Quote:
Originally Posted by ATLjon 
No, sorry, unemployed until Monday, when I start my new job. I was just bitching that because I'm 29 and the new guy has a salary history 10 years longer than mine, he gets to make 70,000 for doing less than me.
No, sorry, unemployed until Monday, when I start my new job. I was just bitching that because I'm 29 and the new guy has a salary history 10 years longer than mine, he gets to make 70,000 for doing less than me.
I don't want to piss you off here, and without being familiar with your situation, I can only speak in generalities, but here goes.
I was intrigued because you mentioned journalism, which is my line of work. Well, old sport, experience does count in that field. I do not Tweet. I do not have a Facebook page. I am not Linked In. I do not own a smartphone. Or an Ipad. Or an I-anything. I cannot upload stories to the web on my own. I cannot fathom why anyone would bother with Outlook. But I do have a few things going for me.
I know how to spell, and I never learned how to use a spell-checking device back in the day when you had to press some sort of button to make it happen. I know how to get people to tell me things, whether they want to or not. I know how to read court documents and municipal budgets. I know a PRP from a NPDES. I can write 2,000 publishable words in an hour. I know that when the cops find a body riddled with bullets inside a church, it's a homicide, not a murder, at least for the time being. The phone numbers that are my bread-and-butter are in a Rolodex, not a computer that turns useless in windstorm, and that Rolodex has home phone and cell numbers for the mayor, several judges, the sheriff, the state's attorney, I can't count how many other elected officials and sources with only initials. I can write an obit that will make you cry and an expose on wasteful spending that will make you mad and a gotcha that'll make someone resign and a review of buffet restaurants that will make you laugh.
I can do all of that now, but I could not do that when I was 29. My point is, tech whizzes are common these days, but true journalists are hard to find. Knock on wood, I've never had trouble finding a job. But I have seen younger folks struggle who have all the cutting-edge technology skills but cannot look a politician in the eye and say "You, sir, are without clothes." Or write a sentence with fewer than 40 words and eight prepositional phrases. Anyone (except maybe me) can learn the technology. But there is no substitute for experience when it comes to this line of work, especially now. All the dead-weight dinosaurs with bloated salaries got laid off or took early retirement long ago. The ones who are left tend to be pretty darn good, which is why they're still around.
Again, I don't know your situation, and I really like your posts on the thread and seeing the stuff you find. I'm glad you've got another job--I wouldn't be on this soap box otherwise. But just because someone knows more about the digital world than someone else doesn't necessarily make them a better journalist. That's all I'm saying.
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