Forget about Internet competition, the alleged advertising crash, declining news program ratings and newsroom cutbacks. There’s only one problem facing the journalism industry in 2011.
And that’s… attitude.
Too many people in our industry, from publishers to cub reporters, are wallowing in a culture of failure, bringing a fatalistic attitude to their jobs, one that has been and will continue to become self-fulfilling.
Journalists’ bad attitude toward their business manifests as whiny entitlement: People should communicate online under our rules; Readers should pay more for our reporting; Online publishers (in this case, Julian Assange) should play nice to the powerful like we do, too.
Winners make money and differences in peoples’ lives. Losers make excuses. Which do you want to be?
Sure, you can find (at least temporary) comfort in the familiar. Keep working on traditional, quote-three-sources-including-one-elected-official, inverted pyramid, newspaper-style stories. Maybe add a part-time blog on the side, to feel “hip” and score some points with your boss. If you get laid off (or fear you might be), send clips and resumes to other newsrooms. If that doesn’t elicit a job offer, look for a j-school faculty gig. Keep attending the same industry conferences, networking with other newsroom journalists, to commiserate about how tomorrow just doesn’t look or feel like the good old days.
People who follow this path are simply trying to run out the clock on their career: trying to make it to retirement before they’re forced to make any substantial change in how they work or what they do.
Do you really think you can make it? Even if you do, is that really how you want to live?
You don’t have to live in a culture of failure. You can leave the journalism industry that pines for the past to join a journalism industry that engages the market as it exists today – one where publications are building income, and influence, along the way.
You won’t be the first journalist to do this. That means that others are available to help show you the way. But you’ll need to start listening to these new voices, and tune out the pessimism, frustration and even scolding you might hear from the colleagues you leave behind.
So here is where I make my pitch to you: Come apply for our 2011 KDMC News Entrepreneur Boot Camp. It’s an intense experience that will help you develop the skills you need to succeed in this new journalism industry. It will help you see that our industry is not one that’s failing, but one that’s being failed by ignorant management and inflexible institutions.
You don’t need to be their victim. You can be the leader of new journalism publication, one that makes a positive difference in its community while providing you will the livelihood you need.
We won’t help you do this by trotting out the same speakers and voices that you’ve been hearing at journalism industry conventions for years. We’ll be at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, hearing from business school faculty – people who have built multi-million dollar businesses with less money up front than you spent on dinner last night.
The journalists you hear at this camp will include boot camp alumni, individuals who’ve taken what they learned at the camp and built functioning publications that are supporting themselves (and, in some cases, multiple employees). This boot camp isn’t about learning the theory of entrepreneurship – it’s an online and in-person blueprint for how to do this yourself.
And it’s free. We’ll even help cover part of the cost of getting you to LA in May for the in-person week that wraps up the camp.
I’ve been publishing my own websites since 1996. I’ve been working full-time for myself for nearly three years. And I’ve never had more fun in the journalism business than I’m having now. My income went up in 2010, not down. I am so thankful to have found a way out of the culture of failure that imprisons so many others in the news business. I just want to help other journalists find their way out, as well.
That’s why I’ve worked so hard on developing this boot camp, and why I hope that you will take the time and make the commitment to apply for it. Here’s the link. The deadline is Friday, January 14, 2011.
Got questions? Hit the comment button below. We can’t wait to see you at the camp.
About Robert Niles
I am a veteran journalist who did hard news for decades and I’m now a blogger and I agree 100% with this assessment. Too many people I know and respect are spending time wringing their hands and moaning instead of just jumping in and moving forward
Oh, I get it! It’s irony — an article complaining about journalists complaining. At first I just thought it was another one of those self-righteous tracts written by someone who didn’t have a clue about what’s really happening to people out there but wants you to come to their class promising salvation.
I absolutely agree with these statements. Even when I was in jschool, the attitude toward web journalism was ignorant. The journalism department made no investment in this curriculum, then wondered why their graduates were having such a hard time finding employment. They merely chalked it up to a bad economy and blamed the web for robbing the franchise media of ad revenue and audience. I knew then that change was taking place. It was obvious! So I took an independent study credit and created my own web journalism curriculum. It worked out great for me!
This is a load of crap. Do you have any idea what an online journalist makes? Go compare salaries between the editor and reporters at Huffington Post or Politico with the New York Times and the Washington Post, both based in the same cities of NYC and DC. You can get laid off from your gig at the LAT, but if you think blogging for Perez Hilton is going to pay your bills and health insurance and provide you with any sort of growth prospects other than hopping from one gig to another over the course of your fledgling new journalism career, youre sadly mistaken.
Spot on, Robert. I’m Tom Abate and I’ve been doing journalism for 20 plus years. I am astonished at the sourpuss factor in journo culture. We need skeptical, questioning minds but we have grown cynical in a way that freezes change. Over the last couple of years, I have struggled with depression brought on in part by the horrible layoffs around me. My recovery has involved forcing myself into a more positive mindset. That has helped me look at my job in a new way — part of which is to help create new products that out ad guys can sell.
I think that these are very valid comments. There is also the view from an overwhelming percentage of the public that mainstream journalists are simply puppets of the corporations and politicians and treat any news that comes from them as biased or bought. There has been a huge rise in trust when it comes to seemingly independent online journalists who are perceived to be more objective in their reporting. Whether you agree with these views or not, the digital frontier is becoming the main source of opportunity for anyone wanting to work in journalism. My sincere hope is that those who follow these opportunities will use the digiscape to present truly worthwhile journalism that corporate sponsored newsrooms might not always allow.
I worked at small daily newspapers for more than three decades. My company’s head was (and is) an active promoter of many of the attitudes expressed in the article. After the 2008 newspaper meltdown I took a hard look at where I saw small-town journalism heading in a corporate environment — no raises, more cuts in staff and page size, news page design outsourcing … and the fear that some guy with a local news website could come along and make my life in print media a friggin’ nightmare with a long time to go until retirement. Fortunately, I had a little money saved and the confidence to walk away — and be the one creating the nightmare for my former colleagues, instead of the one living it. My local website is launched and is earning enough to support my humble lifestyle. If you are in your 40s-50s, well connected or native to your community, have a newsman’s ability and the courage to go out and sell advertising … do it. Do it now before someone else in your town does it. Do it now while you have a window of opportunity to develop your site as your flat-footed newspaper bosses ponder how to provide people with news that you can give them for free.
Nice post,I’m Bookmarking it.There is also the view from an overwhelming percentage of the public that mainstream journalists are simply puppets of the corporations and politicians and treat any news that comes from them as biased or bought. There has been a huge rise in trust when it comes to seemingly independent online journalists who are perceived to be more objective in their reporting. Whether you agree with these views or not, the digital frontier is becoming the main source of opportunity for anyone wanting to work in journalism.