Tuesday, February 24, 2009

OK, OK, I know it's not healthy to dwell on bad news, but I had to share this Facebook message I just got from my friend, Andrea, who works at a newspaper in St. Louis.
Duuuuuude!
I totally forgot you were going to J-school! Holy buckets. Didn't you get the news flash? Journalism's dead, baby. Even still, I'd have to imagine a degree from Columbia's gotta get you a pretty sweet gig somewhere. Weren't you looking into magazine writing or something? I can absolutely, unwaveringly tell you that newspapers are dead. We've had three layoffs in the past six months, and we're now being forced to take weeklong, unpaid furloughs... and our contract with XXXXX is up in June.
Needless to say, I'm over it. I have been for more than a year, but I didn't get my shit together enough to transition to another profession until last fall. That's when I started studying for the law school admissions test. I'm now shockingly neck-deep in acceptances (I may have applied to a few too many schools...) and trying to decide between Portland, Denver and Seattle.
I met Andrea five years ago when she came to Kona to work for the West Hawaii Today. She stayed there a year or two, then took the gig in St. Louis.

In an interesting sidenote, another ex-West Hawaii Today reporter, a young lady originally from Hilo, who wound up in New Mexico, is also attempting to get into law school.

3 comments:

Xeb said...

So you're thinking of becoming an out-of-work-journalist-lawyer? It's an ironic step, from reflecting the truth to manipulating it :P

kiki said...

No, not at all. But I bet there will be tons of ex-journalists in law school next year!

Anonymous said...

I think there's a distinction between the end of newspapers (as we know them) and the end of journalism. I believe (and hope) journalism will continue, but the business model needs to change for the industry to survive.

You might like this article: http://smatterofopinion.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-much-value-do-we-put-on-information.html