Professional notes

A few stray odds and ends about journalism that have come across my view lately…

In an interview with the Sacramento Bee, the most senior working reporter in America, 91-year old Daniel Schorr, seems to suggest he’s glad he isn’t making a career today. “Of course, the changes are partly technological,” he says. “You no longer have to rely on a great newspaper like the Sacramento Bee or on a television network to get the news. You can go on the web and get anything you need.” He adds: “I’m glad I’m not 20 years younger, because I’d be very discouraged.” I’m only 32, but I’m pretty discouraged, but it isn’t because people have more options for getting their news.

And it brings me to another point: I stumbled upon the obit for Walter Bowart, the founding publisher of 60s alternative newspaper the East Village Other, who died last week at 68. In addition to admiring his unusual career (in the 80s he edited Palm Springs Life magazine, which wrote about celebrities and golf etc), I admire the dedication and brass behind the alternative press of the 60s, even if most of the writing was wretched and the reporting was shoddy in the extreme. But I’ve been curious about why this kind of spirit hasn’t adapted itself well to the new Web frontier, where sure, many individuals run off on their own, but their seem too few good collective efforts to move journalism forward. It feels as if to do something, anything, these days with a goal other than making tons of money is deeply and unacceptably radical. This is why I am keeping one eye on Politico.com, founded by journalists, and wish it succeeds.

Of course, morale all over is terrible. A recent study by a professor at Ball State University found what every working journalist already knows. Deadline driven work, low pay, long hours, demanding bosses, technological uncertainty… all these make working journalists an impressively miserable lot. How long can this go on? Forever, I say. One by one, individuals who’ve gotten themselves into journalism make up their minds to get themselves out of it. J-schools churn out an abundance of replacements to come along. You can exploit youthful idealism, enthusiasm, and naivete ad infinitum.

Finally, you can always say that things are worse in Russia. The other day there was an interview in Novye Izvestia with Mariana Maximovskaya, a television presenter for REN-TV who is probably the only figure on Russian television today who I recognize as a television journalist. Her very presence testifies to the misery of the state of television news here: it is amazing that the most respected t.v. reporter left working in this vast land, the only one you could say carries any sort of professional integrity and personal gravitas, is only 37 years old.

Maximovskaya talks about how exciting it was when she got started in the 1990s, and how the job has changed. She describes how today, the final year students she teaches at Moscow State University are already lined up with jobs, and ethics are hardly the first thing on their mind. “These young people understand that they are coming to an existing structure, and have to make some compromises," she says. "Including, perhaps, to compromise their conscience.” UPDATE (Jan. 25): Simon Owens has a good overview and much more about the Ball State study here.