Media and print journalism traditionally are difficult industries to enter. Most prospective employees have numerous unpaid internships under their belt. They work countless hours each day, often for very little compensation. The stereotype of the lowly intern getting coffee for the reporters in the newsroom has been true for some time. He pushes through piles of paperwork before getting a single word he’s written printed anywhere. Times are a changing however, and the media world is changing as well, bringing new obstacles that bright eyed college graduates can anticipate.
David Carr of The New York Times recently wrote an inspiring article about the changes affecting the media landscape. Any writer and editor knows the tribulations that print media is encountering. More and more magazines fold each month, revenues are down, spending is down, and each magazine seem slimmer than the previous year. Postings on ed2010.com have gone from lots of promising jobs at glossy mags, to the current array of dubious positions at new online magazines. The reason: glossy mags aren’t hiring anymore, and when you do come across the open positions, the competition is fierce.
While these changes may seem difficult at first, they are just the progression of a malleable medium. Media has always changed and grown. What Carr recognizes is that people are finding other ways to find success in this industry.
For every kid that I bump into who is wandering the media industry looking for an entrance that closed some time ago, I come across another who is a bundle of ideas, energy and technological mastery. The next wave is not just knocking on doors, but seeking to knock them down.
Somewhere down in the Flatiron, out in Brooklyn, over in Queens or up in Harlem, cabals of bright young things are watching all the disruption with more than an academic interest. Their tiny netbooks and iPhones, which serve as portals to the cloud, contain more informational firepower than entire newsrooms possessed just two decades ago. And they are ginning content from their audiences in the form of social media or finding ways of making ambient information more useful. They are jaded in the way youth requires, but have the confidence that is a gift of their age as well.
It is no longer a privilege of the few in the industry. People with something to say can do so rather easily. The question is how do they get people to listen?
Elliot, an advertising and graphic design company in Montreal, took the Facebook feature “Like This” to a whole other level by rating things outside of your friend’s network. This video goes around Montreal showing all the sites that Elliot Likes.
The challenge: Can you last a week without reading any media outlet, publication, online forum, or blog? Better yet, could you abstain from Facebook, Twitter, Matador, or whatever social networking site you frequent? If you think you can, you are one of the few. It certainly can be done, but not without some discomfort and a slight feeling of disconnect from the world. The obsession with information and consumption has penetrated our society for quite some time now. Employees have become so obsessed with information that many companies have started to block certain sites in order to ensure that employees aren’t surfing the net instead of doing their job. Even those efforts are thwarted since more and more people have a Black Berry or iPhone, which provide constant access to an endless supply of knowledge at any time of day. Most of us need information, we crave it. We want it now, and we want it short and pithy.
Last year Nicholas Carr wrote an article for The Atlantic where he asks his readers, Is Google Making Us Stupid? Suddenly a former literary major in college found himself skimming articles and avoiding novels. It became difficult to paying attention to things that once kept his interest so profoundly. I was also an English Literature major and the current owner of a bookcase full of books that I used to spend hours reading. Now between changing careers, keeping up online and with life in general, I find the task of finishing a novel rather daunting. In fact, the time when I get most of my reading done is when I travel. I personally feel that traveling allows me to put aside some responsibilities, in particular social media, and just experience, without worrying about everything else.
Claiming that the internet and Google are making consumers stupid, is a false and bold statement meant to catch the reader’s attention. I wouldn’t call someone stupid because they read five online newspapers per day and have over 1000 subscriptions in their Google Reader; however that same person probably skims through most articles in order to read more, know more. They aren’t lazy and they certainly aren’t stupid, but rather less anchored than media consumers 10 years ago. There is merely too much information saturating our short attention spans.
The Guardiantravel blog most recently published a post about travel writing and whether or not this somewhat self-indulgent art form is in fact truth or fiction. They argue that the line between truth and fiction is often blurred because writers may ‘introduce “colour”, altering the sequence of events to make a book or article “flow.”
Of course these types of exaggerations don’t have a place in guide books or instructional articles because they require accurate research on accommodation, budget, and description of sites; however, when it comes to personal accounts of travel, does “colour” interfere with the purpose of the story. Writers such as Tim Cahill and Bill Bryson have long inspired me to travel and experience Road Fever. Their perspective and slightly off humor personal accounts are clearly from their perspective. There is no confusion about that.
When I think of the times that I may ‘colour’ a story on some of my recent travels, they are hardly ever a declaration of a falsehood. This year while traveling on a trail towards Machu Picchu, I experienced a horrible bout of food poisoning and altitude sickness. At the time I was in the middle of the mountains with no easy route back to a doctor or even a moving vehicle. Was I close to death? Hell no. But did I feel like it? I guess you could say that (a mixture of puking, dizziness, and difficulty breathing can certainly change a person’s perspective). When a tour guide suggests to take some oxygen to help with breathing, rationality tends to go out the window. Let’s just say that the colour added to this story was in fact, an accurate, but emotionally exaggerated depiction of the truth.
Funny enough, the same day that I decided to post my Asbury Park photographs, the New York Times Travel Section publishes an article about the Eclectic Renaissance of Asbury Park. This goes to show that the travel powers that be concur, Asbury is back.
Asbury Park CasinoIn the casino, this map displays many of the changes that will be taking place on and near the boardwalk.
I recently entered a photo book contest at Photography Book Now. The book I entered is a compilation of photographs I took while traveling throughout Mexico. Winners will be awarded in the categories of Fine Art, Editorial, and Commercial. Along with the judges categories there is also a People’s Choice Award. Please take a look at my photo book and if you like what you see, vote for it! Just press on the orange ribbon above. It was a lot of fun to create the book, and as always it was a lot of fun to travel and take pictures.
No Reservations is back! The excitement started to build when I saw the episode guide on the Anthony Bourdain website. Looks like he will be traveling to many interesting places for the second part of this season, including Chile, Australia, the Rockies, and Buffalo New York. Yesterday the Travel Network offered a No Reservations marathon. While I’ve seen most of the episodes, I still welcome the opportunity to watch them all day on a lazy afternoon. Anthony writes on his blog that he may or may not have gone to Kerala India, which is where a very close friend of mine is from, so naturally I have a lot to look forward to this season, and so does everyone else! Tonight Bourdain will be in Chile which means there will most likely be endless supplies of meat, fresh seafood and beautiful footage of Patagonia. Another episodethis season is dedicated to the outer boroughs of New York City, which are often forgotten by tourists, but happen to have some of the yummiest dishes and ethnic food that NYC has to offer.
Can’t wait for tonight!!
Media and print journalism traditionally are difficult industries to enter. Most prospective employees have numerous unpaid internships under their belt. They work countless hours each day, often for very little compensation. The stereotype of the lowly intern getting coffee for the reporters in the newsroom has been true for some time. He pushes through piles of paperwork before getting a single word he’s written printed anywhere. Times are a changing however, and the media world is changing as well, bringing new obstacles that bright eyed college graduates can anticipate.
The challenge: Can you last a week without reading any media outlet, publication, online forum, or blog? Better yet, could you abstain from Facebook, Twitter, Matador, or whatever social networking site you frequent? If you think you can, you are one of the few. It certainly can be done, but not without some discomfort and a slight feeling of disconnect from the world. The obsession with information and consumption has penetrated our society for quite some time now. Employees have become so obsessed with information that many companies have started to block certain sites in order to ensure that employees aren’t surfing the net instead of doing their job. Even those efforts are thwarted since more and more people have a Black Berry or iPhone, which provide constant access to an endless supply of knowledge at any time of day. Most of us need information, we crave it. We want it now, and we want it short and pithy.
