A little something for the kids — Raging against the online newspaper production machine

Danny Sanchez of Journistopia pulled out an interesting comment on his popular post about student advice:

But pay particular attention to the remarks of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s Lucas Grindley.Take note, future interns and recent hires, as Grindley writes:

“When folks send me their resumes, I often feel bad for those who think they have two years experience working at a major news Web site. But really they have two years experience pasting photos into a gallery and writing cutlines.

If that’s your job, learn on your own how to do something more complicated. Learn a programming language. Teach yourself something. Try Flash. Anything.

But don’t tout yourself as an “expert” at cutting and pasting photos or stories into a content management system.”

… And that really hit home for me and from rapping with a lot of my j-school homies and folks in the biz.

// begin flashback! //

At my first official full-time gig out of the gates, I’d just returned from a photography internship in Sydney, Australia. Life was good. I was young and fill of piss and vinegar. I landed a gig with an awesome boss (also a Curley fanatic) and settled in for life as an ‘adult.’

A couple weeks into the job I really started debating if I’d made a huge mistake. The long nights of copying and pasting. Pumping content. Rewriting headlines. It was kind of a shock to my system. Jumping from the freedom and creativity of daily photojournalism to an online producer gig as a … glorified copy editor robot of some sort. (No disrespect to copy editors, I’m in awe of them. I could never do what they do. It’s like… Swallowing swords to me.)

After a while working with my editor, challenging myself and diving at any opportunity to do extra multimedia content, things got better.

// end flashback! //

I’m purposefully not naming any papers because (from the handful of new journerdists I’ve consoled and consulted) this happens in just about every city at just about every newspaper.

Web production–while streamlined compared to print pagination (Seriously, why the hell do people have to do this by hand?)–is still an act of cruel, slave labor that should only be done by interns and robots. And since sophisticated robots don’t exactly exist yet and interns can’t always be trusted with the keys to the ‘Vette, online producers are subject to the monotonous slavery and horrible hours.

So I guess my point is for the kids, we’ve all been there. Don’t give up. Don’t burn out. Don’t turn off. Don’t turn into a robot. Rage against the machine and dive at every opportunity to do something more, something creative.

If those opportunities are fewer and further between than you’d prefer, in your spare time learn everything you can. Experiment. Build your portfolio without the backing of an ink and dead wood product. You might be surprised and find you don’t need a boss with a tie to survive.

- Start a documentary project to learn video filming and editing.
- Start your own niche online publication/community.
- Do some freelance web design work.
- Build a tool that people can use like Soundslides or ChicagoCrime.org.
- Study a programming language and built an automated system for resizing images with ImageMagick so you don’t have to waste so much time doing monotonous tasks.
- DO ANYTHING to engage yourself more

I love the Internet (and libraries) because they are the great equalizer–Information is basically free and it’s all up to how much time and effort you want to put towards doing something cool.

So while you’re young, take your time and energy and do something fulfilling. Sure, pay the bills jumping through the hoops and fetching bones when you have too but don’t burn out and just become another unimaginative automaton at a newspaper. Monotony and mediocrity is what ruined journalism over the past 30 years. Don’t fall in line.

And if the job really continues to suck, I hear both Roanoke.com and LJWorld.com/Lawrence.com are looking for a rock star (or seven!) right now.

“The average is the borderline that keeps mere men in their place. Those who step over the line are heroes by the very act. Go.”

- Henry Rollins