Job Satisfaction of Minority Journalists at U.S. Daily Newspapers
By Edward C. Pease (©1991)
Doctoral Dissertation
E.W Scripps School of Journalism
Ohio University • Athens, Ohio
CHAPTER 8—Would You Want Your Kids Doing This Job?
Journalism is fun. It’s exciting. It seductively powerful. It’s ego-gratifying. And, as J-school teachers tell students, it’s an excuse to mind other people’s business.
At an early 1990 meeting on retaining minority journalists held at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, an Asian American reporter for Reuters News Service was talking about her 18-year-old daughter, who recently had entered college. Like many freshmen, her daughter was shiny and excited with her new experiences; she thought she wanted to go into journalism. The Reuters reporter sighed. She was terribly ambivalent about the prospect of her daughter entering journalism, she said; it’s an awfully tough business, and if she herself had it to do over, she wasn’t sure she would.
Perhaps the ultimate test of anyone’s judgment of a thing is whether they would recommend it to someone they love. Would you want your parents or your kids or your sister to partake of this or experiment with that? Answering “Yes” is an ultimate vote of confidence. Which parts of your own life would you really recommend to your children – Your college? Your first marriage? Where you live? The car you drive? Your profession?
Based on the comments of that Reuters writer in Florida, this survey asked newspaper journalists to vote on their profession. The question asked, “Would you want your child to go into newspaper journalism as a career?” and then asked respondents to explain their answers. If those who work in a profession are its best ambassadors, these responses may give some indication of why the newspaper business is having trouble finding new recruits. From these responses, newspapers looking for fresh, smart talent should bolt the doors and not let their newsroom employees out of the building.
Some respondents said they had no kids; others wrote they didn’t want any kids. Still others checked neither yes nor no, writing instead that the decision would be entirely their child’s, which were coded as a “yes.”
Despite the enthusiasm for the profession they expressed in a 90 percent satisfaction rating (see Table 24), newspaper journalists are just as ambivalent on this question as that Reuters correspondent in St. Petersburg. Only half say they’d want their children to follow them into the newspaper business. Like the Reuters reporter, journalists at American newspapers waffle when asked to recommend the profession to their children. And there are only small differences by race: About 56 percent of white journalists and 51 percent of minority journalists say they’d want their kids to go into newspaper journalism careers. Respondents to the summer 1990 survey of California Latino journalists in both print and broadcast also demonstrated ambivalence on this question: About half answered “Maybe” when asked if they would want their child to become a journalist; 34 percent said yes.1
In this study, however, newspaper journalists weren’t given the “maybe” way out, expressing their ambivalence in a tie. If the 54 percent-to-46 percent results on this question were election totals, we could call this 8 percent plurality a near-landslide victory for the newspaper profession, but as a career recommendation, such ambivalence indicates the newspaper profession a sorry loser among those who practice it.
Those who say they would want their kids in the newspaper business offer some predictable and genuine reasons why. The newspaper supporters fall generally into two camps: The Good-Timers, those who think newspaper work is “as much fun as you can have with your clothes on. And get paid for,” as a white female reporter from Missouri wrote; and the Altruists, those who think newspapering is important work necessary for the democracy – “Journalism offers an opportunity for work that makes the world better,” as a black religion writer from California said.
Those who say they would not want their children to pursue newspaper careers also fall generally into two groups. One group is the Burnouts, those who cite stress, long hours, lack of advancement, poor salaries and strain on family as unbearable. This white male Southern reporter with 18 years in the business is representative: “This business destroys families. Satisfying, well-paid jobs are few, competition is backbreaking, management is insensitive, hours are long and stress is high.” The other nay-sayers are the Doomsters, who see newspapers dying off within a generation because of declining readership, the impact of electronic news media, corporatization and newspapers’ failure to adapt to a changing society. The words “dying,” “decline,” “failing,” “dwindling,” “doom” and “extinction” run through these journalists’ comments: “Will there be newspapers in 25 years?” an African American woman from Cleveland asked succinctly. “It’s a dying business!” wrote a white male reporter from California who, after 10 years in the business and a graduate degree, says he’s unlikely to be in the newsroom in five years. “Being a newspaper reporter is like being a cowboy on a dinosaur ranch,” he said.
For minority journalists, the question assumes additional aspects. Wrote a black man reporter in his late 30s, “Unless you’re a white male, there’s no point. Your ideas are not respected and multiculturalism is a farce. Perhaps, as newspapering’s ivory (I emphasize the color ivory) tower sinks farther into irrelevance to U.S. society, this will change, but probably too late to save newspapers.”
Broken down along gender lines, race lines and circulation lines, newspaper journalism is only a marginal winner at best in this straw poll, as Tables 51 and 52 indicate. Women overall, largely on the optimism of white women, are more supportive than men of the idea of their children pursuing newspaper careers, but only slightly, as Table 51 shows. White women are strongest on the question, nearly 63 percent answering yes; among women, Latinos are least enamored of the idea, nearly 52 percent saying they would not want their kids in newspapers. But Asian American men are the most negative about having their children follow in their footsteps – almost 57 percent said they would not want their children to pursue newspaper careers. Other men are marginally supportive of their kids trying newspapers, with black and Hispanic men slightly more positive than whites.
