Why are you angry today?
Tell us what’s making you upset at your journalism job.
Anonymity guaranteed. One rule: no real names.
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10,095 Responses to “Why are you angry today?”
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February 26th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Does anyone have a figure for how many of us Journalists have left the profession through buyout or layoff? Paper cuts would paint a number around 20,500 since 2007 and growing. That might not include BO but in some cases it does which is why I ask the question.
I would just like to take a break from the bitch sessions and see if someone has other numbers.
Sincere hope and good wishes for all those still in the business. Carry on so we all have a future.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Let’s all raise a glass on Friday, Feb. 27 to remember the Rocky Mountain News and its courageous staff.
I don’t know what happened there, but if it’s anything like my newspaper, management completely gave up and led the paper to its demise. I’m so tired of newspaper execs standing around waiting for someone else to save the industry.
February 26th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
I believe that we are all angry with ourselves. We chose to pursue the path into the dreaded industry that as while ‘we didn’t know any better’ in the early days. We loath this industry now as we did then. Then we put our trust into it… it carried us into comfort.
Now is the opportunity to pursue our real passion. I know a talented young photographer who took a buy-out after being at the LA Times for a year. He bought new gear and a ticket to India. He is armed with a couple of 5D Mark II’s and a website, and even has a side-kick writer (who abandoned her staff position at a national newspaper and company that is on the verge of bankruptcy).
He has seized the opportunity to follow his dreams, yet brings himself to the forefront of our ‘industry’ that he has ultimately separated himself from… but they still pay for his work, somehow. His clients are different now; higher on the news-chain.
Masters of journalism (in all its mediums and forms) have dabbled in newspapers, and exited, then they became masters. But they ultimately separated themselves.
So thank you, Dreaded Industry, for setting me free from your Dreaded allure of comfort before I could become comfortable.
See you all on the other side of this thing.
February 26th, 2009 at 6:05 pm
#8134 from his pedastal forgot to tell us how he’s doing in his new field.
February 26th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
I’m angry because the people who own the weekly tabloid I work for are so god-damned cheap that they won’t pay for my reporter to accept her award at the banquet, but they’ll send their winning daily writers.
Furthermore, our salaries have been frozen and I don’t make much more than a gum-chewing drugstore condom salesgirl.
February 26th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
#8133:
Your amount of years in the business doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole.
#8130:
Get out while you still can. Change your major and do something else. Don’t end up becoming an asshole like #8133 has. Myself? I’m getting out of here just as soon as I can get my kids on an independent insurance while I go back to school.
February 26th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
All the journalists that I know who share the same enthusiasm towards subject, story, and communicating it all toke. They aren’t the ones who are guiding this ship straight into the squall.
I’m waiting for marijuana laws (in Canada) to be relaxed even more so I can jump ship into that business – there’s money there that will in turn fund my journalistic endeavours. I’m convinced that legitimizing the weed business can save the economy too!
February 26th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I keep hitting the wall.
At the end of the day, it is about who you are and if this is what you bargained for when you let go of so many things just because you wanted to write and maybe change things.
I am not regretting. I never do that. It is just sad to see so many stories fall through the gaps. It is disorienting. Yet I continue to hope that maybe someday the plight of those who still care about the profession will improve. For now, it is mostly crime and routine and those that sell.
What do you when you are faced with so many odds? You either give up or you cling to hope.
When I had moved back from United States last year where I mostly wrote on refugee issues, I was excited about being a journalist here. But journalism in India is mostly a power trip. At least in Delhi it is. Yes, you can get stuff done and you the right people. Journalists are powerful people here, second to maybe politicians. They can make or break you. And they are forever tripping on the power thing, promising you things. I am quite disgusted with all this. No, I can’t and won’t compromise and if it means that what I write will forever be tucked in the inside pages or maybe not even make it to the paper, so be it. I can’t sell my story. I won’t do it.
Today I went to Jantar Mantar’s famous protest street once again. It was full of people and there were too many new faces and too many different voices. A group of Muslims marched to condemn the Azerbaijan genocide on the occassion of the 17th anniversary of the massacre. That was a story. But there were others too.
the Tibetans had gathered to join their people in Tibet in boycotting the New Year’s celebrations. To me that was a story but of course for the higher-ups crime, petty and rotuine crime was more important. Often we forget the faces, the human misery and get entrenched in stupid news that only sells but doesn’t redeem. I wrote the story and posted it on my blog. At least it has some space there.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:36 am
I’m angry I’m not good enough for you.Or him.
And i cant be bothered trying harder,fuck that.
