Archive for March 4th, 2009

I took the train to Princeton on Monday night for a dinner date with about 25 college journalism students. Walking across the icy Gothic campus always brings back memories, in this case particularly of cold mornings spent delivering newspapers my freshman year to make book money and the like. I was joined by US News & World Report reporter Katherine Hobson (a 1994 grad) who asked the assembled young folks who read a newspaper in print form. A few admitted to doing so on vacation at their parents’ homes, but if there were lingering hands when asked about their on-campus days, it was definitely fewer than 10%.

Yes, print newspapers are probably doomed, though, as someone who lugged the darn things up four flights of stairs, staining my hands, I have to say that may not be a huge loss. Paper, ink and fuel for delivery trucks are all resources that we spend in a much more profligate fashion than we should. I recently purchased a Kindle, which can receive daily newspapers in a readable form, and if people want paper copies, they can probably print their own.

But this, of course, doesn’t mean journalism, or any form of print writing, is doomed. Hobson and I agreed on the walk from the train that we would not preach gloom and doom to 20-year-olds hopeful enough about building a career in the field to spend their evening with us. And I really don’t think there’s reason for despair. For starters, about half my writing now is appearing solely online, and my income hasn’t gone down. There are no journalism “jobs” to be had, but there are plenty of freelance opportunities — more now than probably ever before. Business models are changing. Given the short shelf life of many publications, it probably makes sense to think of all of them as projects, with teams of free agents assembled to make a great product, then disassembling when required. If things show a shelf life, then you can start creating longer-term contracts. But still, this changing industry needs flexibility — something that’s a lot less possible with large payrolls. Some people bemoan the lack of payroll employment in the field, but I track what people with similar tenures to me make as reporters and editors, and I’m definitely doing OK.

Plus I get to work in my pajamas, which rocks.

So I think I gave a fairly hopeful talk. After all, music has survived the transition from records to casettes to CDs to mp3 files, and we still use phones, though they’ve transitioned from rotaries to text messaging gizmos the size of a deck of playing cards in one generation. Likewise, unless this recession brings about another Dark Ages, literacy is going to survive. Which means people will want to read — one way or another. All in all, things could be worse.