The vote among minority journalists on this question improves somewhat as circulation levels increase, as Table 52 indicates. The 60 percent “No” vote by journalists of color at smaller newspapers is consistent with other findings of dissatisfaction at this level; that negativity decreases by about 14 percentage points among minorities at the largest papers in the sample, perhaps a function of better salaries and other working condition factors.
TABLE 51 here
White respondents basically are unchanged across circulation categories, with slightly more than half at newspapers of all sizes saying they would want their children to pursue newspaper journalism as a career.
________________________________________________________________________
TABLE 52: Would you want your child to go into newspaper journalism as a career? by race and circulation, in percentages
250,000- 100,000- 50,000-
500,000+ 500,000 250,000 100,000
W M W M W M W M All
Yes 55.3 53.9 57.3 54.8 54.1 47.2 56.5 40.0 54.1
No 44.7 46.1 42.7 45.2 45.9 52.8 43.5 60.0 45.9
N=1193; X2=7.103; d.f.=7; p=.5256 (NS); Missing = 135
________________________________________________________________________
Taken as a whole, the responses to this question are very troubling for the newspaper industry. Given human nature, it is perhaps not surprising that so many journalists in this survey voiced such great satisfaction with their choice of a career in newspapers (see Table 24); it would be difficult for anyone to confront the alternative, to say that his or her career had been a disappointing waste of time and energy. Further, despite the tendency of newsroom staffers to complain – “Journalists are professional kvetchers,” observes a white male West Coast feature writer in his 40s – it also is a human tendency to be as positive as possible about the situation in which one finds oneself.
Given those positive responses on the satisfaction scale, then, how should we interpret these responses, indicating so little support for the newspaper industry? Why would so many journalists who expressed such a high degree of personal satisfaction in their career choices switch to such negativity when asked whether they would recommend the field to their own children? Perhaps they think it’s too late for them to make a change. Or maybe they see only a few more good years in the profession before it slips quietly into inconsequence and is delivered to what one copy editor called the “graveyard for newspapers and other dinosaurs.” In any case, whether the nay-sayers base their advice to their children not to enter newspaper journalism on the profession’s poor working conditions or on its dismal future, the fact that nearly half of all newsroom rank-and-file vote no on this question sends a very scary message to the industry. If so many working newspaper people would tell those most important to them to pursue other fields, what message would they send to others in the society, to audiences in high school auditoriums, to candidates at job fairs, to strangers’ children?
Understanding why
Because so many of the 1,328 respondents to this survey took the time to explain their answers to the question regarding whether they’d want their children in newspapers, it is useful to review some of their open-ended comments. These statements offer some compelling insights into the morale, thought processes and priorities of those who populate American newspaper newsrooms. Their explanations of why they voted yes or no to this question tell much about how they feel about their profession, much more than the empirical results of responses to dichotomous questions or on five-point scales. These responses show where American journalists live, what’s important to them in their professional and personal lives as issues that most affect their work, how they evaluate newspaper performance and mission.
Some critics of newspaper industry efforts to “fix” shortcomings in coverage and content of all segments of society have suggested that simply hiring new troops will do little to alter performance if the troops remain powerless to effect change. For all newsroom professionals, as the discussions in this section illustrate, powerlessness is a central issue in their evaluation of whether they would recommend the profession to others. Many of these respondents took the opportunity in answering this whether they would want their children to follow them into the business to talk about their sense of powerlessness, of inability to control their lives.
THE YES VOTES
Anyone who’s taken a journalism history class or an intro to mass communication course knows the philosophical reasons for going into journalism. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, the marketplace of ideas, the watchdog on government. Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein. John Paul Zenger, Joseph Pulitzer, Ida Tarbell and Edward R. Murrow. Surveillance of the environment, entertainment, information, commentary on society. With some self-righteousness, journalists tell themselves they go into journalism to do good, to help the little guy, to serve the community and to right wrongs. Further, anyone who’s been in a newsroom knows the other part of the attraction: Journalism is fun. It’s exciting. It seductively powerful. It’s ego-gratifying. And, as newswriting teachers tell students, it’s an excuse to mind other people’s business, a license to ask strangers questions about intimate or deeply personal parts of their lives, a chance to crusade for Good. It is an opportunity for people who love language to use their writing skills in a stimulating environment, to see their words and names in print and to perform a critical function in society under the moral imprimatur of the First Amendment. Journalists have plenty of reason to feel good about themselves, as those who said they support their children’s choice of a newspaper career explain. Those respondents break down into the Good-Timers and the Altruists.
The Good-Timers
“It’s as much fun than you can have with your clothes on.
And get paid for.”
And get paid for.”
– White female reporter, late 30s
250,000 Midwestern metro
250,000 Midwestern metro
The profession traditionally has attracted free-thinkers, individualists, artists and poets. One senses that many of these are Good-Timers, journalists for whom newspaper work is fun and personally satisfying. For many, journalism was a way for new college graduates to apply their otherwise unmarketable BAs in English, art, political science or photography. These liberally educated college graduates discovered that newspapers would let them exercise the skills they loved while providing an alternative to being a starving poet or artist. Good-Timers enjoy their work mightily; they love language and ideas, they like people, they find writing and interviewing an excuse for being nosey and chasing gossip; they like knowing what’s going on in the world.
