Great expectations
By Jim Killam
When I started in this business, we used typewriters, not computers. We worked for $180 a week. And people knew grammar and AP style, or else. Blah blah, blah blah blah.
Next, you might as well tell a young journalist that you had to walk
three miles to work in the snow, uphill both ways.
Today's journalism students and new grads see the world very differently
than did those of a generation ago. News organizations and journalism schools
that fail to understand that are doomed to failure, agreed two experts from
both sides of the fence. Jim Jennings, vice president and editorial director
for Thomson Newspapers, and Trevor Brown, dean of Indiana University's School
of Journalism, spoke to editors and journalism educators at NINA's spring
conference April 28 at NIU.
Jennings is a principle architect of Reader Inc., Thomson's ambitious, 12-week
program to recruit and train new reporters. It's not intended primarily
to replace journalism schools, but to enable mid-career transitions. The
inaugural class of 16 ranged from a former lieutenant colonel to a minister
to a pizza delivery driver. The average age was 36.
Reader Inc. now sits on the shelf as Thomson's newspapers await sale. But,
Jennings thinks the program has helped editors and recruiters realize that
new employees' expectations are very different from those of a decade or
two ago. And what's true for 36-year-olds is doubly true for 22-year-old
J-school grads.
An April 24 Editor & Publisher article by Joe Grimm outlines those expectations:
"The chance to do meaningful work, to create, to be respected, to have
a personal life."
Jennings agreed: The recruitment game often boils down to perceived quality
of life rather than money.
"It's difficult to prove to young people today that life in small-town
America is what they want to do," he said, "because we don't try
very hard to prove it."
In fact, Brown added, new grads sometimes harbor inaccurate perceptions
of small towns. Not all of them will be happiest working in a large city
… even if they don't immediately realize that. Small papers can sell
not only their sense of community, but also the freedom, the broad experience
and the responsibility that come with being a big fish in a small pond.
"I learned more in small newsrooms than I ever learned at a metro,"
Jennings said.
Brown agreed, but added that smaller newspapers must overcome a perception
that they are news factories rather than learning environments. In a seeker's
market, young journalists will shun newspapers where training and mentoring
are not visible.
Then there's money. Good newspapers once could get away with paying fast-food
wages to quality recruits. No more.
"If there was any industry in our communities that paid people as poorly
and expected as much out of them, we would be reporting about it,"
Jennings said.
A decent wage could be considered a realistic expectation. Others are not.
Jennings told of a new sports hire at the Lexington Herald-Leader who immediately
wanted to become the University of Kentucky basketball columnist.
"People want the best jobs, Day One," he said. "They see
their counterparts jumping from school to big metros … because the
pool is drying up."
Blame that on the combination of rapid job growth and a shrinking labor
pool. The low birth rate from the mid 1960s to the late 1970s translates
today into a shortage of twentysomethings.
Add the "I want it all right now" attitude and you get what may
be the most transient workforce in U.S. history. For an already carpet-bagging
profession like journalism, that's a problem.
"There are people who, on the day they arrive, start to plot and plan
their exit strategies," Jennings said. "How would you like to
be the mayor who, every 18 months, has to break in a new city hall reporter?"
There's a flip side. Those who don't necessarily want everything right now
may not know what they want at all. Noting that Reader Inc.'s average students
are in their 30s and still sorting out what they want to do with their careers,
Brown said, "I hope you can understand what it's like at age 18. A
very high proportion of the journalism students sitting in front of us don't
necessarily know what they want to do."
And the news business can be a tough sell. Increasing numbers of students
today are turned off by both politics and journalism, Brown said, and are
inclined to see the two institutions off in their own world, fascinated
by each other.
"They don't see a lot in the media that is relevant to them,"
he said. "We've got to make them see the relevance, the responsibility
of journalism in a democracy."
Given that challenge for educators, news organizations sometimes have unrealistic
expectations of what J schools can produce.
"There is no way contemporary American liberal education can prepare
someone for life," Brown said. "This is just the beginning."