How The New York Times Screwed Up An Easy Trend Story

Have you read Cara Buckley's piece in The New York Times entitled, "Starting Salaries but New York Tastes"?

Exactly what was the point of that article?

If you haven't read it, a quick recap by way of an extended nut graf:

Having one’s mother mail rotating boxes of old clothing is just one of the myriad ways that young newcomers to the city of a certain income — that is, those who are neither investment bankers nor being floated by their parents — manage to live the kind of lives they want in New York. Every year around this time, tens of thousands of postcollegiate people in their 20s flood the city despite its soaring expenses. They are high on ambition, meager of budget and endlessly creative when it comes to making ends meet.

Some tactics have long been chronicled: sharing tiny apartments with strangers. Sharing those apartments with eight strangers. Eating cheap lunches and skipping dinners — not just to save money, but so that drinks pack more of a punch and fewer need be consumed.

But there are smaller measures, no less ingenious, that round out the lifestyle. These young people sneak flasks of vodka into bars, flirt their way into clubs, sublet their walk-in closets, finagle their way into open-bar parties and put off haircuts until they visit their hometowns, even if those hometowns are thousands of miles away.

In general, the article is interesting. As New York's prices get higher, and the economy crisis reaches deeper, the young professionals that move to the city post-Sex and the City absolutely have trouble making ends meet. When high expectations meet low salaries, it's cause for any interesting article in the Metro section.

But hold on, just one second: this article is indicative of truly poor news judgment.

Why?

Because it allows for a local trend story that isn't even-handed. And as all journalists know, you're supposed to interview all sides of a story.

In the article, Buckley uses characters/sources that are all living beyond their means in a decidedly unequal way: notably, putting extremely overpriced drinks, habits or digs in Manhattan's most sought-after neighborhoods above basic daily nutrition. While that's an interesting and notable trend, there's not a single mention of those unsupported young professionals who do the opposite -- live within their means to get ahead.

"But wait one second!" you say. "The Times runs a story like that all the time! This story was a breath of fresh air, a new take on a perpetual phenomenon!"

That's true. But without a mention of the other side of a trend, a story about it shouldn't run.

What's more, the story doesn't even make use of comparable subjects: all of the sources in the article live in coveted neighborhoods of the young: Chelsea, West Village, downtown Brooklyn, Williamsburg. All of them profess having problems eating well-balanced meals. But guys like Peter Naddeo, a $15-an-hour musician, just can't be compared with Allison Mooney, a publicist in the West Village, or Adam Liebsohn, a communications strategist who makes $60,000 a year and lives in the East Village but finds it impossible to pay for a broadband connection. Some find it hard to eat out on a $3.50 plate of rice and beans.

Ever hear of the supermarket?

As an editor, I look at this group and I see problems: True, all the sources are on their own financially, but where are the people making $10 an hour or less, without college education or recently graduated and no longer allowed to live on loan checks? I know several people who pay less than $600 a month (far less than some of the rents mentioned in this article) and make ends meet freelancing -- as in, no full-time job, no benefits, no health insurance.

So to an editor's eye -- one that knows New York -- I ask: with all of these reporting holes, why?

Or more appropriately: so what?

To me, running an article like this is like running a piece on homeless people who drink away their money or use it on drugs. Without the article addressing the greater problem of, say, drug laws or the psychological problems of alcohol dependency, the article is one big, "so what?"

I feel the same way about this piece. It's as if the Times didn't want to pass judgment on the ridiculous fact that many of the sources in this piece are acting irrationally (to boot, without looking at why). So in avoiding showing the other (arguably more rational) side and putting it all into perspective -- which is what a good article should do, of course -- they condoned an article to run that was neither balanced nor fair.

Though the nut graf is to the point, it promises the wrong point in the words ahead. It is misleading and written for a different article. To reference a specific example, we see that this article is supposed to be about even better ways that poor young professionals manage living in such a high-priced city:

They are high on ambition, meager of budget and endlessly creative when it comes to making ends meet. (emphasis added)

But for many of the sources in this article, there was no creativity involved in making ends meet. For many, living and "making ends meet" was simply living extravagantly and making the wrong kinds of sacrifices to zero out the budget. Who cares how creative a person on a limited budget must be to make ends meet when that person has habits so easily beyond their means financially?

Maybe it wouldn't be so hard for a communications strategist pulling in 60K a year to afford broadband internet connectivity if he didn't live in such a high-priced real-estate area.

The effect the article leaves on its readers is also problematic. For an article that made such a point to note that these young professionals were not relying on trust funds or parents for additional income, it wildly misconstrues the overall, non-supported young professional population as irrational spenders -- and without figures, data, reasonable comparison or anything to round out the trend, it's a misleading, failed piece.

And for that, I say, go back out there and keep reporting.

Mitchel Stevens’ Guide to Employment and Questions

Editor's Note: The following column is part of an anonymous weekly humor column chronicling the struggle of a new, young journalist out in the working world. You may find the author's previous posts in the archives. --The Ed.