One African American former reporter-turned-educator says, “I know what I’d tell my son [who’s 2]: Newspapers are fun. They never really told me that at Indiana.”2 A journalism educator who exchanged the classroom for the newsroom after six years as a copy editor said, “I miss it. After three years in the classroom, I’ve gotten into the academic rhythm. I enjoy my teaching and my students benefit from my professional experience. But some days I wish I could read the wire again.”3
For these former journalists and those in this survey, the fun, excitement and challenge of newspaper journalism more than make up for its shortcomings. “It takes absolute dedication, and family life suffers,” wrote a white male sports editor from the West Coast, “but it’s satisfying, challenging and exciting. The pay isn’t what it should be, and the hours are hell on social and family considerations, but still, it’s a hell of a life. I enjoy going to work.”
A black female metro reporter working on the East Coast agreed that the profession’s pluses outweight its minuses. “I still think journalism can be fun, educational, challenging and rewarding,” she said. “It is one business in which people are paid to explore the world and have fun with words. Every business is going to have racism and sexism.”
“At its best,” a 45-year-old Asian features writer commented, “the newspaper business is exciting and provide a daily sense of accomplishment. I’m in it because I like to tell stories. I get paid to do what I like to do.”
“Many days I can’t believe I get paid to do this,” a Midwestern desk editor agreed. And a 29-year-old Latino reporter from Texas wrote, “Most journalists I know actually like their work. How many professionals can make a similar boast?” To which a New York copy editor supplied amplification: “It has its creative elements and satisfaction factor (e.g., my dentist says most dentists hate what they do).”
“It’s exciting, rewarding and something different happens every day,” a white female sports reporter said. Various others added: “Beats banking” or “Beats driving a truck. I think.” Said others, “Alternative to gangs or the Green Berets,” “Every day is different,” “fulfilling, exciting, life experiences” and “fun and socially useful.” “It’s never boring,” a white, 38-year-old female feature writer concluded.
Many respondents commented on the personal growth benefits of a newspaper career: “It’s a lifetime of exposure to fascinating aspects of life and affords one infinite opportunities for self-discovery,” a white women features writer wrote. A Northwest city hall reporter in her 30s agreed: “For 10 years, it’s been incredibly fulfilling for me. I’ve learned a lot, grown as a person and in my craft. I love it.”
“If my child chose journalism as a career, it would mean he or she has a love of language, a thirst for information and a working brain,” a Texas metro editor wrote. “It’s not mindless work.” A copy editor for a Midwestern metro agreed:
I believe journalists are intelligent, thoughtful, well educated and generally motivated by a sense of fairness. They think clearly and succinctly and make good conversationalists. Those are things I want for my child. And although I believe most journalists bring these qualities with them to start with, I really think journalism education and newspaper work develop them.
Many of the comments of the Good-Timers blur their border with the Altruists. For a great many reporters, after all, newspaper work is a license to do what you like to do and perform good works at the same time. For example, this Missouri reporter explained why he’d like his child in newspapers: “To help people, to right wrongs. And because journalism is a hell of a good time.”
“It’s many jobs in one: news coverage, education, a creative outlet, ‘do-gooder’ and still a sense of being able to change some small part of the world,” wrote a white female reporter in her late 30s from her paper in Tennessee. A black male sports desk editor with more than 10 years in the business agreed that this is an important part of what he would hope for for his children: “Because of what they could gain individually and be able to give back to society as a reporter/writer/ journalist.” And an Asian American reporter in the Northeast said, “On the right newspaper, journalism can offer a closeup view of current history. It’s an exciting, relevant profession and important for a free society.”
This combination of personal satisfaction and involvement in an institution critical to society makes journalism the best possible profession, many concluded, both fun and useful. “Reporting is honest, wonderfully creative work that forces people to be engaged in their world and communities,” a white reporter from the Pacific Northwest wrote. “It’s important stuff.” Others agree. “Few fields place an equal premium on truth, honesty and fairness,” a Pennsylvania metro reporter in his late 30s wrote. “The press is arguably the most important institution in a democracy.”
The Altruists
“This is one of the few career where you can still work your conscience.
Not many jobs offer that.”
Not many jobs offer that.”
– Black male desk editor, 40s
East Coast
East Coast
This was a common theme among the comments of those classified here as Altruists, people who cite journalism’s importance to society as the primary reason for wanting their children in the profession. “It’s a wonderful way to perform a public service while constantly learning new things,” a white Southern woman wrote. “Newspapers are extremely important to a free society.” Even so, after more than 10 years as a reporter, she said she’s leaving the business to go to law school.
“It’s a critical public service,” one respondent wrote. Said another, “I still consider it a noble profession,” to which another added, “despite the negatives.”
“This is one of the few career where you can still work your conscience. Not many jobs offer that,” a black desk editor wrote. “Still a battlefield for underdogs, justice.” A female Hispanic reporter for an Eastern metro added, “It’s intellectually challenging. You can expose injustice at times and sometimes make someone’s life better.”
Said a female features editor in her 40s, “If his talents and interests are suited to the profession, I would want him to pursue journalism because I want journalism in the hands of people who seek and tell truth, and he is such a kid.” On that same theme, the father of a 7-year-old boy wrote, “It’s an honest, socially useful profession, but needs more honest, ethical participants.”
