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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Even before TV news put such a high premium on looks, journalism was for many a young person’s game. The history of people leaving newspapers for more interesting, challenging, meaningful, age-appropriate (and lucrative) jobs where they may be able to use their skills is nothing new. I bet if you totalled the number of people who started in journalism it would be many times more times more than the total of those who ended their careers there. The negative reasons to leave journalism today may be stronger compared to the lure of other work, but I don’t think you can lay most of the blame for the exodus on the state of the trade.
The state of the trade is exactly why I left the trade.
Where would you lay the blame for the exodus?
BTW Ian, HNN had a segment I believe on Saturday night as their lead story that Apt3 was closing and even had a live interview with one of the co-owners who cited the noise complaints as the reason for closing. I guess no one there reads your blog.
Oh, and, Jack Kelly just took the new Communications Manager slot at KIUC…a breath of fresh (and clear) air over here!
I believe Burlingame left the SA for a more creative job at a museum.
Sorry for the depressing statistics! 🙂 I agree, they are depressing. But perhaps it’s an exciting time for what can be done with journalism. I hope more people continue to care about news reporting and the value of it — but I’m not confident that it will carry on in print form.
Politics, public interest, law and media all corporatized. The slide continues…
“Hottie of the Week”? WTF?
Is there a “Hunk of the Week” to answer the question of having balanced reporting?
The Star Advertiser just beat us to the story about Obama being raised by aliens on the moon. It’s be tomorrow front page.
Dam it’s hard to be a good writer when you type with your thumbs.
For some wild and crazy reason, I seriously and absolutely doubt that Playgirl has similar circulation as Playboy.
I also seriously doubt such a suggestion could happen in a London newsroom without an eruption of laughter and smirky looks.
http://www.cjr.org/feature/true_enough.php?page=all
This piece, co-published by CJR and ProPublica, you may have seen, but it is certainly relevant and sobering.
“Modern public relations was born from a train wreck.”
PR has bad genes.
(pun not intended but hard to avoid.)
I cracked a smile. heh
Funny you should mention the PBN and “Hottie of the Week” in the same column. Back in the the 1960s to 1980s, PBN use to put in a photo each week of a girl in a nice bathing suit or bikini. The photos weren’t risque or poses controversial, simply an old fashion glamor shot. I think the photographer they used was a woman.
However, when the women libbers and the UH crowd started howling about the “sexist” nature of the photos, PBN quietly discontinued the glamor photos. Funny how things work out, what goes around comes around so to speak.
The funniest thing next to the “Hottie” link on the Pulse box was one for “Beautiful: At the Pearl Ultra Lounge”. I clicked on that link and the first photo is of a local looking gal with what looks like an artificially enhanced chest pouring out of an orange dress. I want to see those old women libbers raise hell over that kind of photo in today’s world. The irony just cracks me up.
P.S. The “Hotties” are not that great looking by any ones standards. I feel sorry that someone talked them in to posting those photos, because they ain’t that hot.
So what? An exodus is nothing new. We know many music/band teachers who burned out and left public schools to enter careers in financial services, insurance, or other business fields. The emphasis is on “burned out.”
so everything is simply fine and dandy in the newspaper world? LOL. this assumption requires ignorance about the decline in both quality of product and quantity of revenue and scores of layoffs and closures in the newspaper industry that have happened in the past 10 years. somehow this connects directly to teachers? please explain this. (Ian is raising issues about “the public role of critical journalism.”)
I consider myself a dinosaur, but personally lucky.
I spent is whole working life of 46 years in the news business and being able to determine my own retirement on my schedule. I escaped the Gannett opt out of Hawaii.
I submit “burn out” is not the reason for today’s rash of exits by mid-creer journalists.
If the job was still fun, and meant something meaningful, they’d still be there. I’d bet there was no effort whatsoever by managers to retain these people. Journalism was one of those jobs that you got better at as the years went by.
From personal observation inside the newsroom over many years, the managers do make some effort to retain journalists.
(but here’s the BUT!)
strrrrrangely enough, for some crazy reason, the managers do not pick the best and brightest. Disagree? Look at the people who left the Bulletin and Advertiser during the past 10 years. The evidence is exhausting.
Experience,
It’s called union seniority my friend. Mgmt cannot pick and choose…..doesn’t work that way.
flat-out wrong.
Mgmt absolutely CAN pick and choose – the evidence: how they treat the workers and what they assign them to do. None of this is union protected. The whole point is that management will handle this carefully to avoid union thugs from getting involved.
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. It’s like believing employers cannot treat the elderly differently — everyone knows that is a total crock of garbage.
Perhaps Black Kettle was referring to the time of the Honolulu Advertiser’s demise when management didn’t have the option to pick and choose because it had to retain all the union-protected employees of the Star-Bulletin then fill in whatever slots were left with Advertiser staffers. Sorry, we’re getting off point here. (Lewis makes several cogent points).
You’re making my point. The SB management Did get to pick and choose from the Tiser staff in that situation. Did they pick Jim Dooley? Rick Daysog? Greg Wiles?
No to all three.
We are not getting off point. newspaper managers do not pick the best and brightest. Consequences include news quality and reader interest. I don’t need to repeat this again.
(1) What’s happening with the media now goes beyond the normal attrition to law schools and PR jobs.
(2) Some of the news slack is picked up by things such as Ian’s and other blogs, Civil Beat, Hawaii Reporter, etc. But still the losses are troubling.
(3) The staff at the S-A are probably embarrassed about online features like “hottie” or the titillating “Tats and Tan Lines.” But management doesn’t care. They want the clicks.
(4) The potential for burnout is greater than in Hugh Clark’s day, when you only had to worry about producing a story. Today you do that after you write an online brief, Tweet about it, and maybe blog about it.
(5) What’s the most troubling here for the community is the loss of experienced journalists. Management can choose to make better offers when reporters say they’re leaving. But they typically don’t and journalism doesn’t pay well compared to the smarts required. Generally, you can’t plug a 20-something into the same position left by a 40 year old and expect the same depth or sophistication of reporting.