Reflections

Answer: These temporary work positions can be paid or unpaid, will probably last for a few months, and your chances of getting a job without one are both slim and fat.

Question: What are internships, Alex.

It became kind of a game toward the end of the trip: we’d sit down with our host at whatever establishment was on the literary for the day, and ask questions. Eventually, one of us would cave and ask the inevitable question – how do we get a job with your company?

The answer was just as inevitable. You’ll need an internship!

The real world’s a competitive place, today more than ever. The economy has created a job-seeking environment that is Darwinian at best, hopeless at worst.

Because of that, employers are demanding more and more from their applicants. It’s no longer enough to have a degree with a high GPA; even extracurricular activities like working for the school paper aren’t going to get one far.

This rather intimidating realization was perhaps the most applicable lesson from the trip. It certainly gives credence to the Communication department’s requirement that all students have to have an internship to graduate (a requirement I wasn’t a huge fan until this trip).

It’s also a rather ironic realization – I’ve felt for a while that journalism in particular and communications-related jobs in general are almost better learned on the job than in the classroom. Employers seem to realize this, as they won’t hire you unless you have on the job experience. But for some reason, a college degree is required as well. Many of our hosts said up front they don’t care about what your degree was in, or even in what your GPA was. The question is then begged: why is it important to have a degree at all? Wouldn’t it be better to just jump right into internships out of high school?

I’m certainly not saying there’s no value in going to college, particularly a liberal arts college. It just seems more and more like employers don’t care much about it, beyond it being present and accounted for on one’s resume.

Besides the importance of internships and the apparent meaninglessness of modern higher education, I learned a great deal on this trip. Much of it is related to media; some of it is not. I’ll organize this paper into a series of short, pithy sections in which I’ll detail the most salient points.

 

Book publishing is cool in ways I had never dreamed of

That’s not to say that I’m applying for a job with Random House, but it is true that publishing had never really popped up on my radar when considering potential career tracks after school. It checks all the boxes – there’s editing, marketing, public relations. Pretty much everything except writing the books themselves.

Probably the most interesting tidbit I learned from the book publishers we visited came from Regnery Press – apparently, the average novel sells only 2,500 copies. This makes sense when you reflect on the number of books that populate the fiction section in most bookstores, but it’s a depressing number. I’ve tried my hand at novel writing (it’s hard), but now that I know that even if I did manage to actually finish a book it probably wouldn’t sell, I’ll have to find other motivation. Personal satisfaction, perhaps?

 

Cities are dirty and full of people with better things to do

Admittedly, D.C. was better in this regard. But while New York was the worst offender, both places are large, fast paced, dirty, and full of rude people. Especially people in the customer service business, ironically. Restaurant employees, shop owners, the like. You’ve caught them on a good day if they’re not glaring at you for having the audacity to give them your money.

I’m not sure if it’s a pacific northwest thing, or just a smaller city thing, but I’m much more accustomed to being treated with a little respect  when I walk into a place of business. Not because I’m all that, but just because they don’t have a place of business without their customers.

On the other hand, they don’t seem to be going out of business, so maybe it’s me that’s missing something…

Bias is inevitable; embracing it is sad

It’s been pounded into us in the journalism classes I’ve taken – you can’t defeat bias. No matter how straight you attempt to look at an issue, your life experiences and worldview affect the way you see it, and thus report on it. There are ways to minimize its effect – being aware of your bias, having editors that don’t agree with every word you speak, etc – but it’s always going to be there. Reporters know it, readers should know it.

But when a media outlet decides to wholeheartedly embrace their bias and report the news from their narrow perspective, it just seems like they’re slapping blinders on.

We encountered this type of philosophy on both sides of the aisle – Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) on the left, Eagle publishing (Regnery Press and Human Events magazine) on the right. Both places have admirable goals, but both are committed to covering their particular patch of territory in a very one-sided way.

It’s one thing to believe in a set of ideals and evangelize for them. But it’s not journalism. And it’s not what these two places doing. FAIR has ads plastering their walls advertising books they’ve published attacking conservative figureheads. The editor from Regnery Press as much as admitted that they’re not in business for ideals but to get books on the bestseller list and make money.

Of course, there’s a chance that I’m just being a naive college student and these folks know something about the world that I don’t. Perhaps bias is deep-seated enough that even attempts to minimize its effect are futile and we all should just be dogmatically honest about the perspective we come from.

I’ll take a small leap of faith here, though, and assume that that’s not the case. Today’s world has made it incredibly easy to become a hardened cynic at a very young age, but I can’t fully believe that ideals are quite that far out of reach.

