Any useful journalist who has been around newspapers for any length of time can tell you:
It’s an avocation, not a vocation.
We love(d) what we do. And we will allow huge tracts of our real lives to go to pieces to make sure the print product we worked for is as good as it possible can be.
That was part of the gig, for the century or three in which print was the ascendant source of news. People were in it because they loved it, because they cared so much it hurt.
So much that it killed them. Or certainly shortened their lives. All those mad dashes to crime scenes or press boxes. Day after stressful day of banging up against deadline and getting that last source into your story, or cleaning up that reporter’s story, or slapping the eye-catching headline on it, or turning in the photo or graphic that illustrated the story perfectly … all that took a toll.
And we paid it. To the tune of wrecked marriages, neglected children, lots of booze and drugs, high-blood pressure, migraines and chest pains, 20-200 vision — and heart attacks and strokes. Shortened lives. I’m sure of that; print killed many of us and took years off the lives of many more.
My question today is this: Is print journalism, in its debased current form, still worth dying for?
It’s one thing to feel as if you are part of something bigger than you. This eager, edgy organization dedicated to rooting out evil, shining its First Amendent light into dark places, chronicling the day-to-day highlights of a community, as well as tracking births, deaths, comings and goings and who just made the all-league football team.
It’s one thing to revel in a sense of journalistic continuity newspapers have provided. People covered the cops beat before you, and the desk sergeant can tell you stories about him or her. And someone will cover those same cops after you, and they will hear stories about you. It’s almost like being part of a genealogy, and it’s comforting, inspiring, even.
It’s one thing to dedicate your life to a thriving enterprise led by inspirational and far-sighted managers, men and women who believe tomorrow’s newspaper will be better than today’s and next week’s will be better than this week’s, and who fight like berserkers to give their newsrooms the resources to make it happen.
It’s one thing to know that your efforts are noticed and appreciated. Maybe not in daily attaboys, but by the collective nods of approval from colleagues and managers, the knowing glances from the city editor when the police radio crackles with mayhem, and everyone knows You Are On the Case.
It’s quite another thing … to work for organizations in collapse, led by editors cum accountants who spend more time plotting the next round of layoffs than the next series of exposes.
It’s another thing to see it all coming apart, to be in the middle of organizational collapse, when institutional knowledge goes unfiled in a library or chucked out into the street when senior staffers are purged for being too old or too well-paid.
I understand the journalist’s mind. I was one for my entire adult life. The striving, the ambition, the conviction to be better and faster and more complete. It generates intellectual and emotional highs.
You leave behind something tangible, too. The newspaper. There it is. In your hands. In the news racks. And that’s your byline on that story, or your photo next to it. You matter. You are a part of history by chronicling it. You go into the bound volumes and into the microfilm, and dedicated historians can go look it up someday. They probably won’t, but they could.
The camaraderie of like-minded reporters and editors. It has value. The death-defying rush of beating deadline one more time. I know why we do it. For all these reasons, and more.
But what about that toll? The one we knew we were exacting on our brains and bodies and families? We paid the price because we believed in a better tomorrow. We worked till our nerves were shot and our BP was off the scale and our hands shook. Till the booze we soaked up to bring us down from the adrenaline rush had destroyed our livers.
Was it worth it, once upon a time? Maybe. Maybe. OK, yeah, it was. And we did it.
Is it worth it today? Is it worth it at papers evaporating before our eyes?
Should the sad remnant left in newsrooms work even harder to make up for those who are gone?
I say, no. No. NO WAY.
The paper you work for probably no longer deserve your life. The people you work for have no call on your 24/7 commitment. Your managers probably are just the latest group of soul-dead drones whose MBOs are about hacking another 20 percent out of the newsroom ledger this fiscal year.
Your paper probably is owned by a corporate raider or a Wall Street-fixated chain or a wacko who has leveraged five bucks into a nationwide gulag of suffering journalists and unserved readers.
A note: I have a sense that a handful of well-run newspapers are still out there. Family-run, many of them. With strong leadership that doesn’t rattle easily, with ownership dedicated to coming out the back side of this industry implosion — and having their best reporters and editors still in place when profits come back.
But that is a minority. For the rest of you, laboring for dying newspapers overseen by clowns and cretins … this is my advice to you:
Go home when your shift is over. Give an honest day’s work. But no more. Fight the impulse to stay late, file the extra story, create a blog, post a photo gallery or make sure everything gets posted on the web even though it’s not part of your job description.
It’s that kind of commitment — instinctual in journos, but ultimately destructive — that got our forebears killed and probably already has shortened our lives.