Altruists also pointed to other values of newspaper journalism: “Few careers allow an individual to influence the local and national agenda,” said one black woman. Said others, “impact society,” “help people,” “public service,” “vital to society,” “make social change.”
Still others saw their children as soldiers in the fight to provide nonwhite perspectives in the news and to help empower minority communities. Wrote a Hispanic metro reporter from Washington, D.C., “It is critical that Latinos and other minorities increase their numbers in journalism.” An African American reporter from Austin, Texas, agreed: “Only rugged determination and sacrifice will improve the climate for minority journalists and only by increasing our numbers will we have foot soldiers to fight for change from within.”
An African American features editor in his 40s had a more personal reason for wanting his children to follow him into the profession: “I will need workers at my newspaper when I own it,” he said, “and we need many more minorities in the business.” And a black female copy editor from the South said her children could do a job that whites cannot: “I think it’s essential that minorities be represented on newspaper staffs and that they cover their own communities as well as other assignments,” she said. “They have an expertise that is unmatched by even the best white writer.”
Finally, echoing the charge of the Hutchins Commission regarding the press’s obligation to give voice to the concerns of representative groups in society, a Latino metro reporter in his mid-30s thoughtfully summed up what many others said about newspapers’ mission and responsibility in a diverse culture. He wrote,
I am a firm believer in public service. Moreover, if American journalism ever is to become an institution reflective of our increasingly diverse society, it must recruit more people of color. And if my child could help provide sensitivity and perspective to the white-male-dominated profession of journalism, then I would be all for her or his entry into the career, especially given the disgusting percentage of minority journalists in American.
THE NAY-SAYERS
The problems fall into two categories: 1. Working conditions – salary, long hours, high stress, feelings of lack of respect and wide-ranging unhappiness with management. 2. Fears that newspapers are dying.
Any industry that elicits a vote of no-confidence from its rank-and-file has to take some serious looks at its structure, procedures and premises. Nearly half of American journalists – 45.6 percent – say the costs outweigh the benefits; even given the potential personal and moral perks described above, they would steer their children into other professions. The problem areas? According to these 548 journalists who say they wouldn’t want their children in newspapers, the problems fall into two broad categories: 1.) working conditions – salary, long hours, high stress, feelings of lack of respect and autonomy, and wide-ranging unhappiness with the quality of newsroom management; and 2.) fears that newspapers are dying, that economic, social and industry changes place newspapers in their waning years as an American institution.
For convenience, let’s roughly categorize these in-house industry critics as the Burnouts and the Doomsters.
Complaints about stress, hours and salary are traditional and legion in the newsroom; those factors are one reason newspapering is known as a young person’s profession (see Table 6). Two-thirds of journalists who say they’d counsel their children not to join the industry cite these traditional working-condition complaints about newspapers. One journalism historian who spent about 15 years in the newsroom before making the switch to academia in his late 30s said he’ll never regret his time as a reporter and knows what he’d counsel his son about entering the business: “I’d tell him to do it for a while,” he said. “It’s great preparation for just about anything else. But I’d never go back. And I’d sure never want to grow old there.”4 Many current journalists feel the same. “I’m glad I pursued it,” said an African American reporter in Cleveland with 12 years’ experience, “but I wouldn’t recommend it.”
The other 37 percent of the nay-sayers – the Doomsters – cite more fundamental doubts about the industry as a whole as their reasons for not wanting their children to pursue newspaper careers. These 203 journalists say the industry is dying, or at least changing under economic pressures and corporate influences to such a degree that newspapers of the future will no longer perform those important functions that attracted them originally. For journalists who might once have Good-Timers, the remark of one white male reporter in his 40s – the age when most American journalists start thinking about career changes – is illustrative: “The profession is not idiosyncratic anymore,” he said. “Less room for eccentrics and oddballs. Less commitment to raising hell.” A white photographer in his 50s with more than 30 years in the profession agreed: “It’s no longer fun!” he said.
Beyond being less fun than it once was, these journalists said, newspaper prospects are dim. “Newspapers are a dying breed. In the next 20 years there will be few newspapers,” a 47-year-old white male features editor wrote. And, as another nail in the industry’s coffin, he added, “Americans are getting their news from TV.”
Perhaps most chilling about these responses of both the Burnouts and the Doomsters is that they come from the whole spectrum of newsroom employees. It cannot be said, for instance, that white male rank-and-file reporters in the early 30s with between five and eight years’ experience at two or three papers are most at risk; the nay-sayers’ club is open to everyone without regard for race, creed, experience level, gender or geography. The 548 journalists in this study who say they wouldn’t want their children to follow them into the industry are as diverse a group as people in newspaper newsrooms can be: about half white, half nonwhite; in their 20s to their 60s; working for both 50,000- circulation papers and 1 million-circulation giants; beginning reporters and seasoned veterans; women and men; Texans, Oregonians, Long Islanders, Illini and Floridians.
A closer examination of the nay-sayers’ open-ended comments on this question reveals a broad array of concerns.
The Burnouts
“If you get out before you’re 30 or 35, you can always get a real job later
– go to law school or something and then have a life.”