If they are, I suspect I’m in the wrong business.

 

Foreign correspondence is hip and awesome

Here’s one I didn’t expect – reporting from overseas, particularly danger zones, sounds enticing.

I didn’t expect this because I don’t particularly like reporting to begin with. I have a lot of respect for it, and there’s certain types that I enjoy (investigative), but to get to the point where you’re doing the big stories you have to climb a ladder with rungs made of headlines that read “New reality show even more vulgar that old reality show” and “Woman swears dog is direct descendent of Napoleon.”

On top of that, I’ve discovered I’m just not very good at it. I’ve learned a lot, and I suspect I could continue to learn and get to where I was pretty decent at it. But I just don’t have a natural nose for digging up stories and coming up with new angles to look at topics from. So I suspect that if I tried to make a career of it, I would quickly end up becoming frustrated.

The AP and the Newseum, in particular, alerted me to something I hadn’t considered before, however. Doing work overseas would be fascinating. A couple of reasons – I’m guessing that if one is working for the AP from Mexico, one isn’t doing many stories about Napoleon’s dog child. The stories that seem to come from reporters in those situations are stories that matter, stories that change lives and make governments angry.

The other reason is I love the idea of putting myself in danger for something that matters. Call me a hopeless romantic, and it is admittedly a rather naive thing to think, but writing a story important enough to put you on a hit list is worth doing.

Perhaps I’d think otherwise as bullets are whizzing by my head, but whenever I see a picture of a photographer running beside a solider into a fire zone, I can’t help but think “I could do that.”

However, it’s a lifestyle that doesn’t mesh with what I want even more – a family. Perhaps in another life I’ll learn Chinese fluently and cover their takeover of the world on location, but in this life I’d like to have children. And I’m happy with that.

Hostels are groovy and not full of murderers

I’m thoroughly sold on the idea of hostels. My last experience with a hostel (in New York last spring, incidentally) left me rather skeptical. A grouchy front desk guard with a thick foreign accent and a penchant for yelling at confused visitors thrust some linens at me and muttered guttural warnings and demands before I was able to escape to the seedy, insecure room which was already inhabited by a sleep-deprived French dude. This hostel, however, is lovely. Owned by Hostelling International, it’s quite large, filled with mostly friendly foreign travelers, and stuffed with thoughtful amenities. Like couches and Wi-Fi and a free beer night. I hate beer, but that’s not the point. The point is, I feel appreciated here based solely on the fact that I’m far away from home. And that’s pretty cool, I guess.

Bloomberg was creepy

We received a tour of the Bloomberg building (massive) from a quiet young man who probably had better things to be doing but was kind enough to show us around anyway (my theory: he lost a bet).

The building is constructed mainly of glass (to enhance transparency), the elevators only go to high traffic floors (to enhance community), the artwork is obscure and abstract (to enhance despair over the state of modern art), and the snacks are free (to remind us all that we are most certainly not just cogs in a giant media machine that will eventually consume our souls).

While impressive, it was perhaps the most Orwellian experience I have had to date. I have no doubt that every second of our stay in the building was recorded; I wouldn’t be surprised to find that our heart rates and chemical levels were measured for analysis to improve on the near transparent formula they have for making people feel relaxed there. Near transparent, but not quite. The furniture is just a little too plush, the glass just a little too prevalent, the art just a little too…too. From the moment we entered, I couldn’t get away from the feeling that everything in the building was carefully calculated to make its inhabitants feel a certain way. Open space to make you feel relaxed; glass to make you feel honest; free food to make you forget the gnawing sense of unease that your mother warned you never to ignore. It was creepy. I wanted to leave. The New York Times, which we visited next, felt more like a workplace, were people gathered to, you know, do work. It also felt like there was significantly less chance of your soul being sucked out by a corporate void there. I would definitely work for the Times; I would definitely not work for Bloomberg. Not that I’d ever be offered a job at either place, but don’t pay that any mind.

After the tour, we were ushered to a meeting room made of glass (the shades were drawn, however. Conspiracy? Hmm…) and told by a genuinely nice lady that we were all sworn to secrecy. Sort of. Her exact words were “all of this is off the record,” but nobody actually knows what that means anymore. So, on the off-chance that there is a sniper team following me right now, I’ll keep my descriptions mysteriously vague. Suffice to say that they have the most impressive intranet/database I’ve ever seen or heard of, accessed on completely custom computer equipment. The amount of money in that building is staggering; I did a few quick calculations and estimate that the actual dollar figure would give me a heart attack.