Don’t go overboard. Don’t ruin your marriage or ignore your children or stare down deadline till you can hear your heart pounding in your ears. It isn’t worth it. Today’s newspapers have no dedication to you or their product, and for you to give over your heart and soul to them … it’s a foolish, one-way commitment.
Maybe things will turn. I doubt it. But it could. And if that day comes when news organizations are doing anything but cutting, shrinking and forgetting … then go back to killing yourself for it. But not before.
5 responses so far ↓
1 cindy robinson // Apr 11, 2008 at 10:40 AM
You know, I figured it out five years ago when I quit the business. Until then, there were plenty of times a story, an investigation, covering a gamer was more important than birthdays, anniversaries, religious holidays (surprised I wasn’t struck by lightning when working on Yom Kippur) school plays, little league games, etc.
But when Singleton took over the Sun and Lambert parked himself in the office, the cost cutting began five years ago, I knew it was time to go. What’s very sad is ink still runs through the veins of many of us. Many of us are still viable, lively reporters, editors, designers, etc. who are now figuring out second careers, ones that will still give us the adrenalin rush we got from being part of a newspaper. But as I read Paul’s blogs, I really wonder what came first the chicken or the egg. Did readership go down because the product is so bad and turned readers away or did the papers go bad because the readership was down? Amazing to me is local businesses DO NEED newspapers. Advertising dollars are out there to be had. But why spend money to advertise in a something not seen?
Poor management — a publisher and EE who don’t really have ink running through their veins — is the real culprit of newspapers’ demise. Upper management is more concerned with the bottom line than the community (if it cared about the community, so many journalists would not have been let go).
When I broke into the business it was exciting to think I was going to be a part of making sure the corrupt guys would be held accountable and the public would be well-informed. Yeah, I ventured into sports, but there was plenty to reveal there as well as in general news. We were the fourth estate. Now, we’re in a state of demise and there is no one to make sure the corrupt people in charge of newspapers are held accountable.
I know those still in the business think those out are bitter. You’re wrong. I’m glad you still have a job because it gives me hope the business can be revived. But if you’re a newbie, you will never understand what it feels like to have ink rushing through your veins and those who do remember what a great feeling it was to break a story, you no longer have the support of an editor who cares that you broke a story — he/she just wants to know can you keep it to 10-inches because the newshole has shrunk.
So, unfortunately Paul, you’re right. It’s not worth dying for.
2 George Alfano // Apr 14, 2008 at 3:33 PM
Don’t love a job, because a job won’t love you back
3 Bridget Lewison // Apr 17, 2008 at 3:31 PM
If you’re looking to replace that deadline adrenaline rush, try repossessing cars. I starting helping my fiance about a year ago and do it in my spare time, you know, “just for the fun of it.”
It’s really not that different from working on the average copy desk.
Similar late hours
You sometimes have to work weekends
You live off fast food
You’re lied to by assholes all night long
Sometimes you sit around and do nothing for hours, then it’s bust-your-ass-busy until you can’t see straight
You often have to make do with equipment that doesn’t work right
You sometimes achieve the impossible and nobody says “good job”
4 Bridget Lewison // Aug 19, 2010 at 12:38 PM
I Googled myself (we all do) and this page came up first. I may as well offer an update:
I married that repoman. I also still work for a newspaper. It’s a small one in a region saturated with corruption on so many levels. I learn more every day about the key players, and I wish I had the conviction to write a novel about it. Believe me, it’d be a good read.
I, like so many others, moved here to get away from the Southern California experience (ie traffic, crime). Live a better life, enjoy the river. I never imagined I’d be back in a newsroom, much less working for a company, it turns out, that values the ideals of journalism.
It’s sad to me that so many who still are in this industry have seemingly rolled over and convinced themselves that it’s all over. I’ll admit, I was there myself not long ago. But recent events have shown me it’s still possible to have passion in this business and do the right thing. The few readers the industry has left are craving it. They’ve been very patient. Things ARE changing. Even baby steps still lead to progress.
Please, keep the fight alive. There may be fewer of us and morale among our ranks remains wilted, but please don’t give up.
5 Bridget Lewison // May 17, 2011 at 11:10 AM
So much has changed. I guess I got a little *too* deep in my attempt to expose corruption and injustice in the Tri-state. I no longer work for that corporate-owned newspaper. Walked off that job Jan. 9; I happen to value my principles and integrity. I now freelance — actually, mostly volunteer — for a number of independent/privately owned newspapers, websites and a listener-supported radio station in Needles, Calif., KTOX 1340-AM. I’m broke, but at least I’m able to promote the truth. Maybe someday I’ll get hungry enough to go back to rewriting press releases and getting a pat on the head from my editor, but I sure hope not. Sending my love to anyone who sees this and is still out there in the trenches. It’s a damn tough slog out there.
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