– go to law school or something and then have a life.”
– Black female newsroom manager, early 30s
East Coast 500,000+ metro
East Coast 500,000+ metro
Most of those – 63 percent – who answered “no” to this question about their children’s future pointed to environmental conditions in newspapers or structural characteristics in the industry that, they say, make their day-to-day lives miserable. They might be described as Fallen Altruists or former Good-Timers who’ve allowed their dues to lapse. As much as these 345 journalists might love writing and thinking, being involved and making a difference – the elements that first drew them to newspapering – other factors have gotten to be too much to bear. They wouldn’t wish this on their kids, they say.
A Midwestern white female copy editor with almost 10 years in the business echoed the sentiments of that Reuters reporter in St. Petersburg confronted by her daughter’s enthusiasm for newspaper work. “I’m ambivalent,” she wrote. “This can be a hugely rewarding business at its best. Unfortunately, it hits that place less and less often.”
Others agree. “While I enjoy my job and am happy with my career, if I had to start over now I’d pick another field,” wrote a mid-30s white female features editor for a mid-sized Southern daily. “The newspaper business is changing. The emphasis is on short info bites and graphics. If there’s no room for well-researched, comprehensive, well-written stories, there’s not much point in going into newspaper journalism. Unless, of course, you want to be a copy editor or a graphics artist.”
This sense of having had the ground-rules of newspaper journalism change on them was echoed by many of these journalists. “I’m not sure it’s as challenging and rewarding as I once thought,” reflected a white West Coast metro desk manager with more than 20 years in the business. A Native American local news editor, himself a second-generation journalist, wrote that he was disillusioned and dissatisfied after more than 10 years in the profession. “Politics, TV journalism, ass-kissing,” he wrote. “My father, who is about to retire, has worked at newspapers for nearly 50 years. He taught me to be a strong, unapologizing, righteous, responsible journalist. That amounts to nothing today.”
A black woman reporter in her 30s, working for one of the nation’s largest dailies, sees newspaper work as a preliminary to something else. “It’s a good way to learn about the world for someone young and without children,” she said. “If you get out before you’re 30 or 35, you can always get a real job later – go to law school or something and then have a life.” A black female newsroom supervisor at the same paper, who’s also in that precarious 30-to-35 age-range, also advised her child to look to other fields: “Not sure newspapers will be around; lawyers and doctors will,” she said. A white, 30-something business reporter from the Pacific Northwest had another suggestion: “Would prefer they have a more saleable skill,” he said, “like engineering.” From California, a white male sports reporter in his 40s sounded a different version of the same theme: “I think he has some mechanical aptitude, so I’m hoping he will be a plumber and support me in my old age.”
Newspapers early and then get out – that’s the ticket, said an Asian American metro reporter in her mid-30s who says she’s unlikely to remain with her 320,000-circulation California paper. “It’s a good career for young adults, but because of limited advancement possibilities and poor pay, I would not discourage my children from changing careers by their mid-30s,” she said.
“It is a marvelous, wonderfully diverse experience for a younger person,” agreed a white male photographer from Texas with more more than 10 years in the business. “But I would advise my child to have other career aspirations at ready for the burnout invariably experienced at the 7- to 10-year mark of a journalist’s career.”
Issues of Race in Choosing Newspaper Careers
For journalists of color, newspapers too often fall short of their mandate to serve all of society. “Newspapers are strange by nature of the fact that while they are watchdogs of prejudice in society, behind closed doors racism and sexism are extremely prevalent and there seems to be no recourse.” Agreed a West Coast city desk editor, “The business isn’t ready for African Americans who bring diversity of thought to the job.”
For some, the burden of being a minority in the white newspaper industry is one they would hesitate to wish on their children. “This is a difficult question,” wrote a black reporter in her 30s. “I’m tempted to answer yes because of the rewards offered by the career and the opportunity it presents to change stereotypical perceptions of minorities. But I don’t think I want my child to go through the same kind of newsroom struggles I’ve encountered and the frustrations I’ve had because higher-ups (white decision-makers) don’t share your views or understand your ideas because of their background.” A black editorial writer also said she’d hesitate to urge her child to fight the same battles. “I envision that newspapers will be no better at valuing diversity then than they are today,” she wrote. And another, a black reporter in Chicago with more than 10 years’ experience, answered this way: “Unless the percentage of minorities in the business increases, I would much prefer they go into some other profession and succeed for what they do and who they are, not be thwarted for their skin color.”
The key word to tell your children about careers in newspapers is “No,” an African American city reporter in the Southeast said. “No, no, no and No,” she wrote. “No money. No respect. No cultural diversity. Narrow-mindedness of editors who are groomed to be that way. No opportunity to advance. I would encourage my child, if he or she was determined to be in this business, to buy his or her own newspaper!”
An Asian American reporter in Washington, D.C., agreed. “Race is always a problem. It’ll hold you back no matter what your experience or background.”
And for all persons of color, an African American newsroom supervisor in the Midwest said, progress is slow at best. “Working at a newspaper is a humbling experience for a person of color,” he said. “Newspapers perpetuate stereotypes, distort reality in many cases and rarely appreciate diversity. Unless you can be satisfied with very small victories, infrequent though they might be, you might be better off trying a different profession.”
