Eric Zorn: I regularly get letters from high school and college students asking for career advice. Should I be more encouraging? … [T]heoretically, there will be many jobs in the future for good writers, whatever medium they end up in.
Mary Schmich: When students ask me about the future of journalism, my first answer is, “You tell me.” … There’s still a demand for news, stories and a well-turned opinion, and where there’s a demand there’s a market. If you’re curious, skilled, willing to work hard and make less than your lawyer friends, you’ll find your place. And when you do, will you hire me?
via So, you really want to be a journalist? — chicagotribune.com.
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Over the last couple of weeks – at MIT for the Future of News and Civic Media conference; at the 124th Covenant Annual Meeting; seeing relatives of mine and Linda’s in Oregon; at Illinois Beach Resort to parachute into the Matson-Mårtensson-Mathiasson family reunion – a lot of people whom I have not seen recently have been asking me about my career change. There are a number of themes in these questions, but inevitably they come around to a version of the Schmich-Zorn discussion in the Tribune the other day: Will there be journalism in the future, and are there really university students enrolling to pursue it?
Well, yes and yes. As many faithful readers know, Forbes reported in April that journalism school enrollments appear to be at an all-time high, and as it turns out Medill’s graduate and undergraduate enrollments for the coming academic year are up significantly. This is probably less surprising when one hears the statistics from Columbia, Medill, and elsewhere on the fact that their 2008 graduates are indeed getting hired … and in a job market like today’s, competitive advantage is not to be sneezed at.
The larger point is made by Mary: “There’s still a demand for news, stories and a well-turned opinion, and where there’s a demand there’s a market.” As I was telling an interviewer today, and as so many others have written, the very real economic crisis gripping the industry is not about news, or journalism, or demand for same. It’s also not about “paid vs. free” or “print vs. digital.” If both the industry and those studying to join it can stay away from those false dichotomies, canards, and briar patches, many of the hirers and the hirees will have purpose and gainful employment….and many others will have gainful self-employment.
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…and the duckbilled platitude lays & lays
and Lays aytash unee
–e.e. cummings, “remarked Robinson Jefferson”
5. Too many stories on iPhone 3.0 were written for anyone in the universe (whether the currently known universe, and or any portion thereof that is not yet discovered or explored) to write anything new or interesting or of the remotest value. So I wanted to write about how silly I found it when the “ring/silent switch” fell off my iPhone 3G, what has to be a $0.01 piece of material, and the friendly folks at the Genius Bar handed me a new phone instead of reattaching the switch. But I didn’t. And I now I did. (As I did manage to tweet, I am still ROTFL.)
The jumping-off point is a question about the San Francisco Chronicle, as are several of the examples and explanations Rodriguez cites. But Rodriguez’s thesis is as much about the idea of a city as it is about the fate of The City, and it summoned up for me a definition of a city that I think I learned in philosophy class: a community founded on common acceptance of social norms.
Really, the only virtual trip down St. Clair Street came when my friends showered me with gifts and remembrances. Here, for example, you see my very own Chicago Tribune Chicagoland Music Festival first-place medal, struck by C.D. Peacock. (The Festival, held every year from 1930 to 1966, was just one of the many events – the Golden Gloves, the Silver Skates, the College All-Star Football Game – that the Tribune gave to Chicago over the years. Jack fondly recalled the glow that suffused Soldier Field when, at the end of each Festival, the lights were turned down and everyone in attendance struck a match and held it aloft.)