February 26th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Angry Journalist #8130:
You are a whiney jackass…grow up and grow a pair.
February 26th, 2009 at 7:21 am
I liked reading AJ No. 8136’s venting, especially the last line!
Good luck with that bull.
February 26th, 2009 at 4:06 am
Oh no, they’re turning on each other.
February 26th, 2009 at 2:01 am
*#&%$ is driving me up the flipping wall!
February 25th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
make funnier tee-shirts. you people are supposed to be journalists.
February 25th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
To the dummy AJ who wrote…
–The problem is large media corporations and their ownership of papers. In the days when papers were owned by people in the communities they served, they did just that — they SERVED the information needs of those communities.–
Newspapers are businesses and always have been. The reasons businesses fail is because shrinking (negative) profits. In equation form,
Failure = Costs > Revenue.
This is what we’re seeing in the newspaper business. Now, as to why: newspapers were built to be regional monopolies for advertising sales/distribution. Consequently, they could support large staffs, printing plants, costly regional distribution, etc. Successful monopolists can charge high prices for their products, and newspapers were able to charge steep fees for display ads and support bloated business practices. Honestly, how much of the overall business costs were actually focused directly upon newsgathering? My guess is much less than 50% and probably less than 20%. But the internet has steamrolled that model for advertising sales/distribution. The future of daily news is lean and mean.
Further, you’re well-articulated argument reveals an anti-capitalist, anti-market sentiment common among your comrades. Still further, the argument also admits a great deal of intellectual arrogance and ignorance. Certainly little understanding of commerce. The irony of many journalists is that they fancy themselves as sophisticates but actually have very limited formal education. The further irony is that newspapers attempt to appeal to middle-upper class audiences to attract advertisers, the very customers who actually have intellectual sophistication and market-oriented preferences. In short, your customers have long known how limited and ignorant you are but tolerated your ignorance because the regional monopolist structure of the industry. We had no choice! Only now when your business has failed (a development that’s hardly been sudden), the market has forced you to prove yourselves in other endeavors and you find the true value of your education and training. Very little.
And now for this AJ…
–I’m angry because at the age of 20, I work as both copy editor and features editor for my college newspaper. I feel tired and burnt out all the time. My passion for writing has turned into an attitude of “just get this shit done so I can finish my homework and go to bed”.–
You are 20 years old and in college. You have a staggering amount of choices for who want to be and what you want to study. And you’re intentionally taking a path that will likely lead to destitution and misery. I mean, jeez, you’re already miserable and haven’t started working yet! Presumably you’ve read some of what’s been posted on this site. Why are you wasting your time in this way when you have options and all these other posters do not? You demonstrate my earlier point about lack of intellectual sophistication among (aspiring) journalists.
I have a journalism degree and worked 10 years for big city papers. I was a damned skilled newspaper reporter. Five years ago, when I saw my paper’s circulation (and others) plummet by double digits year on year, I went back to school to focus on quantitative, business-oriented graduate degrees. You, AJ, can do just about anything in science, law, business, healthcare — but get the hell away from that student paper.
February 25th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Re: Angry Journalist #8130:Take it from a person who came out of school at the dawn of the age of mass layoffs and downsizing doing just what you do — be happy you’re doing all that, unlike the other idiots sitting beside you in class doing nothing for your campus paper, you might actually get a job.
But, if you don’t want your adult, real world life to be the newspaper like it is now, change majors.
3 rounds of company layoffs and counting and I’m happy to have worked the past 13 days straight.
February 25th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
All of our photographers were laid off. How is that going to work?
February 25th, 2009 at 10:34 am
This just in: Newspapers are a business!
Journalism by way of contrast, is an art.
If the artists are no longer bringing in the business, if there isn’t some direct connection to the artists bringing in profit for a patron who can no longer afford charity, the patron has to let them go.
BUT! In this modern age, the costs of selling your art to others have become practically non-existent. You can do your own promotion, your own marketing, your own publishing, your own sales, and have your own agents. There are numerous newsletters out there that are subscription only. The trick is that your information has to be more valuable than what people obtain for free. This usually entails either books, celebrity, additional services, pretty visuals, science, or math.
Like any other artistic profession, the purists and the vast mediocre majority tend to starve. We are in the golden age of the Citizen Journalist.
February 25th, 2009 at 9:50 am
#8134 – #8132 here – Speaking of narcissism, I just blogged again, this time about the Washington Post report on Congress texting and Twittering the whole time Obama was speaking last night!
Did you hear about that? How awful.
February 25th, 2009 at 9:22 am
MSM ♥ BHO