Frustrations with the Two Ms – Money and Mismanagement
Most of those in the Burnout category simply scrawled a dollar sign or other pithy epithets next to the question asking them to explain why they wouldn’t want their children to try newspapering. “It doesn’t pay the bills,” wrote one. “$, low satisfaction, publishers’ attitude of pushing profits over product,” said another. “Dead end.” “No family life.” “Personal toll.” “Stress stress stress.” “No security.” “It takes an incredible personal toll.” “Stress, $$$, satisfaction.” “Too much pressure. Pay not good enough. Too many injustices.” “No advancement.” “Hectic hours, poor pay.” “I’d tell him, ‘Your mother and I used to be married.’” “It runs you ragged.” “Miserable quality of life, and for what?” “Too little regard for the legitimate concerns, needs and fulfillment of people.” “Too little $. Too much frustration. Too many assholes.”
A 10-year veteran city hall reporter, a white male from a mid-sized Western daily, described his daily sense of being trapped. “Too few opportunities in better-paying slots; low pay, high exploitation in entry-level slots,” he wrote. “Not a day goes by when I don’t wonder if there might be another career for me, but I know of none for which I am so well trained, skilled, independent and get paid.”
Other nay-sayers think there’s got to be something better out there, and many say they’re determined to find it, if not for themselves, then for their children. “The profession is changing much for the worse,” wrote a white female metro reporter for a Western metro. “It’s tougher and tougher to make a decent living in a business run by corporations whose decisions may not be in the best interests of the paper and the community. Exceedingly poor management in the whole industry.”
The blame for much of what’s wrong with newspapers in the 1990s is laid at the door of management. Poor people skills, lack of management training, lousy communication skills, knuckling under to corporate pressure and general insensitivity to the legitimate and mounting concerns of the rank-and-file – the troops are ripe for revolt. “Newspapers are one of this country’s most important institutions, and one of the worst-run,” a white male political reporter wrote. “The most pressing problem is the lack of management skills, especially human management.”
An African American metro reporter from Texas agrees. He says he’s thinking of leaving the business in the next five years. “Too many mediocre middle managers destroy the careers of young, talented minorities,” he said. “I don’t want my children to have to endure what I’ve had to, and seen others put through.”
Although individual managers often are the focus of the complaints of these journalists, the Burnouts realize that a new corporate mentality – management-by-objective devised by faceless, non-journalistic “suits” in distant corporate offices – has created structural changes in the industry that victimize local managers as much as front-line reporters.
“Structural changes – the never-ending chain ownership expansion and more publicly held companies – will continue to change the nature of the industry and drive down the number of available editorial positions and salaries,” a Midwestern reporter in his mid-30s wrote. “The bottom line is falling on top of reporters and editors.”
Others sounded the same theme. “While newspapers are populated with many intelligent and caring people,” a Latino reporter wrote, “the industry is structured in such a way as to make them – almost without exception – very exploitive of people who only want to do a good job and are not concerned with climbing the corporate ladder.”
And a white male makeup editor in his 40s, working for a Midwestern paper, concluded that, for his child and for himself, the joys no longer make up for the frustrations in a new corporate newspaper environment. He wrote:
At most newspapers, journalism takes second place to corporate profits. Gannett and Knight-Ridder are two examples. That has forced many good reporters and editors out of the business. People are promoted according to their politics – i.e., are they members of the good old boy clique. Merit, talent and skill no longer play a big role in promotions. This is a tough business, and the roads to the top are littered with obstacles, more often than not placed there by management. This profession once was dedicated to enlightening the public, but all too often falls miserably short. I think there are more enobling pursuits.
“The ascendancy of marketing”
This industry preoccupation with profit was common theme. “Greed, corporatization, Wall Street and timidity are ruining the newspaper industry,” wrote a white female metro reporter in her 40s. “We don’t have to worry about fighting for the First Amendment – we’re giving it away for profits.”
Although the economic downturn of late 1990 certainly helped focus rank-and-file resentment on management policies, many of the complaints of journalists who say they see bookkeepers where editors used to sit are not new. “There’s just too much influence by the bean-counters,” wrote a white male sports reporter in his late 30s. “Newspapers in the U.S. have always been a place where characters and character could flourish. We’ve lost that, maybe for good. It’s tougher and tougher now to be creative, to go after the sacred cows.”
A large part of these journalists’ declining satisfaction with their jobs has to do with the focus of modern newspapers and what a West Coast newsroom manager called “the ascendancy of marketing.” Many newsroom professionals feel that newspapers are being taken over by “narrow-minded, short-sighted advertising men in the cloak of journalism.”
“Too few of the positions in newspapers have much to do with journalism,” wrote a white female features editor who’s thinking about leaving the business after more than 10 years. “Bottom-line mentality is influencing too many editorial decisions. Little real writing occurs on newspapers; we’ve become purveyors of information that we carefully package.”
Many newspaper journalists react strongly to that issue of “packaging,” focusing on how pressures from the electronic media helped produce a new age of newspapers that bears little resemblance to the profession they once loved. Few of these reporters want their children forced into the soul-less uniformity of journalism’s equivalent of fast food, what more than one respondent called “the McPapering of the newspaper industry.”
