Without Disclaimer, NYT Assails Generation Y

In yesterday's New York Times was a television review of the popular NBC show "Heroes" by critic Alessandra Stanley. In it, Stanley writes:

Generation Y has more special abilities than any previous one: these are people who came of age taking the Internet, BlackBerries, cash machines, Facebook and iPods for granted. They also take the taking for granted. They are the most coddled, indulged and overprotected generation ever. Swaddled in safety and self-esteem, they have all been assured that they are special. They don’t rebel against their parents or even seek independence; they welcome an electronic umbilical cord that stretches through high school and college and even the post-graduate return to the empty nest. On “Heroes” those filial bonds stretch beyond the grave: even after his father is dead, Hiro (Masi Oka) still receives his fatherly advice via prerecorded DVD.

If you read the review in its entirety, it's a great review. Stanley makes legit, specific connections between the writing of "Heroes" and Generation Y's habits.

Problem is, Stanley forgets to mention one thing: that she's a Baby Boomer, having graduated from Harvard in 1977, putting her birthdate roughly at 1955, smack dab in the center of her generation.

Suddenly, passages like the following seem less insightful and more vitriolic:

“Heroes” returns on NBC Monday night for a third season at an apt time — in the midst of an economic crisis that confirms the worst fears of Generation Y members, namely that their baby boomer parents are leaving them a world convulsed by war, drowning in debt and melting down under global warming.

The heroes in this science-fiction drama are a group of young people with special supernatural abilities who seek to save the world from a dark, high-level conspiracy, spawned by the Me Generation that is hellbent on annihilating humanity.

Critics are certainly allowed to take a side; that's what they're paid to do. But what a disgraceful lack of transparency by Stanley and the Times.

'Generation U': Why Time Reporters Just Wrote Their Own Career Obituaries

We're still catching up on important news this week, and one of the more interesting tidbits was a recent Women's Wear Daily report saying that Time Inc. print reporters won't be forced to do online work, thanks to a contract clause proposed by the Newspaper Guild.

Apparently, the two parties reached a tentative agreement for a three-year contract that includes guaranteed annual pay raises, and changes to severance packages and other benefits to Guild-protected employees -- but one of the additions is a stipulation that prevents management from demanding that print reporters must write for the Web.

(The magazines under Guild protection include People, Time, Fortune, Fortune Small Business, Sports Illustrated and Money.)

The Editorialiste asks: Can Time Inc. journalists make a bigger mistake?

As Columbia new media spokesman and writing-for-the-web guru Sree Sreenivasan said to me on Monday, "It's backwards. The guild might be making a mistake."

And I couldn't agree more.

Say what you want about new media, generations of journalists and the decline of printed readership, but it's looking to me as if Time Inc. professionals are swimming against the ever-strengthening stream of progress. But that's the obvious take on the news.

What I really want to know is: How exactly is this supposed to mesh with the 84-year-old flagship magazine's attempt to stay relevant in a 24-hour, wired, online news cycle?

When the flagship magazine slims down and takes contract work over full-time salaries, that sends a message that the time of the cubicle-embedded journalist is nearing an end. So when the journalists themselves turn around and say that they don't want to be a part of this "new movement," are they not hypocritical -- and furthermore, writing their own career obits?

It seems to me that this contract is two steps forward, three steps back. For every guaranteed annual raise and benefits package, each journalist is effectively saying, "Keep me comfortable for the rest of my career here, please, at the expense of the publication and my generation." All Time Inc. seems to have to do is wait it out until each journalist drops dead, phasing out the "resistant generation" and gladly handing the iconic magazine over to a new generation of technophiles for which writing for the web is the norm.

Of course, this will all happen, in say, 20 years -- when doing so will seem old hat and fitting of Time's reputation. But is this really the way to conduct business -- leaving (ironically) time to shape a publication and company?

I don't think so. Time Inc. employees, it's time to wise up -- buy yourself a laptop and a digital camera and learn how to do what the rest of the U.S. already does.

The New York Times' Thomas L. Friedman wrote today about "Generation Q" -- a "quiet" generation of idealistic college students who aren't into political or social activism. I beg the question -- are Time Inc. employees a part of journalism's "Generation U" -- Generation Unplug?

Mitchel Stevens’ Guide to Employment and Presentation

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.

I woke up this morning with a bit of a shiver going on. If that’s not a sure-fire sign that Fall is here, then I don’t know what is! Aside from it being an acceptable time of the year to sleep in Tompkins Square again, Fall is great because there are always new jobs popping up—like that Village Voice Ad on Craigslist that mysteriously disappears and reappears.

What a lark, I say. But larks aside, the worst feeling in the world is being ill-prepared for pitching a story or going presenting yourself in the morning. I generally look like I’ve been shit-kicked from sea to shining sea most mornings. And while most journos look, act and sound like they’ve got the bubonic plague and a liver that runs on rot-gut, they also have one other special trait.

