Journalism School Now??

I know people do crazy things in a recession, but taking out a student loan for a degree that won’t give an edge in a wheezing industry actually makes getting
an MBA look smart.

Exactly.

Forbes reported that enrollment at journalism schools is soaring. Huh? Media jobs are hard enough for undergrads to get, so why they hell are you going to pay $40,000+ a year, incurring millions of dollars in debt to become poor? And these kids aren't going to want to be working for a PR or marketing agency after a stint at J-school.

Forbes also lists that there will be a tiny increase for entry-level reporters and news anchors by 2016, and positions for experienced writers and editors will grow by 10%, which I find hard to believe, even if they are for trade publications, freelancers and digital media. Maybe it's just the cost-cutting going on now, or the fact that there's an excess of writers and editors without a large enough, supportable structure in place.

The Forbes piece, much to my disappointment, doesn't really go into the detail I'd have liked. I've read many times before that the only benefit to J-school is the connections, but nowadays I feel that's crap--follow enough people on Twitter, read enough blogs, put real effort into this kind of networking (and create your own stuff), and you too, can make it. Julia Allison is the master at it. I admire many New York writers--there's no reason I can't meet some of them someday, I reason; I don't live far, I'm familiar with their work, I just need to be at the right place at the right time.

I'm sure J-school does have a purpose, real training for real journalism, and the kinds of opportunities that aren't available for those cub reporters that can no longer be because every day a new publication bites the dust. They're an in.

This reminds me of a teleseminar I attended recently at work, where one of the editors of Good Housekeeping (or similar magazine) had a MA in journalism from a top-notch school. And you're working here?, I thought. What a waste. And then I felt bad--what if she couldn't get anything better? But writing fluff copy for midwestern moms pays a living.

Catch-up Time

Over the next few days, I plan to post on articles and topics that I wanted to call out from the rest of the year, but for one thing or another--lack of time, usually--just never got around to. Some of them were topics I wanted to expand on and the entries just never left the ground (really, the notebook). Most of them will be from the recent months and weeks, as they are fresher in my memory. Here goes:

New York Magazine is just fantastic. They always have really interesting articles featuring really interesting trivia, often about New York. Case in point: One out of every apartment in Manhattan is occupied by only one person; the number is one in three when you add in all the other boroughs. Jennifer Senior's December 1st cover story on loneliness doesn't offer much new insights other than those statistics, but reinforces a lot of existing theories on the nature of community (note: I did a lot of research in college on this topic, especially dealing with community vis a vis the internet, so it wasn't new to me). What I especially loved was that the article reaffirmed a lot of my anecdotal evidence regarding single life:

[Eric] Klineberg, the NYU professor who is writing about living alone, points out that single people are partly responsible for the vibrancy of New York’s public life: “We know form marketing surveys that single people go out more than couples,” he notes. “They’re more likely to go to restaurants, to bars, and to clubs. A lot of people who live alone say it’s very hard to enter their apartments and stare at the walls when there’s so much going on outside.”

Conversely, married people—women especially—have smaller friendship-based social networks than they did as single people, according to [sociologist] Claude Fischer.

The article goes on to say that that the reason why many single people feel lonely is when they are surrounded by other couples--and that family neighborhoods in particular are the places that have the highest rates of social isolation, especially among the elderly. Asynchronous environments breed loneliness; that's why it's better for one's livelihood if they aren't exclusively around others who are in a different stage of life.

Weak ties (acquaintences and people you are one or two degrees separated), the internet, and of course, New York City (and cities in general) get quite the boost here. But that's fine; the overarching idea is that people--connection--are what matters, and that getting out of the house and interacting with others will boost your mood. The internet bridges the public and the private, and often facilitates this.

I look forward to David Carr's column every week, and he rarely disappoints. While he has written many that I could talk about endlessly, his recent entry on how the media essentially created Black Friday opened my eyes to the symbiotic relationship between advertising and the media--something I all too often overlook.

I orginally had not planned to read the Times Magazine's cover story on John McCain the week before the election, citing time constraints and not much interest, but it turned out to be way better than their Obama cover the previous week. "The Making (and Remaking) of John McCain" ended up showing how important public relations and message-managing is--and how the McCain camp's infighting and lack of direction killed their campaign. The death knell is spelled out:

The campaign was in the throes of an identity crisis by June 24, when a number of senior strategists gathered at 9:30 a.m. in a conference room of McCain’s campaign headquarters in Arlington. As one participant said later, the meeting was convened “because we still couldn’t answer the question, ‘Why elect John McCain?’ ” Considering that the election was less than five months away, this was not a good sign.

If the people running John McCain's campaign cannot answer that question, then he is doomed.

Speaking of that long-ago election, remember that Wall Street Journal story on Obama's thinness? Apparently the reporter took some of her quotes from a Yahoo message board. Ouch. Certainly not the only time this year that a reporter got into trouble for going to dubious online outlets for sources.