With a few quick clicks, Bloomberg people can access incredibly detailed financial (and other) information on just about any company worth mentioning in the world. You can have your very own Bloomberg terminal for the price of $1,800 a month. Worth it? Very probably.

The New York Times, by contrast, was lovely. Walking through the hallways of the Gray Lady feels distinctly less like being in an ant farm compared to Bloomberg (an improvement). Rather, it feels like a place where one comes to do actual work and then go home feeling good about it afterward.

The graphics department there is quite impressive. Their staff is around 20 strong, publishing graphics and animations to illustrate and support stories both online and in print. They even do some of their own reporting. I made a note of this for implementation at The Whitworthian.

 

The law is complicated and I’m glad I don’t have to do it

We visited the Student Press Law Center, which was probably the most directly beneficial visit of the trip. It’s an organization dedicated to providing free legal advice to student journalists. What this means is that they defend a lot of student newspapers from their fascist administrations.

Whitworth is a private institution, so many of the First Amendment rights don’t directly apply to us. We’ve been blessed with an administration that has chosen to behave as if they did, however, a fact for which I can’t be grateful enough. However, it’s still a bit disconcerting to know that the free hand we enjoy with our press could be taken away without our being able to offer much resistance.

Perhaps the most interesting tidbit of the visit was hearing how the courts are handling cases involving social media. Basically, the courts have no idea how to handle social media. Unsurprising, since most judges are of the “the internets are Al Gore’s devil creation” time of life. At this point the basic approach is to shoehorn social media cases into precedents of physical media cases. This works…mostly…it’ll be interesting to watch how it all shakes down over the next few years. But until then, organizations have a little leeway in how they handle stories related to social media, since the law hasn’t really caught up with it yet.

The Newseum may, in all likelihood, be a level of Heaven

The best news of the trip comes, without irony or pun, from the Newseum. Six floors of all things journalism. I bought two books published by The Onion, which should give you some insight into the degree of cynicism I have already developed at the ripe old age of 22.

Honestly, however, it’s one of the best places I’ve ever visited, Smithsonian and, yes, even Disneyland notwithstanding. There’s a gallery there dedicated to Pulitzer prize winning photos, of which there are roughly a lot. They’ve been officially giving them out since 1946, I believe, and in the 60s they began giving out two a year, one for news and one for features. The result is one of the most powerful and emotional 60 minute experience I’ve ever had.

Photos that will make you smile, even chuckle; others that take your breath away. Most powerful of all are the ones that nearly brought me to tears – a picture of a devastated survivor of the Columbine massacre embracing a fellow student, his face frozen in an agonized cry; a shot of a Sudanese child, curled up in starvation, a vulture sitting patiently in the background; human suffering on a scale I’ve never even begun to experience. And probably never will. But by gazing at the timeless still recordings hanging on the walls at the Newseum, empathy springs naturally and unbidden.

Unfortunately, it springs straight to the tear ducts, which is, of course, unacceptable for a man as manly as I. Somebody must have smeared onions on the walls, I explained to the woman next to me before I scuttled from the room.

The ‘L’ subway line in New York is probably another level

In New York, NY, I saw Boba Fett playing an accordion in the subway. Allow that to sink in, gentle reader. It may help to know that I am a geek, that I may or may not have a belt buckle in the shape of Boba Fett’s head, and that if a Wookie had suddenly barged into our hostel and asked for volunteers for an assault on a small European nation, I would’ve followed without hesitation.

That last bit might not be all that relevant, but don’t pay any mind. The point is, this guy made my day.

 

Thank God I’m a country boy

Some of my classmates decided after our time in New York that it was the sort of place they wanted to live.

I decided it was the sort of place that makes me glad I live elsewhere. I’m not precisely a country boy (I don’t think you can be a geek and a country boy at the same time…) but I’m definitely not a city boy either. If I had my own place in the city where I could retreat and get away from everything, it might be different. But it just doesn’t seem like the friendliest place to a guy whose idea of a fun time involves hanging out with a few friends playing video games and guzzling Mt. Dew…

 

I like advertising; I don’t like its stunted stepbrother, PR

I hadn’t really realized this fact before this trip, but I could never do PR.

Well, never is a strong word. But I would much rather do advertising. Between Saatchi & Saatchi and Ketchum, I would work for the first doing anything before I took a job at the second (edit: because I’m going to have so many options, I’d turn down a job at a giant PR firm…right…).

PR is just too…soft, for lack of a better word. It relies entirely on convincing other people to do your job for you. You have to convince the client you have a good idea; then convince their marketing department to pay for it; then convince the media to cover it; then convince your client it was worth tens of thousands of dollars; then go home and convince yourself you’re not wasting your life away pandering to the rest of the world.

