Should Journalists Be Amateurs or Professionals?

However historically and perhaps even more so today a career in writing or journalism has not always translated reliably into a lucrative career This reality is perhaps more wellknown when it comes to fiction writers whether it be Cormac McCarthy in the early stages of his career living in quota shack with no heat and running water in the foothillsquot He elected to do this rather than take on assignments that might come at the cost of his unique approach to fiction writing Even James Joyce often found himself resorting to hairbrained business schemes to try to supplement his payments from his writing and teaching Journalists though often enjoyed comparatively better career stability particularly in the golden age of newspapersThen things began to change As one journalism professor of mine used to say The Huffington Post killed the profession of being a columnist when it succeeded in doing the impossible getting writers to write for free Now with the rise of outlets such as The Huffington Post and the proliferation of social media which consists in essence of platforms that publish content in real time from uncompensated users this has continued all the more According to the Columbia Journalism Review in 2018 the median starting salary for a news reporter was 34150 Pay is particularly low at the nonmarquis outlets and in local news though some writers and freelancers who parlay their skills into more commercialminded writing assignments can be very wellcompensatedThis reality paired with another trend I have examined frequently in my columns that of the increasing ideological and stylistic homogeneity in the news media space invites an important and pressing question Will journalism increasingly see the rise of the amateurs those who make a living in more lucrative sectors and produce their writings on the side To this point some of the best commentators and essayists I know including Alexander Zubatov Gerfried Ambrosch and Vahaken Mouradian all have day jobs and would likely prefer to keep them bringing to mind that lyric from the 1978 Dire Straits song quotSultans of Swingquot quotAnd Harry doesn39t mind if he doesn39t make the sceneHe39s got a daytime job he39s doing alrightquot Even TS Eliot the man I would put forward as the greatest writer of the 20th century kept his job as a banker a job he was apparently quite good at despite his consistently accumulating literary fame He was reportedly adamant about not resigning until his wife39s declining health demanded it For instance even in announcing the shuttering of The Criterion the famous literary magazine he edited Eliot wrote quotNo one expected that it would be more than an 39amateur39 review its editing was the evening occupation of an editor who being on the staff of a City bank was not in a position to accept a salaryquotFor David Gelernter the polymath Yale computer science professor and onetime target of the Unabomber he chose to pursue a career in technology originally so that his income would never be dependent just on his writing and tinkering with ideas Having that latter sort of arrangement Gelernter feared would inevitably result in having to write on topics he did find worthwhile or worse yet take stances that did not accord with his actual views And though he has no formal training in biology or any number of the other subjects on which he writes his commentaries and magazine pieces are routinely hailed as deeply insightful and frequently trigger extensive debate But this should not be altogether surprising as I narrated in The Post and Courier this past spring many of the great insights throughout history have been the work of amateurs those in the enviable position of being able to bring a fresh eye to the subject rather than be unduly bogged down in the dogmas of a given fieldIn August of this year the data scientist Jonatan Pallesen tweeted quotBillionaires should fund many more independent thinkers researchers and investigators The main channels are not working well and there aren39t great options for people to work outside themquot bringing to mind another argument I recently put forward that reservoirs of independent wealth though frequently maligned today have the potential to finance great thinking at a time when universities and the press are increasingly falling victim to intellectual conformity and their respective economic challenges This is one possible remedy for the 2020s iteration of the starving artist stereotype that of the burned out overworked and underpaid journalistNone of this is to argue that good writing or highquality journalism necessarily ought to be divorced from financial viability and Miguel from Madrid 1987 would no doubt agree it is not to revisit some Age of Exploration concept that one ought to be ashamed of being engaged in commerce Consider it a recognition of reality with layoffs rampant and with traditional new business models being impacted by the ascendancy of platforms editors have increasingly pushed clickability which as I have documented tends to come at the cost of quality not that quality to be clear was always mainstay of the journalism of yesteryear So I would not be at all surprised to see a growing number of commentators essayists and journalists with day jobs perhaps emulating the model of the parttime mayor or the parttime state legislator such as is the case in many states Perhaps one day it will even go so far that we will see aspiring writers cut out the middleman of publicists and public relations teams and pay outlets to publish their work as the idea of a journalist being considered an employee or even a contractor is further called into doubtClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet

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Should Journalists Be Amateurs or Professionals?

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Erich J. Prince

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