I wrote a lot about the Journal's coverage of the election, especially how voters decide on a candidate. I had wanted to add another entry to that list, on their September 4th article, "The Biology of Ideology". It's the old nature vs. nurture argument: are even voting patterns predetermined? That's one heck of a scary idea. I was very skeptical of this idea and hated the article back when I first read it. I took a more pragmatic approach, of convince us why you're worthy. Tom Friedman summed it up five days later:

If you as a politician connect with voters on a gut level, they will follow you anywhere and not fret about the details. If you don’t connect with them on a gut level, you can’t show them enough details.

I wondered why it was ok for newspapers to openly assume Obama was going to win the presidency, as many non-opinion pieces used "when", instead of "if", in referring to anything after the election. Guys, that's why people say the media is in the tank for the dude. Lay off. Turned out Clark Hoyt at the Times agreed with me.

I felt though--and vaguely remember coming across something along these lines--that people tend to vote in step with the environment they find themselves in. In my social life, my friends and I (generally) read the same media, or at least the same types, have similar opinions, and come from similar backgrounds, so of course we tend to vote similarly. This is true all over; I wondered how hard it would be to separate from the pack.

Travel Observations: Stop Dominating the World, America

I'm vacationing in Europe right now, traveling from the Czech Republic to Vienna to Bratislava to Budapest. One of my cultural observations--besides little things like finding that there seem to be no gyms in Prague--is just how overwhelming American media and culture is. Go into a local bookstore in a small tourist town in the south of the Czech Republic, and see bestsellers from Sophie Kinsella and Jodi Picoult, Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, Josua Ferris' And Then We Came to the End, and a really awesome cover for Freakonomics that featured hip-hop kids, pimps and just all-around flashy people. The American cover is orange. If Americans are the idiots and the Czechs the big readers (according to a book I saw on Czechs for foreigners), then how come they get the dumb-downed, misleading cover?

Prominent books are usually by Americans or Brits, including lots of classics by Austen and Hemingway, followed by big names like Stephen King. Czech authors--unless they are Milan Kundera or Kafka--are in the back. But I think it's really awesome that the Czech's first president, Vaclav Havel, is not only a prominent statesman and was active in the Velvet Revolution, helping to overthrow communism, but is also a playwright and author, and is just as well known for his writings as his political contributions. I can't imagine any writer actually getting the respect and the backing to be a full-fledged working politician in the states.

But back to the media. As soon as I landed in the Prague airport, I heard James Blunt in a novelty shop. In fact, every radio station overheard in buses, restaurants, and shops has played American music. Oh, maybe one unfamiliar song might have been some Eurotrash hit, but Rihanna seems just as popular here as she does in North America (and I haven't even heard Umbrella yet). Even lite-fm Canadian staples like Bryan Adams gets some play. In Cesky Krumlov, where I am now, I heard Britney Spears' "Pieces of Me" and Cher's "Strong Enough", mediocre hits for both artists. Middle aged people in the Czech Republic look the same as they do in the states, as does old people. Preteen girls show off too much skin for my taste, wearing lower-cut shirts than even American girls dare to. Maybe the American media should stop their hand-wringing--other countries are much worse.

What's different, but only as an afterthought, is that the clothes aren't flashy or filled with labels. Girls wear less makeup. Occasionally you see some unmistakable Europeans, since they have real fringe-y, close-cropped bangs which are incredibly unflattering on everyone, funky mullets or other odd, stringy hairstyles. Their is much less talk or visual cues about dieting and nutrition. There's Coca-Cola light, not diet, and that's the only light flavor, although there are fruit juices and fruit sodas galore. Labels are in several different European languages, usually Czech, Hungarian, French, and various Slavic ones.

"Look at the labels," my friend instructed me to do in a clothing boutique. I pulled out a button-down: "H&M. Made in Indonesia".

We keep hearing how we're living in an age of globalization, how the world is flat. If anything, Americans are the last to know this, because we dominate the conversation. How does it feel to grow up listening to music that is written, produced, and performed by artists from across the world, meant specifically for those listeners, in their language, espousing their values? How does it feel to see their presidential election drama mentioned on the front page of the paper, with editorials from their papers inserted into yours, even if only for the tourists and the expats' sake? How does it feel to know that the majority of the movies and television you watch come from a smog-filled city thousands of miles away, and are dubbed for your viewing pleasure?

I cannot help but think that I would feel resentful that my country, and my people, get none of the attention. We hear all the time of the American dream, how each little Bobby and Susie wants to grow up to be a baseball star, a Hollywood actress. But what about all the non-American Bobbys and Susies? They are informed by the same Indiana Jones, the same Carrie Bradshaw. How come they don't get their chance to shine in the sun? Even in their own country it seems that they either lack the ambition or the means to become famous, and that's just not fair.

Is it okay to be unsure?

Everyone in my family plans to vote in the presidential primaries Tuesday.

None of us is sure who we’re going to vote for.

Polls and studies have indicated that many people make up their mind the day of, at the voting booth. Some people even make up their mind a day or two before.

My weekend–-and my Monday and probably my Tuesday–-will be made up of studying the candidates and finalizing my vote.