Advertising on the other hand is active. You have an idea, you create it, you pay for it, and it happens. It seems like it’s easier to track your results and get hard data, and you get to do a lot of the things PR agencies do anyway.

I’m hoping to jump into a job doing marketing, which is similar but distinct from both fields. I’ll probably end up doing some of all three, however. But I already know which part I’ll enjoy most.

 

Non-profit news organizations are the way of the future

Here’s something that pleased my inner cynic: non-profit newsrooms. Propublica, primarily. Bias is inevitable, as discussed above, but it’s worse when your bias is also writing your checks. It’s a story I’ve heard from several professional and formerly professional reporters – when the big story paints the big advertiser in a bad light, the big story suddenly doesn’t look so big anymore. Doesn’t even look like it’s worth running. Too bad.

The solution to this, or one solution, is to run ad-free. A non-profit business model is an effective way to accomplish this (or so I gather). While you’re still accepting big checks from people, it’s often private interests. Propublica did a smart thing and had their benefactor pay for a few years up front so even if they got mad they wouldn’t be able to damage the news gathering process unduly.

It’s a problem that will likely plague the journalism industry until the four horsemen raze it all to the ground, but at least there are organizations out there trying to do something better.

 

Celebrity journalism is not journalism

I’ll file sensationalistic journalism under this heading, too. This primarily came up at TV Guide, the Smoking Gun, and surprisingly (or, perhaps, not surprisingly) at Human Events magazine.

When your newsgathering day involves finding out who Brad Pitt is sleeping with, it’s time to reevaluate your life trajectory. It’s not news; it’s gossip.

Sadly, it’s also the most popular type of publication in the nation. President Obama drives nation into debt: one thousand page views. Katy Perry is pregnant by WHOM???: the internet explodes with page views.

Ambush interviews, like those practiced by Human Events, are not journalism either. Not good journalism, anyway. I suppose there are contexts, perhaps, where these might be appropriate. But when you go out with the intent of making someone look bad or unprepared, it’s “gotcha journalism,” also known as “terrible journalism.”

The year’s top ten craziest mug shots, as found on the Smoking Gun’s front page, is not news either. Interesting? Perhaps. Worth publishing? From a certain perspective. Journalism? Hardly. It’s sensationalism barely above the level practiced by trashy tabloids.

I could go on, but now my blood pressure is up.

 

Twelve pages is a lot of pages

I had no idea I had this many reflections when I started writing. Looking back over this paper, I’m still not convinced I actually have this many reflections.

 

In the end

The Media Impact Tour was a blast. Just being able to say I’ve been in some of those places, places where news is happening and stories are published that shape the course of the nation, is cool.

The opportunity to talk with people who are working in the field, particularly young people not long out of college, was extremely beneficial. Even though I’m not actively looking for a job (with any luck, I have one already nailed down), the insight gained from hearing recent job seekers and from the HR professionals who hired them was valuable.

Internships; experience; extracurricular activities above and beyond the call of duty; a degree in whatever and a GPA that isn’t dragging its knuckles on the floor: these are the things that will get you a job in today’s world. Perhaps in less competitive environments (i.e., not in New York), the standards are different. Of course, there aren’t as many jobs in less competitive environments (one wonders if those two facts are related…hmm…). But the bottom line is, all this is making me glad I chose to focus more on the Whitworthian than my GPA for the last couple of years. Not that I’ve let my grades go completely; but I believe the time spent working on the paper will prove to be much more valuable in my future than straight As.

Between job seeking insights, interesting places to visit, and three weeks on the east coast, this trip was well worth the time and the cost. I’d recommend it to any student, if only for the odd chance that they, too, will get the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Boba Fett playing an accordion on the subway.

 

Finding the Middle

If a cow had chanced to run by me on the street this fine evening, I would have gone Han Solo on that beast and draped myself in its steaming innards.

Too graphic, you say? Too shocking? Shockingly cold, mayhaps. Cold, and windy.

This is a sad turn of events, as the last two days have actually been rather nice (the sun shines on the day my girlfriend visits. Coincidence? I think not). I suppose it’s because we’re in D.C., where the winds of politics can shift at any moment, and a bright sunny day of aisle-crossing progress can suddenly become a soul crushing filibuster of overcast skies and icy gales.

I realize that I’ve talked about the weather in most of my blog posts. I refuse to apologize for this, though I realize I should probably move on.

We visited the Student Press Law Center today, which was probably the most directly beneficial visit of the trip so far. It’s an organization dedicated to providing free legal advice to student journalists. What this means is that they defend a lot of student newspapers from their fascist administrations.

