It’s all about the future

According to everyone this side of the Federal Reserve Board, the economy is in for a bumpy ride this year. Actually, the word our local regional economists used at the Economic Forecast luncheon on Tuesday was recession, coming soon!

One of the industries ahead of the curve, on the downside, is newspapering. Ad revenues are down, newsroom jobs are being cut, readers continue to be lured away by TV and Internet headlines, and those of us clutching our AARP cards just want to make it out with enough left over for the occasional can of cat food as a treat in our golden years.

But, here’s a surprise — people are still going to journalism school. I know this because my alumni association keeps having eager young j-students call and chat me up for an annual donation. Good work on the upsell, Danny.

Having spent some time yesterday feeling old for having to background Gary Hart for the under-30 half of the staff, and following this Mike Royko discussion on the Newsosaur blog, I decided to drop the name of the late nationally syndicated columnist into the fundraising conversation. Yep, Danny had to spell it – with a C.

But he not only wants to trod the unsung copy-editing path to the dark side of a journalism career, he’s also taking business courses, because he knows we’re all self-employed at one time or another. He also works on a weekly comedy show on the campus TV station, helping the vid-kids tell their stories in a coherent manner and building his own multimedia skills.

So, Danny and the reporters who were in diapers when former Sen. Hart singlehandedly opened up presidential candidates’ private lives to enquiring minds with cameras rolling are the future of this industry. That is, if the short-sighted, penny-pinching, bottom-line thinking of media conglomerates that don’t see why consolidating copy desks and outsourcing city council coverage overseas are screamingly bad ideas doesn’t drive them all into investment banking and to hell with an informed citizenry.

It’s all about us Newsosaurs sharing whatever wisdom we have and helping the younguns fight the corporate madness. That would be the best legacy from the feisty boomers to the collaborative millennials, I think. That, and a healthy contribution to your favorite j-school scholarship fund, of course.

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