Week Five: Cobblers, Chimney Sweeps, and Journalists

What do cobblers, chimney sweeps, and journalists have in common? Apparently they’re antiquated professions. I’m looking into signing a lease on an apartment back in Seattle and that came with a fat dose of reality: I need to find a way to afford rent (read: I need to find a real person job) and I need to do it in five weeks.

I’ve had a blast working here this summer. I’ve loved taking motorcycle taxis to press conferences at the Ritz Carlton and getting to write about whatever interests me.  It’s the dream. The only problem is that comes with an unpaid-intern salary. That won’t cut in in a city where the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is over $2,000. 

I spent last Saturday applying for jobs at my pseudo office, a Dutch café in my neighborhood with insanely good coffee. I’ve been trolling LinkedIn and Indeed.com for the last few months. I've found that the few publications that are hiring are either looking for Mid-Senior Level editors or volunteer interns.  I’ve taken to applying for PR and Marketing jobs seeking “good storytellers” and “strong writing skills.”

Snapchats from the job application process

After my job application marathon, I came home and watched Spotlight. Its a movie about the Boston Globe journalists who exposed Catholic priests sexually harassing kids across Boston and around the world in 2001. Fifteen years later, I’d guess most news outlets don’t have resources to support an investigative reporting team like that one. The journalists on that team got there starts at small, local newspapers and worked their way up. Those gates into the profession don't really exist anymore.  Online media has taken their place, and like so many other industries, offers what once used to financially support the profession for free.

Modern inventions replaced chimney sweeps, and I guess there are still cobblers out there but you don’t hear much about them. Maybe chimney sweeps thought this when they were losing their jobs to machines, but I can’t think of a mechanism that could take the place of journalism.

Empty copy-editors desks in the newsroom

Newspapers are dying, but news isn’t; there’s still a huge demand for news, people just don’t want to buy it. People use their cousin’s-friend’s-brother’s-ex-wife’s subscription to The Economist, or stop reading after The New York Times’ ten free articles. Advertising dollars can support online news to a point, but digital advertising doesn’t pay the same way a full page add in the Sunday paper would. Other media turn to company sponsorships and product placement, but any PR textbook will tell you the difference between advertising and news is that advertising is paid and news is earned. Advertorials can be great, but they can be dangerous when presented as hard facts and not sponsored content. Just think about a world where you could buy the cover of the New York Times.

I wish I had a solution. I spent my classes in the business school, classes I took as a backup in case journalism didn't workout, thinking about how we could support news in our time. There definitely are some millennial publications like Buzzfeed and The Skimm who seem to have it figured out. I think means there is a way into journalism for my generation, its just not a clear path, and I could really use some clarity right about now. I’ll leave you with a photo of this somewhat-tacky-but-relevant Steve Jobs quote on the menu at the café I’m working at, in hopes I'll figure it out.