A few weeks ago, I was in a Facebook group centered around business opportunities for African Americans. We got into a discussion about careers, and one young woman said she hoped to get into freelance writing. As a 20-year veteran of the media business, I decided to offer my sagacious advice. I told her the business was in awful shape and she should look for another career. The young woman was quite upset. I told her it was better she realize this now, before she mortgaged her future only to realize, she had trained for a career that doesn’t exist anymore.
Maybe I was harsh, but I think the young woman was better off knowing the ugly reality for freelance writers and journalists in general. The industry is either dead or on it’s last legs. Journalism, like the music industry, has been devoured by the monster called the Internet. It’s simply economics. Why buy a product that you can get for free? The biggest mistake the journalism industry ever made was giving their product away for free. I remember in the early days of the Internet, around 1994, when this was happening. At the time, I felt it was a troubling development but I was a lowly reporter, so I was in no position to speak up against this. Now some publications are trying to charge subscriptions fees, but that’s like closing the barn door after the horse has bolted. People are used to getting news for free.
I am a big fan of journalism, but I can’t remember the last time I bought a newspaper. When I see newspapers on stands, they look anachronistic, like telephone booths. Who’s still using them? I still try to buy magazines, because I want to support the writers and the publications.
As a journalist, I realize the work that goes into crafting a well-written and sourced story. That is a craft and needs to be rewarded. Sure, there are a billion and one bloggers out there doing it for free, but what kind of work do they produce? Who is checking their work? Who is editing their copy? With bloggers and other people working for free, you get what you pay for. The sad thing is that in today’s market, there is a plethora of free material, either from bloggers or press releases written by public relations professionals, who are often ex journalists.
But press releases are not journalism. I have written from both sides of the fence so I know. A news story is supposed to be objective, and the quotes are directly from the people being interviewed. In a press release, the quotes are often made up out of thin air by the writer. They only need to be okayed by the person quoted. Also a press release is polished and rewritten until the person who is quoted comes off looking their best. That’s not journalism, it’s actually more like advertising.
If editors, who are often hungry for copy to fill their publications, are relying on this, they are actually cheating their readers. Readers buy publications because they think what they’re reading is the truth. If you’re reading stories, which are reworked press releases, that’s not the 100 percent truth. Actually, it’s about 75 percent true, sometimes even less than that.
Editors are in a tough position too. Most of them are facing shrinking staffs and essentially being asked to do the same job, with fewer resources. Some of them have gotten so used to getting free material, they get offended when you demand payment. After all what could be worse than a writer asking to be paid?
Publishers are going to unique lengths to either drive down wages or get writers who work for free. A few years ago, a California publisher hired a writer in India to cover his local city council meeting. The writer did it by watching a live feed of the meeting online. Even more disturbing is a recent story in The Huffington Post, which reports the Associated Press and The Los Angeles Times are using computer programs to write stories. Apparently, the stories written by robot journalists had fewer mistakes than stories written by humans.
The shrinking number of news outlets has also affected the public relations field, which is an industry many journalists escape to. Competition for jobs is fierce and it’s tougher for PR practitioners to get their clients in the media, which has fewer outlets. Many PR practitioners have taken to creating their own publications, which run material about their clients. This creates a gray area. If a publication is run by a PR agency, they are not going to run objective stories about their clients. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence recently attempted to create a state-run news agency which would put out stories written by his communication staff. He shelved the idea after it was met with criticism from both sides of the aisle.
Society suffers in general when there are not enough real, paid journalists doing their job. Take the case of the Los Angeles suburb of Bell. Bell hit the headlines, a few years ago, when it was discovered that the city manager and members of the city council were on huge salaries. Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo was found to be making about $800,000, more than the president of the United States! After the scandal was discovered, there were several media stories by the Los Angeles Times and local TV stations.
How did this happen, you ask? Probably because there was no reporter covering the Bell city council meetings. The Los Angeles Times has reduced its staff and doesn’t cover backwaters like Bell. There is also no local paper writing about these issues. So the city council was able to carry on meetings, where they awarded themselves inflated salaries with no watchdog. The media covered the story only after it became a scandal, but by then it was too late. Rizzo went to jail, but he resigned before he could be terminated, so his $600,000 annual pension remains in tact.
I realize there is still a need for journalists, I just don’t know who is going to do it. I still see ads for journalism professors, but I wonder who and what they are teaching? If I met a young person who was majoring in journalism, I would still tell them to think of another career. Journalism is no longer an industry, it’s a hobby.
Journalism isn't dead. When major disruptions impact industries, the old models break faster than the new models emerge to replace them. Journalism will be different.