It’s all about the next generation

My esteemed blogging colleague, Carrie Pinsky, has recently posted her concerns about the Millennial generation moving into the workforce. Check it out next door at The Business Route Less Traveled.

I must respectfully disagree, based entirely on personal observation. This summer it has been my privilege to meet and work with three members of the dreaded Millennial generation who have been the complete opposite of Carrie’s description.

You’ve seen their work. Joe Schmidtbauer’s blog, Outside the Batter’s Box, gave us insights into the life of a summer ballplayer. Jenna Jordan has written on a variety of subjects for our print edition – everything from the foreclosure crisis to the cost-of-living index.  Brett Wagner’s photos of the aftermath of the Windsor tornado were just part of the portfolio he’s built for us.

What they all have in common, other than this is the first election in which they will be able to vote — but won’t be able to lift a glass of champagne in celebration if their candidates win — is that they all have day jobs to support their pernicious journalism habit. Far from slacking after putting in the hours landscaping or cooking or working retail, or coasting on the family fortune, our interns have been going to the keyboard or into the field to develop career skills before they head off to college to learn even more (we hope).

And, Carrie, they all came to us. They took the initiative to send in the resume, pull together the portfolio, dress up for the interview, and follow through with e-mails and phone calls. Once we brought them on, they’ve done whatever has been asked of them, and for the most part, entirely on their own. I can count on one hand the number of times Brett and Joe have been in the office; we’ve worked entirely electronically, but they’ve always met deadline and always been available for assignments and editing conferences.

And that might be the nubbins of what really makes us Boomers nervous about Millennials. They get the job done with a set of tools most of us may not entirely understand and secretly still consider a novelty, if not a passing fad or a sucking black hole of time.

As a generation, we had our share of individuals who made The Greatest Generation despair for the future of the workplace as they knew it. And they were right — we effectively killed The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, those real Mad Men — opened up opportunities for women and minorities, and ushered some badly needed innovation and creativity into the U.S. economy.

Now it’s our own turn to feel like an endangered species. Let’s just hope the Millennials have more respect for our accumulated wisdom than we did for our parents’ back in the day.

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