by Susan J. Demas
June 1, 2009

This column is beginning to feel like writing the obituaries — which, coincidentally, is where many reporters used to get their start at major metros.

In two years, 11 dailies have disappeared, according to the morbidly informative chronicler of the industry’s demise, NewspaperDeathWatch.com. Twelve papers have eliminated print editions in favor of online-only editions, half of which are notably in Michigan. All told, in 18 months, 15,000 journalism jobs have disintegrated.

And yet college journalism program enrollment is booming — up 42 percent in 10 years, according to research by the University of Georgia.

Talk about a disconnect. But I’m guessing that a lot of students are like Emily Bisek, a junior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“Honestly, and it could be because I’m young or naive or all of the above, but problems with the newspaper industry don’t worry me all that much,” she told a Capital Times reporter. “I know the industry is changing; it’s in flux due to the Internet and new technologies being used to tell stories. I guess I feel that, at the very least, as a young graduate entering the workforce in about a year, that I’m a little bit ahead of the curve as far as being exposed to the new technologies and being part of a different age of reporters.”

Sorry to be blunt, but Ms. Bisek is beyond naïve. Every j-school student knows how to use The Twitter, The Facebook and even the old granny site, The MySpace. They can shoot video with a small handheld camera, not to mention their cell phone. They know all about blogging and how to post audio and video clips online along with their stories.

What’s not clear to me is if any of them can write, although that skill appears to be on the backburner in the high-tech-style-over-substance ethos dominating media today. It is utterly ridiculous to demand reporters shoot video, Twitter and write on several stories a day (especially for $21,000 a year) — and the quality suffers. But post that as an ad on JournalismJobs.com, and I guarantee you’ll get at least 300 applicants, even for a weekly in Wichita.

Which underscores the real problem — there just aren’t that many jobs out there, even for the most talented, experienced journalists. Those who get hired have to walk in with the mentality that it’s a temp job — one that could easily disappear after the company’s next quarterly revenue report comes in. Or they can go the unpaid/severely underpaid blogging route and hope to weather the storm, which usually only works if you plan to live in your mom’s basement indefinitely.

Not all wannabe journos are jejune. Take UW senior Ashley Spencer, who will likely take a PR or advertising gig after graduation.

“Why would I want to be low-paid and really struggle to find a job?” she told the Capital Times. “I feel like journalists are completely undervalued and work very hard for very little pay. And with the added stress of the profession and the economic situation, I just decided that this isn’t where I wanted to go with my life.”

Some might call her a sellout. I think she should be applauded for knowing what she wants and doesn’t. Being a journalist, especially in this market, will never make you rich. If you do your job right, it probably won’t make you many friends, since you’re likely to rile the mayor, the police and even the local animal shelter with hard-hitting stories.

And frankly, young reporters who aren’t willing to go all-in for their job just waste everybody’s time. Over the years as an editor, I worked with a handful who were smart, dedicated and passionate about their job of informing the public. A couple were truly good writers; the others were dogged reporters. They are what make the tedium of management, with its endless string of meetings, tenable.

Alas, they were the exception and not the rule. Many undergrads end up in journalism not because of any burning desire to be the next H.L. Mencken, but because they’re not sure what to do and it beats reading 12 books per class as English majors or dissecting pigs for biology.

The majority of reporters I worked with often expended more time trying to get out of stories than reporting them. Stereotypical, yes, but the young female reporters were obsessed with getting married, while the guys were preoccupied with getting some. That always seemed to trump tracking down health clinic funding or a City Council scandal.

For years, I’ve watched veteran journalist friends unable to land jobs because companies chose a 22-year-old they could get away with paying in peanuts. Unfortunately, newspapers often get what they pay for.

This was all extremely frustrating for me, since it was my job to put together a paper someone might want to read. Newspapers are understaffed as it is, and to have reporters flake on the few stories we were covering was disastrous.

Not all of them have jobs today, thanks to the ongoing media meltdown. Although I don’t wish ill on anyone, it’s probably for the best that quite a few have ended up in PR. They are much better paid and don’t have to deal with deadline pressure.

What I worry about is the thousands of tough, fearless reporters who have been fired or forced to jump ship. Even when the industry’s death spiral subsides, it will take a long time to recover from such a loss.

Susan J. Demas is a 2006 Knight Foundation Fellow in nonprofits journalism and a political analyst for Michigan Information & Research Service.