“Newspapers across the country are emulating USA Today and that’s a travesty,” wrote a Native American desk editor in his late 20s, voicing a common industry theme. “TV-in-print is not responsible journalism but, sadly, it is fast becoming the norm.”
One white male newsroom manager who might be described as another “fallen Altruist,” says this conflict between newspapers as a business and newspapers as a medium for social commentary is at the core of the complaints of both those who are burning out on the profession and those who fear they’re presiding over the death of a national institution. That’s why he says he’d counsel his children to look elsewhere regardless of whether they want to do good, or simply to do well.
“Newspapers are likely to be less read, smaller and less influential in the future,” he wrote. “Also, creativity is evaporating as marketing ascends. If you want to look at powerful newsroom dynamics, consider the tensions and uncertainties created by the ascendancy of marketing versus news/entertainment/honest/guts values, and the steep decline of readership.”
This evaluation lies at the core of the Doomsters, journalists who think mistakes by the industry – such as corporatization – coupled with changing market realities and habits of American information consumers, will result in the death of U.S. newspapers in the next few decades.
The Doomsters
“How much longer will there be newspapers, really?
Being a newspaper reporter is like being a cowboy on a dinosaur ranch.”
Being a newspaper reporter is like being a cowboy on a dinosaur ranch.”
– White male state news reporter, 30s
Mid-sized California metro
Mid-sized California metro
It seems unlikely that newspapers actually will disappear in the next generation, but that’s what hundreds of journalists say. More than a third – 37 percent – of the 548 newsroom professionals who say they wouldn’t want their children to go into the newspaper business think the medium might not survive. The mere fact that 203 journalists – 17 percent of all respondents – took the time to write about concerns over the future of the profession should be a strong signal to the industry about the level of morale in the newsroom trenches.
Regardless of whether newspapers really do die in the near future, the fact remains that many rank-and-file journalists would discourage their children from entering the profession on that basis and feel strongly enough about the issue to write comments about it. This one is typical: “I have no idea what the newspaper industry will be like when they finish college in 20 years,” a white female copy editor wrote. “The profession will be much different, if it still exists. But the future certainly doesn’t look very bright for newspapers.” An Asian American desk editor from a major East Coast metro agreed: “I worry deeply about the future of newspapers. They are going to have to change drastically or die a painful death. I fear it’s already too late.”
This should be a clarion warning bell to those running the industry. If widespread, perceptions that newspapers have no future undoubtedly will torpedo efforts to recruit and retain talented journalists, making it more likely that promising entry-level prospects and experienced journalists alike will opt out of the industry for greener and safer pastures.
“I think newspapers are a dying breed of communication,” wrote a black desk editor from Philadelphia. A white male photo editor at a major East Coast metro agreed: “The future of newspapers never looked gloomier.”
The image that emerges from these journalists’ comments is one of resignation. For many of these doom-sayers, the end of their own careers and the end of newspapers as a major mass medium in America will occur at about the same time. “The future of the business is murky at best,” said one reporter. “It’s an industry under threat of extinction,” another wrote. Several wondered if there will be newspapers by the time their children were ready to look for work. “Opportunities will shrink significantly by the time my 7-year-old is looking for a job,” said a white male business reporter in his 40s. “Newspapering represented upward mobility for me. It won’t for my kid.”
“By the time my children are old enough to start a career in newspaper journalism, newspapers will be fossils,” wrote a Florida sports copy editor. On the same theme, a Latino male with more than 10 years in the business wrote, “No future. Newspapers are dinosaurs.” And a third agreed. “These things are dinosaurs,” a San Francisco reporter said. “He’ll be taking his grandkids to museums to look at them [newspapers] much as we look at stagecoaches.”
Many others worried that fewer newspapers in the future would mean fewer good jobs and even less chance of getting ahead than there it today. “Newspapers are dwindling,” a white male copy editor for a Texas newspaper wrote. I would not want my child to face a career where chances are that there will be fewer chances to advance in other careers.” Said a black New York features writer, “Newspapers will be obsolete by the time he reaches adulthood. I would prefer a career where my child had a chance of reaching the top of the ladder; this one may not even have a ladder by then.” “No decent jobs. No future,” said another. “This industry is killing itself by not looking at the big picture,” a Hispanic sports editor wrote.
“There are too few newspapers now, and they are dying off,” a white female reporter for a major East Coast metro wrote. “This is not a medium with a future.” A West Coast reporter in his late 50s agreed: “This is a dying, irrelevant biz that has lost its soul.”
A black reporter for a Southern paper said she wouldn’t wish the experiences of her 10-plus years in the business on her children, if she had any. Further, she said, there is little opportunity. “1. No money. 2. No chance for advancement. 3. People don’t read anymore, so why suffer through 1 and 2?” she wrote.
“Readership is dying. Newspapers too. RIP.”
Many of these respondents point to declining readership as a sure sign that the industry has no future. “Newspapers are declining so rapidly in circulation and revenue that it will be extremely difficult to secure a good job or keep it,” wrote a white male science editor. “Most people 40 years of age and under do not read newspapers.” Further, a Pennsylvania desk editor said, because newspapers haven’t done a good job of attracting young readers, there may be an entire generation lost to the medium, which may be enough to do newspapers in for good. “I see newspapers having a difficult time of it in the future,” he wrote. “Illiteracy is common; kids I know spend little or no time reading newspapers. If it isn’t electronic, they’re not interested.”
