Fuck Being A Journalist…And Other Revelations About Journalism
From 9th grade on I planned to major in Journalism in college–broadcast journalism to be exact. Where I’m from, being on a local TV channel and reading the news is big shit! I thought I’d be perfect for a job like that, I could write and speak well, I have a great voice, and the camera loves me like a sister.
I show up freshman year of college, declare my major as Journalism, Public Relations and Advertising with my concentration being broadcast journalism. By the 3rd class I realized a few things.
1. I don’t give a damn about going out to get a story.
2. I really just wanted to be on TV.
3. I prefer giving my opinion to just presenting facts (even if I order them in a leading manner).
4. “Sacrificing” and “paying dues in a small market” really wasn’t “my thing.”
5. I didn’t like or fit in with the other JPRA majors.
I had decided early on that political science would be my minor. But I noticed that in those classes I felt more at home. Debating back and forth with arrogant white male preps who wore suits and carried briefcases and laptops to class was more my speed than discussing ad implications with a bunch of over serious introverts. I’m generalizing here, but this was the culture at my alma mater.
I switched my major to Political Science, changed my minor to Spanish, and voila…entered a career in politics.
I thought about my path to speechwriting, lobbying, and public affairs when I saw the video below which pretty much summed up many of the conversations communications professors at Temple had with JPRA students.
It always felt like they were trying to talk you out of a career in journalism..trying to save you from a lifetime of thankless hard work and heart ache by imploring you to understand how difficult it is to make it as a journalist. They would beg that you understand in advance that journalism is a lot different from the inside than it looks on the outside. Those sorts of hello-reality conversations were like gang initiations. ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH TO SURVIVE IN JOURNALISM?
I definitely wasn’t. Also, I didn’t want to.
Obviously, this kind of of thing happens across fields but I think journalism has a special set of trials and real journalists are wary of outsiders in a way that people in other fields aren’t. I think this dynamic is what inspired, and eventually sunk the now infamous Journolist site. Journolist was started as a place where journalists could speak freely among friends. But the site’s creator forgot one key thing:
Journalists don’t have friends.
Journalists have sources, acquaintances, contacts, inspirations, muses, loved ones, colleagues and networks. Friends? Meh.
Too many stories in the world to be making friends all willy nilly. And too many people with eyes on journalists to speak freely.
Journalists are craft protective and have every right to be skeptical. Every bozo with a pen or computer thinks they’re a writer these days.The real journalists have to fight for space with the bloggers, hacks, and the generally inept and-your-expertise-is-what-exactly people who don’t know a damn thing about anything but writing a headline-grabbing piece of shit that gets clicks.
Now that news has deteriorated almost completely to clicks and views, what’s a real journalist to do? I have no idea. But I sympathize tremendously.
Posted in Featured, Writing @ 4:27am 
Journalism
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The hustle is real, but I can’t stay away! I fell into web reporting after writing for tv news. My strategy is pretty much keeping myself as loosely defined as possible…less ‘journalist’ and more ‘writer’ if that makes sense.
JPRA!!!!!!!!! I think they changed the name when I entered Temple to BTMM.
haha That’s right Dash they did! Right as I was switching they were under review in terms of accreditation because their requirements were extensive and confusing. I had forgotten about that. I think when they changed to BTMM and I had to redeclare is when I chose not to. Oh memories!
Nice reflective piece. Question, however, must one major in Journalism to be considered a “real journalist” by you? Do you not consider bloggers as “real journalists”?
I define a journalist as someone who reports original stories using sources they pursue and write with an emphasis on fact rather than opinion. Some bloggers are definitely journalists but they are VERY few and far between. But certainly there are bloggers who break or find and discover stories.
Most bloggers are more similar to columnists i.e. take what journalists report and interpret those facts to mean one thing or another.
Stark, frank thoughts. Some I completely understand, most I had before I made the (backwards) jump into hard news. Certainly plenty here to make me come back to read more.
You have to REALLY want it to be a journalist and if you don’t go to NYC if sucks even worse; the pay is absolutely abysmal. I live in Chicago and $50K is like, GREAT here for local media. I only do it because I want to write novels. But after 10 years I’m also bailing on this as a full time gig unless something just absolutely awesoem comes along
I’m actually considering going the same route you did, for the same reason. I’m not a big fan of the neutrality of journalism, I much prefer editorials and arguments. I’m in my first semester of Journalism school (well, I’m a sophomore, but I started out at a community college) but I don’t think changing to Political Science will cause me a lot of problems. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who has done this.
Though I’m probably going to stick with a Journalism minor along with the political science major.