Is it ok to vote for someone even if you’re not sure?

I think of it like studying for an exam. You study and study and study, and worry and worry and worry, but finally you realize that you aren’t making any breakthroughs and you might as well just say fuck it and take a break. You’ve read and prepared and outlined to the max, and if you don’t know it now, then you never will. It’s the same for prepping for a speech or a paper: You know the deadline, and extending it just makes the process harder, so you just have to do it. I’m going to take what I know and believe and try to figure out a rationale why I’m voting for a candidate. The problem is that I like many of those running, and many of their positions are similar. I wonder about electability, dynasties, the things that influence me...I read an article the other day about Obama and his chances in the midwest, and a lot of those interviewed made reference to him being a Muslim, and how that worried them. That’s stupid, I thought, they're uninformed, it’s just small-town mindedness and pack mentality. Then I realized that I can easily fall into the same trap, but with opposite reasoning: Basically all my friends are huge Obama supporters, for his vision, youth, and passion, what he represents. Since I live in a different area of the country, one "more liberal", we reject all the nonsense about Obama's religious background. In the same vein, no one I know will vote for Huckabee because he’s an evangelist. We don’t do evangelism here. He’s "the best-liked candidate among people who will never vote for him." My brother, the great follower of politics that he is, dislikes all Republicans except Ron Paul, even though I pointed out to him that some of his beliefs align more closely with Republicans.

I am influenced by all these things, from reading Times editorials every day to listening to my friends expel the virtues of Obama and demonizing Hillary to falling under Andrew Sullivan’s spell in the Atlantic. I wonder at all the things I miss, all the things the media miss. I’ll never feel absolutely informed, and that pretty much goes for any subject. But all I can do is try, and work to constantly separate the minutia from the opinion from the facts to form my own opinion. I cannot not be influenced, from the articles I read to the arguments they give.

So if I'm so ambivalent, why am I even voting at all?

I am voting because I feel this primary is important, and I want to be a part of it, I want to say that I participated in something important and life-changing. If the U.S. is indeed at a crossroads, then I want to say that I was there, I remember, that I took part. My little vote is just one, but it’s something, and being engaged with the world is important to me.

I don’t care about endorsements. I dislike the Kennedys, and so the comparisons of Obama to President Kennedy makes me less likely to vote for him, not more. I pay attention to why newspapers endorse candidates–-for me, that makes a bigger impact than some senator saying "vote for this guy". This might seem irrational at first, as senators, congresspeople and other politicians have worked with the candidates and so have an idea of how they operate, but I never hear specifics from them, nothing concrete, which is what I want to hear--examples, the why and the how. Editorials and commentary from columnists have space to explain, to provide some facts and data.

I'm off to go study. I only have a little time left.

Thank you for being such a good example, Heath Ledger

I was at work when the department head came in and told us that Heath Ledger was dead. He had came to deliver other business too, but for two minutes that didn’t matter. He told four twentysomething girls, all familiar with his work. We gasped. We thought. As we were filled in on the story, we tried to fill in details, explanations. Or at least I did: “He recently broke up with Michelle Williams. They have a two year-old daughter. Maybe that had something to do with it.”

I used to think that when people said they wanted to die when a relationship was over they were morons, weak, silly people. Now, though, I get it, which was why when a friend mentioned to me yesterday, also referring to Owen Wilson allegedly attempting suicide because his relationship with Kate Hudson was over, that both men were weak, I didn’t agree with her. Heartbreak’s a bitch.

However, a few minutes after saying the above comment referring to Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams’ relationship (and getting no responses except silence) I mentioned that I wouldn’t be surprised if Britney Spears were to off herself soon. And I did use the term “off herself”. “She’s heading down that road…it’s only a matter of time before she’s dead…she’ll just do something stupid that she won’t realize she has done and then forget it…” I rambled on my point as no one responded again.

I’m practically waiting for that piece of news, and I’m sure I’m not alone. The Associated Press has run into a bit of controversy for thinking like me: Debate rages over prewritten obituaries for young, living stars. (Of course the AP has to comment on their own story and use a boring headline.) Obituaries are traditionally written in advance for distinguished people of a certain age; here, 70 is given as a starting point. Obituary writers fill their days doing the research necessary for these profiles. If you’ve ever wondered how a 5,000 word piece on Ronald Reagan is able to go hours after his death broke, that’s why. All they do is change a few words in the first paragraph or two and are ready to go.

Go ahead. I think creating an obit for Britney would be kind of fun, just because depending upon the outlet the style would change. Struggling to turn the caricature of the events of her life into a serious story requires some skill, and everyone else will be fighting to see how comical and over-the-top they can make that news. I hope Britney gets the help she needs so I don’t have to witness any more Britney-fueled media mania. I did like Britney once, back in 1999 with light brown hair, a cute pink top and adorable glasses. She seemed normal and intelligent. She may not gain any of that back, but she should be able to have a life where she can calm down and try to heal.

(By the way, listing Courtney Love as a celebrity who has gotten her act together is both inaccurate and laughable. )