Others sounded this same lament. “Newspapers are a dying breed,” a black female metro reporter in her late 20s said. “The habit of reading newspapers is not taught to current and future generations.” Another in her early 20s agreed that too few Americans have the newspaper habit. “I worry because so few people my age depend on newspapers. I think newspapers are vital, must continue. But without change, I’m not sure that will happen.” Summarized one reporter succinctly, “Readership is dying. Newspapers too. RIP.”
Some blame the rise of television, others blame mismanagement and newspapers’ misguided attempts to beat TV at its own game. “If newspapers don’t reassert themselves as news products and stop trying to be TV or civic PR and all the other things they’ve become, newspapers are doomed,” a copy editor at a major Midwestern metro said. A white male business editor on the West Coast agreed: “We seem determined to compete with TV on its terms, a battle we are destined to lose.”
Television certainly is one of the culprits, others agree. “Sadly, this business is dying,” a black sports reporter in his late 30s wrote. “Too much competition from TV – fewer people rely on newspapers as their primary source of news.”
That competition may hold the answer for many of these journalists. “I don’t think there’s really much future in the business say, 10 years from now. People just don’t read anymore; TV is the name of the game,” a 27-year-old black male GA reporter from Ohio wrote. An older, white colleague added, with resignation, “As much as I hate to say it, I’d advise my kid not to try newspapers. Newsgathering, yes. Newspapers, not sure.”
Said another, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but TV news media is a better opportunity.” A Latino business reporter from the Southeast agreed. “I think the days of the general circulation newspaper are gone,” she said. “People will receive all their information through radio or television. If my children wanted to be journalists, I’d head them in that direction.”
“It was once, believe it or not, a noble profession”
For some, newspapers’ decline has been a betrayal of a public trust. “McPapering,” happy news you can use, brights, TV journalism and endless contests have replaced what newspapers in America used to stand for, some journalists say. With its loss of a mandate in America’s democratic marketplace of ideas in favor of the marketplace of profit, the newspaper industry has lost its dignity and, some of these journalists say, taken their own dignity with it. “Changes in the industry and its dominant focus on money mean there’s less focus on high quality journalism and making a difference,” one journalist said.
Another, a white male feature writer from the Southeast, was unequivocal and eloquent on whether he would want his daughter to consider newspaper work. “NO!!” he wrote. “It’s not the 1970s anymore. Journalism today emphasizes trends – pithy, clever, short takes on a consumptive society and endless inconsequential updates on life style and not life substance. I always suspected, when I saw the power of Watergate-era journalism, that it was only a matter of time before corporations – whether through direct ownership or by the influence industry of ad firms and PR groups – bought thought. That has come to pass. Which is OK, as long as newspapers cling to their independence and fight, but they don’t. What newspapers need are editors; instead, what they have are MBAs. To tell my daughter plainly, ‘It was once, believe it or not, a noble profession.’ No more.”
As a result, a black female local news reporter from California wrote, “Newspaper journalism has become routine, dull, petty, boring. The public has diminishing faith in journalists, and maybe they should. Most people have no respect for what we do. There are no heroes in journalism anymore.”
“The newspaper industry is dying,” a white male reporter for a major Western metro wrote. “We’re no longer idealistic. We don’t want to educate or illuminate for the public. We want to entertain, like TV and USA Today. Newspapers have lost their values – now we’re run by the numbers crunchers and the new breed of editors are either scared or could care less.”
This sense that newspapers have lost the values on which they were founded, and for which many idealistic new college graduates want to enter the profession, is at the heart of many journalists’ uneasiness with the industry and their own roles in it. As one upper-level supervisor wrote, “I’m not very sure anymore what we’re selling in the marketplace of ideas.”
An Asian American desk editor in his 50s might have been thinking over the recommendations of the Hutchins Commission – particularly those about the press’s responsibility to present the goals and values of all members of society – when he explained why he wouldn’t urge his child into newspapers.
“The more I remain in this profession, the more I realize that newspapers rarely perform the very necessary function given them by the Constitution,” he wrote. “Most mainstream newspapers are merely the organs of establishment and guardians of the status quo, not the defenders of the few, the weak.”
• • •
NOTES: CHAPTER 8 – Would You Want Your Kids Doing This?
1. California Chicano News Media Association, “Latinos in California’s News Media: A Status Report,” presented to the CCNMA state convention, September 21, 1990, Part 1.
2. Personal communication with J. Frazier Smith, then a faculty member at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Ohio University, after an eight-year career as a reporter and desk editor for the Cincinnati Enquirer and USA Today. March 14, 1991.
3. Ted Pease, “Still on the Beat (or would be): J educators value professional involvement and want more,” Newspaper Research Journal, 11 (4): 52-63 (Fall 1990), p. 53.
4. Personal communication, March 16, 1991. Journalism historian Patrick S. Washburn is assistant director and graduate coordinator at the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Ohio University. After a dozen years in newspapers, Washburn abandoned the newsroom to return to school, earn a Ph.D. and start a second career in teaching.
