Does It Still Make Sense To Become A Journalist Today?
Recently a friend of mine invited me to talk to a group of high school seniors about the future of journalism. She teaches a class on entrepreneurship at a school in New York City. Every month she invites entrepreneurs from a wide variety of fields to speak to her kids about the ups and downs of being your own boss. Some of her previous speakers have been plumbers, real estate agents, lawyers, florists and automotive technicians. I was invited to be part of her “entrepreneurial journalism” discussion day.
I’d been asked to speak about my craft before at school events, so I knew what kinds of questions to expect. Why did you become a journalist? Do you make a lot of money? What is the most memorable article that you have written? Who is the most famous person you have interviewed? And like clockwork, all of those questions were asked of me.
But there is always a first time for everything. One student asked a question that even a lot of other journalists don’t know how to answer these days.
“I was thinking about becoming a newspaper reporter, but my mom told me newspapers are going out of business because of the Internet,” this student said. “But then I thought I could be an online reporter, and then my mom said no one makes money off the Internet. So my question to you is this: does it still make sense to become a journalist today?”
At first, I was actually stumped by the question. I mean, I should have expected it, considering that, yes, print media is a dead business model, and not many print media outlets have figured out a way to make money off of online advertising. I guess I was just more shocked to think that this student believes that all journalism is dead, and it wasn’t a viable career anymore.
I told the aspiring reporter that journalism is going through a major overhaul right now, and statistics show that there will be a drastic decline in traditional journalism jobs in the near future. But the world will still need journalists to report the news. If reporters stopped writing articles and interviewing people on TV, then bloggers and the Twitterati wouldn’t have anything to blog and tweet about. How journalists will be delivering the news (and getting paid) is still an open question.
Nonetheless, I told the listening students that this is also a very exciting time for journalism, as many enterprising journalists are experimenting with new ways the news will be delivered in the future. This is where I began to talk about my own journey into entrepreneurial journalism.
About eight years ago I went to a technology conference, where I sat in on a panel discussion on blogging. At the time I was intimidated about starting a blog, because it seemed really hard to do from my perspective. But the “veteran blogging” panelists were talking about how easy it was to start one and build an audience. So after the conference I said to myself I should just start a Blogger account and get writing. I started my first blog called Global Wire. This was my little space to write about my favorite topics: foreign policy, press freedom, international development and human rights. After a while, I started developing an audience of people who also cared about these issues. I also started receiving requests from other bloggers to help them with editing and writing their blogs. One of those requests came from the founders of a then new website called DigiActive, a start up that reported on tech trends in the online activism space. For two years I had the opportunity to work with some of the best writers, journalists and activists from all corners of the world. It was also an exciting time because technology was just emerging as an essential tool for social change.
After leaving DigiActive, I wanted to expand on that energy of advocacy journalism and technology on my blog and turn it into an actual business – Global Wire Associates. The blog now focuses on reporting on technology and innovation for social good with five staff writers overseeing it. In the last year alone we had the privilege to interview thought leaders in the field and report from a variety of conferences, such as Rio + 20 and the Clinton Global Initiative.
Unlike other online news start-ups that compete for online advertising, we make money selling consulting services and produce Internet trainings and topical webinars. Recently we launched Global Wire Books, our digital book publishing imprint, and we are currently developing a toolkit on best practices of electronic waste (e-waste) recycling we would like to sell in the future.
Advertising has always been the backbone of print journalism, but the Internet has really thrown that relationship out the window. Unfortunately, most newspapers and magazines will eventually either have to significantly reduce their staffs or shut down altogether due to the changing advertising climate.
Now there is this new debate about the rise of “native advertising,” which brings up a whole bunch of other questions about ethics in journalism and business. For right now, I would rather stay away from all forms of advertising just to maintain the integrity of the site. At least when you sell your own products and services, there is more transparency and accountability about how the site makes money. Native advertising, on the other hand, can bring a level of deception and even shadiness to a news site. “Native advertising is an absolute betrayal of the core principles of journalism,” said elite blogger Andrew Sullivan recently at paidContent Live. I’m not saying I have all the right answers for dealing with the financial side of entrepreneurial journalism either, but it might be a good time to rethink how journalism is paid for outside of advertising.
But I have to say, for a group of high school kids, they were really interested in what I was doing. For the rest of the class, the kids bounced off their ideas with me about their own imaginary news start-ups. Just listening to their ideas gave me hope for journalism’s future. Yes, it still makes sense to become a journalist today.