Whitworth is a private institution, so many of the First Amendment rights don’t directly apply to us. We’ve been blessed with an administration that has chosen to behave as if they did, however, a fact for which I can’t be grateful enough. However, it’s still a bit disconcerting to know that the free hand we enjoy with our press could be taken away without our being able to offer much resistance.

Perhaps the most interesting tidbit of the visit was hearing how the courts are handling cases involving social media. Basically, the courts have no idea how to handle social media. Unsurprising, since most judges are of the “the internets are Al Gore’s devil creation” time of life. At this point the basic approach is to shoehorn social media cases into precedents of physical media cases. This works…mostly…it’ll be interesting to watch how it all shakes down over the next few years. But until then, organizations have a little leeway in how they handle stories related to social media, since the law hasn’t really caught up with it yet.

Newseum = happiness? On site reporter tells all!

It’s cold in D.C. today. Not quite as brutishly, rudely cold as New York was for the majority of our time there. But still. Uncomfortably cold. I wouldn’t mind so much if the cold stayed outside, but when it decides to leak in the (closed) window at the foot of my bed and wake me up every five minutes to remind me that, why yes, it’s still cold, I take exception.

Not that it matters to the weather, cold hearted demigod that it is.

But that’s all an aside. The important news of the day comes, without irony or pun, from the Newseum. Six floors of all things journalism. I bought two books published by The Onion, which should give you some insight into the degree of cynicism I have already developed at the ripe old age of 22.

Honestly, however, it’s one of the best places I’ve ever visited, Smithsonian and, yes, even Disneyland notwithstanding. There’s a gallery there dedicated to Pulitzer prize winning photos, of which there are roughly a lot. They’ve been officially giving them out since 1946, I believe, and in the 60s they began giving out two a year, one for news and one for features. The result is one of the most powerful and emotional 60 minute experience I’ve ever had.

Photos that will make you smile, even chuckle; others that take your breath away. Most powerful of all are the ones that nearly brought me to tears – a picture of a devastated survivor of the Columbine massacre embracing a fellow student, his face frozen in an agonized cry; a shot of a Sudanese child, curled up in starvation, a vulture sitting patiently in the background; human suffering on a scale I’ve never even begun to experience. And probably never will. But by gazing at the timeless still recordings hanging on the walls at the Newseum, empathy springs naturally and unbidden.

Unfortunately, it springs straight to the tear ducts, which is, of course, unacceptable for a man as manly as I. Somebody must have smeared onions on the walls, I explained to the woman next to me before I scuttled from the room.

Bottom line – if D.C. weren’t already better than New York just by…well…being less rude and filthy…than the sheer fact that it is home to the Newseum would tilt the scales in its favor.

Of Bloomberg and Such

Our visits today took us to the Bloomberg building (founded by the mayor of this fine town), and the New York Times’ graphics department.

We received a tour of the Bloomberg building (massive) from a quiet young man who probably had better things to be doing but was kind enough to show us around anyway (my theory: he lost a bet).

The building is constructed mainly of glass (to enhance transparency), the elevators only go to high traffic floors (to enhance community), the artwork is obscure and abstract (to enhance despair over the state of modern art), and the snacks are free (to remind us all that we are most certainly not just cogs in a giant media machine that will eventually consume our souls).

After the tour, we were ushered to a meeting room made of glass (the shades were drawn, however. Conspiracy? Hmm…) and told by a genuinely nice lady that we were all sworn to secrecy. Sort of. Her exact words were “all of this is off the record,” but nobody actually knows what that means anymore. So, on the off-chance that there is a sniper team following me right now, I’ll keep my descriptions mysteriously vague. Suffice to say that they have the most impressive intranet/database I’ve ever seen or heard of, accessed on completely custom computer equipment. The amount of money in that building is staggering; I did a few quick calculations and estimate that the actual dollar figure would give me a heart attack.

With a few quick clicks, Bloomberg people can access incredibly detailed financial (and other) information on just about any company worth mentioning in the world. You can have your very own Bloomberg terminal for the price of $1,800 a month. Worth it? Very probably.

The New York Times was lovely, as always. Walking through the hallways of the Gray Lady feels distinctly less like being in an antfarm compared to Bloomberg (an improvement).

The graphics department there is quite impressive. Their staff is around 20 strong, publishing graphics and animations to illustrate and support stories both online and in print. They even do some of their own reporting. I made a not of this for implementation at The Whitworthian.

All in all, it was a fascinating, productive day. Well worth the walking, and excellent preparation for bed.