A story yesterday by Pacific Business News reporter Lynn Nakagawa highlighted several recently announced departures from journalism by experienced reporters (“Honolulu reporters crossing over to PR and communications“).
Those reporters include Ron Mizutani of KHON, Minna Sugimoto of Hawaii News Now, Jodi Leong of KITV, and most recently, Gene Park of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser .
Industry observers say the recent exodus could be due to increasingly demanding work conditions.
Nakagawa goes on to cite a series of depressing statistics. At least they are depressing to me as a news junkie and believer in the public role of critical journalism.
In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that public relations managers and specialists earn a median income of $57,550 per year — a nearly 60 percent increase over the median income of news reporters.
The outlook for public relations professionals in the next decade shows expected growth of 21 percent — while general employment of print and television reporters is expected to decrease by 6 percent by 2020.
The BLS predicts that employment of news reporters will decline slightly because of consolidation of news organizations, a decrease in readership, and a decline in viewership of news television shows.
And the growth in public relations is expected to be driven by the need for organizations to have a social media presence and maintain a solid public image.
Of course, there’s more to the flight from journalism than pure economic rewards.
Take a look at the news. Today more and more is fluff and filler, easy stories (crime and accidents) rather than important ones.
And then there’s the fluff and filler.
I have to admit that I hadn’t noticed the Star-Advertiser’s “Hottie of the Week” until someone called my attention to it yesterday. It’s part of StreetPulse, featured right on the main page of the S-A’s website, along with lots of photos of club life around town. I suppose “Hottie of the Week” could be said to be in the tradition of using sex to sell tabloid newspapers.
I suppose it’s all seen as part of the effort to draw in people who wouldn’t otherwise be looking to a newspaper for anything. I can almost appreciate that strategy, if it then was accompanied by some good reporting on those club scenes, demonstrating the value of news to another audience. Unfortunately, as with the recent reporting on the closing of Apartment3, the reporting missed the basic story that this popular restaurant/lounge was being evicted for being far behind in paying rent, utilities, and other expenses.
All in all, it does leave me pretty depressed about the future of news and the news business.
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Experience,
None of what you said makes much sense, but hey, you have the right to say whatever you want. It’s a free country. Have a nice day. I wonder how many reporters at the SA are “required” to tweet and blog like Lewis states as a fact? I’d say, very very few. Also, on one hand Lewis says sites like CB are picking up the slack for news and then goes on to say the 20 something’s can’t deliver like a 40 year old. Isn’t most of the staff at CB 20 somethings??? So they are picking up the slack but it’s just not very good?
I wrote: “More to the point, I know specifically of cases at local newspapers where journalists left after they were assigned to jobs beneath their performance and abilities. Mgmt CAN pick and choose – only a legal hair-splitting manager would attempt to argue otherwise.”
Since you seem to have trouble reading my clear statements, your reading skills must be as poor as your writing skills. Did you actually work as a journalist for the local papers?
Kettle,
Read more carefully please.
My post said “some of the news slack” and “maybe blog about it.”
And yes, I’d generally take a Derrick DePledge or Kevin Dayton story over Civil Beat if the subject matter is the same. I don’t want to knock CB too much, though, because it has an enthusiastic and hungry crew that sometimes break good stories.
One question I have about the “Hottie of the Week” is whether or not they are getting paid. There is no mention of financial compensation. In fact, I am wondering if the photographer was financially compensated.
If they are not paid, then what are the models’ motivations? Vanity? (Now they can officially call themselves “models”. In fact, people increasingly go to law school not to become lawyers, which is basically a futile prospect, but so they can boast about their law degree when they socialize.)
It could be the constant need in the modern world to market oneself and pad one’s vita with ANYTHING. In fact, high school students start their own philanthropic organizations just to get that noted on an elite college application to distinguish themselves from zillions of other applicants.
But does getting into one’s college of choice help nowadays? The unemployment rate for college graduates 25 and under is supposedly 55 percent, and supposedly for elite college graduates it is even higher.
One parallel is with the way some employee positions began to be replaced with paid internships in the 1990s, by unpaid internships in the 2000s, and now finally by interns who actually pay for internships since the 2010s (increasingly, only rich kids can be interns).
But is this also becoming true in journalism? I noticed yesterday that one of the stories in Civil Beat was written not by a “reporter”, but by an “intern”.
http://www.civilbeat.com/articles/2012/06/01/15968-the-public-file-pro-rail-group-steps-up-offensive/
So not only is journalism becoming a young person’s game — same as it ever was — but the reporters are being replaced with volunteers.
Is the supposedly politically progressive local non-profit public affairs online newspaper Civil Beat leading the way in this way?
Say it ain’t so, Pierre!
Let me just add, that it is not just the acceleration of the drop out rate of young reporters from journalism that is disturbing.
A crucial transforming is the changing of the guard in management. If we take Thurston Twigg-Smith as an example, he sort of exemplifies a certain notion of the old brahman elite who might have dominated much of local newspapers in the past. They might have been conservative or even be nostalgic, but they were rooted in the community and had a sense of noblesse oblige. They also had talent. From the wiki:
Agree with him or not, he was just as impressive as the best in the contemporaneous leadership in the local Democratic Party, or in the leadership of the Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement.
They don’t make them like they used to.
But what exactly is the new blood like in the news business?
Here is the actor Robert Duvall’s portrayal of Frank Hackett (the name is telling, like a cross between “hack” and “hatchet”), a boss at the fictional network UBS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxqkrmkhrjw
The old community elites might have been conservative, but there are worse things on the right-wing than conservatives.
Perhaps the extreme right-wing is not cautious and conservative, but macho and aggressive. They don’t necessarily have an ideology. They are simply crude, bully-boys opportunists. Now, with the changing control of local newpapers, these might be the kind of people who increasingly control political endorsements, which they sell to the highest bidder. They are attracted to politicians who smoke cigars and talk tough. They complain about ‘big government’ and the ‘sissy’ welfare state, but they like big fancy government projects that plow through and destroy things. These are not the kind of people who really have a deep or nuanced understanding of public policy issues.
i am completely in agreement with skeptical on this salient point about desperate-for-attention poser-professionals:
“If they are not paid, then what are the models’ motivations? Vanity? (Now they can officially call themselves “models”. In fact, people increasingly go to law school not to become lawyers, which is basically a futile prospect, but so they can boast about their law degree when they socialize.)
“It could be the constant need in the modern world to market oneself and pad one’s vita with ANYTHING.”
Sadly, yes, this has devalued journalism (as well as the concept of gorgeous photos vs. thousands of boring posed photos).