was heartened to learn that the pay scale was actually fair. Maybe even more than fair. But after only a couple of interviews I was mysteriously and abruptly dropped from the process. I couldn't figure it out until I Googled the people who would have been my supervisors. As it turns out, the education and experience level of most people who work for the Examiner is less than impressive. One guy with whom I interviewed has one year of community college experience. It doesn't make sense, until you stop to realize that in 2008, nobody is interested in accuracy, experience or education anymore. Blogs about nothing more than what someone ate for dinner that day or which party they attended have made plenty of people rich and even famous so why ask for more? The bar has moved down and people both post and accept whatever is published on Wikipedia as fact, so the trained, qualified copy editor has essentially become irrelevant. The question is, where are these bloggers and "examiners" getting their so-called news?? It appears that good old traditional sources, such as an AP feed are still being used. But even AP has sold out, to some degree, allowing for its information to be manipulated accordingly for each Web site client.
We've entered a sad time. A time when a presidential candidate can be besmirched for the level of his education. A time when "elitism" is a bad word. A time when businesses are so confident that worthless, baseless information sells that they are willing to gamble on inexperience and are unwilling to pay for experience. The world now turns on the whims of the lowest common denominator.
As long as people are more interested in the details of Paris Hilton's life, the media will continue this dumbing down process. More arts critics and news reporters will lose their jobs. And bit by bit, Americans will lose its collective intelligence. As it is, we have already discovered that most Americans are now distrustful of intellectualism. Some of our most important jobs- teaching, for example- are devalued by their paltry salaries. The same thing is happening in media. If you don't want to think about or even hear new ideas, if you only care about celebrity sightings and whether Oprah endorses a certain product, if you never question anything, well, this won't matter to you. For people like me, who still care about quality and accuracy, it hurts to be penalized for possessing integrity and ability. And it hurts to know that my fellow Americans no longer care about quality or accuracy. These same people may not realize it now, but the people they are hurting the most with their ignorance and apathy are none other than themselves.
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