A while back I was sitting at one of those circular conference tables for an interview with the HR woman reading over my impeccable, single-spaced resume.

“I like what I see here, Mitchel,” she said.

After all, who wouldn’t? I read through all the tips. I scoured pages from Lifehacker and Mediabistro. I practice in front of a mirror. I’ve done interviews with politicians, writers, former bosses, phone calls, voice chats, telegrams and even pitches over drinks. I’ve been screamed at, shouted at and can usually turn most conversations around over 20 minutes.

“But I can’t help but notice, you’re a writer.”

Except for this. I looked across the table at HR woman and nodded. Her eyes lifted from my spectacular, god-like resume and settled on me. And we waited. To give you an idea, I just took a break from writing this. I went and got some coffee. Scratched my hand. Leafed through a few spare pages of newspaper I have laying around. Then I came back to this.

“That’s right,” I said. After all, this interview was for an assistant editorial position. The job promised plenty of opportunities for copious busywork, editing, coding, writing minor copy and cleaning up other writers’ pieces, as they’d file in. Nothing too awful for an entry-level position and exactly what I had went to college for.

HR woman sucked in her teeth and then let out a tiny sigh.

“Well, what we’re looking for is an editor. Someone who can pay strict attention to details and sentence structure. Someone who isn’t so concerned with the writing side, but who wants to work in the production side.”

I semi-followed everything she said. After all, don’t you need to start writing in order to learn how to edit? Wouldn’t you need to be concerned with how pieces flow in order to understand individual traits? C’mon, not everything can be as soul-crushingly boring as a Washington Times article.

“Well,” I said, “I was an editor at [UNNAMED COLLEGE PAPER] and I do proof my own work before sending it in, you know.”

“Oh, I do, but you need to understand. We’re looking for someone who is very detail oriented. And you? Well, Mitchel, you’re just a writer. You’re concerned with how the story is just written. We’re looking for someone to be concerned with how the story’s made.”

Mind you, one of the other provisions for this job was to come in weekends, sit at a computer and monitor weather reports. God forbid if my strict attention to detail failed me while glued to a self-refreshing screen every ten minutes.

Suffice to say, I didn’t get the job. But it’s odd, since I’ve run into this same question while interviewing with two other extremely different organizations than the first. I’m not sure if this is an HR ploy used to knock candidates on their ass, or if they’re all so mildly retarded that HR across the land use a hive mind. This is, as my father tells me, a simple get. It’s used to irk a candidate, unease them and force them into an awkward silence. To see if they can think on their feet.

It’s this same get that inspired a generation of do-it-yourselfers who got tired of being pissed on by the same question from HR or dot-coms who realized that there are thousands of writers hungry for work and they can be cannibalized for sub-minimum wage in major cities.

The commercials lie: I hate working from home.

I hate having to bow to companies that can get away with paying me $4.50 to $5 an hour for my words. I hate hearing about stringers and how to get such a position I have to intern at the Times before sending in countless e-mails to deputy editors that purposely pick and choose their favorites to see who’ll jump through the most hoops. I hate having to spend weeks begging for an invoice to pay my bills.

I hate having to be a writer sometimes. Funny enough, people can’t help but notice that about me.

-MS

Editing for the Web: Limitless Restraint?

In a recent Poynter E-Media Tidbits on J-jobs, J-schools and the "Webified" reporter, Columbia Journalism adjunct A. Adam Glenn references a quote by Gannett executive Richard Leonard to support the "continuous news" model described by Sree Sreenivasan:

"We now write for the web and edit for print," Leonard said.

Something about this line struck me as very off-putting.

On first read, it can be read as support to the growing importance of "Web Media" (as opposed to new media - when does it stop being 'new'?). But on second read, I took it to mean that print has extreme space restraints, whereas the web can be an unedited realm of journalistic excess.

Now I doubt this is what Leonard intended, but it makes me think about the standards that the web should uphold for journalistic endeavors. And to me, that means that just because each gigabyte is mere pennies doesn't mean they must serve as a catch-all for long, unedited journalism.

In fact, I will go so far as to say this: web editors might have it worse than print editors.

(Print editors, please don't burn me at the stake.)

Aside from the news cycle difference, the web editor must edit without space constraints. In other words, he or she is editing for quality only - and can't just use word count as a target finish line.

If you're editing a piece for only the web, when are you done? And if that piece was already in a print form, should it be longer online? To what extent?

I think this situation gives opportunity to show which editors can actually edit, and which ones can simply cut.

Again, I'm not saying that print editors don't work hard. Indeed they do, and sometimes space constraints are impossibly (impossibly, impossibly) hard to adhere to. What I am saying, however, is that the web editor is bringing editing back to focus more on quality than length.

Of course, the web provides its own set of self-imposed space constraints, but none so physical as newsprint.

I would enjoy seeing the difference in how one print editor and one web editor edit the same piece. That said, is there a different approach to editing for the web? And is it being taught in J-schools?

This I don't know. But I'd sure like to know what you think. Comment below!