They’re employed.

And they might be robots.

All the Billy Wilder/Kirk Douglass pipe dreams I had as a young undergrad J-school kid weren’t too influenced by Bill Murray or Johnny Depp’s Hunter Thompson caricature. Hell, even Hunter Thompson’s own caricature wasn’t that appealing considering the stories of the Gonzo Godfather’s body literally breaking down. As far as I knew, to look like a journalist you had to have the bottle of bad scotch in the lower right desk drawer, a fedora near the typewriter and a pack of Lucky Strikes that magically never empties but always looks crumpled.

To be a real Big J journo you drink to kill the nerves, heighten the sense and dress like living yin-yangs in black slacks and white dress shirts. Few days worth of stubble, a cigarette dangling on your lip and a sneer for the veneer of complacency that society has with itself.

That, my friends, is a Journalist!

That also is what a Journalist isn’t.

Most journos are reformed alcoholics. Most of the films are right: the chainsmoking, the drinking, the celebration for a hard-hitting story or waiting next to the printing plant for the early edition. But now? Now the newspapermen are talking heads as much as they are writers.

You need to look clean for the camera, the Gawker Stalkers and pissed off interns who will gladly turn your hangdog hangover into blog gold. Journalists have to be at the gym when they’re not on the beat, at a desk, hammering away on ancient Power PCs—if they’re a shoddy bi-monthly—or brand new iMacs—if they’re a high-powered daily in Midtown.

Shit, even if you work for Newsday.

But journos are lazier now. They’re blogging, vlogging, podcasting, iChating, AIMing and on Skype. Well, technically, only the guys at Wired still use Skype. Even then, it gets broken out for nostalgia's sake.

The old style journo has been phased out in favor of more “stable” and “clean” writers who you can bring home to Momma and not have to worry about crazy things like alcoholism or drug dependency or completely fabricating stories and writing horrible prose because they’re unimaginative and start off most profiles still about where they’re eating with the profile subject and what the subject is eating and—

Oh, never mind. It’s happy hour at the Blarney Cove.

-MS

Information On The 'Net: Reaching The Modern Journalist

Last week, I read a short blog post on The New York Times' Dealbook about Facebook's rising value. While the post itself was fascinating, what was really interesting to me were the comments attached to the post. In them, readers were having a fairly intense discussion about putting personal information on the web, and I thought it was particularly interesting within a journalistic setting.

Should journalists make themselves available on the web?

We're seeing a trend in recent years of the newly-publicly-available journalist. That is, if the reader has something to say (or correct) about an article, he or she can e-mail the actual journalist who wrote it. Yesterday, I met Vivek Kemp of the Naples (Fla.) News, who was fairly enthusiastic about the benefits of accessibility, noting that on occasion, a reader suggests a new angle to his story that he then can pursue.

With all of that in mind -- should every journalist have a personal website?

For journalists, it seems like a no-brainer, but there's still a debate, and I think it's really just a matter of a generational shift. Looking at the comments in the Times blog post, it seems people from all walks of life are conflicted about the pros versus the cons. In the end, do you lose a sense of privacy?

Good question. So, as a journalist with a website and online profiles on select websites, I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring. My statement in the comments was as follows:

In this age of free-flowing information, nearly everyone will have identifying information about them on the Internet. I’m confident that the chance of not being indexed by Google is becoming increasingly more difficult to avoid.

The difference — which I think is generational — is in how you shape the information that comes up about you. The reason why it is useful to willingly and knowledgeably put identifying information online is, in my opinion, largely to take control of the information that appears.

You may no longer have a choice in whether or not you appear in a search. Is it so bad to put forth the information you’d prefer to be identified with?

— Posted by The Editorialiste.

Naturally, I'd love to hear what you think. Should all journalists be reachable? Should there be a directory of journalists, a white pages? And are journalists giving up too much privacy by doing so?

Or should we keep a decidedly-Timesian wall between our reporters and writers?

Why Young People Don't Read Newspapers But Want to Work For One

Jack Telfer of the Midland Daily News is surprised that young journalists want to work in the newspaper industry.

"If many young people are no longer reading newspapers, why are so many applying for jobs in the newspaper industry?" he asks, noting that his paper in Michigan has received dozens of applications from rookie journalists. "Evidently these young people believe there is some type of future in the newspaper industry. So do I."

Wel, Mr. Telfer, that's simple: newspaper mastheads still hold influence, and what a newspaper is today is not what a newspaper was yesterday.

To the young journalist, a newspaper isn't the paper product. It's the "disseminator" of information. It's a source. The paper aspect is but one facet of what the "newspaper industry" is all about.

"Then why don't young people read newspapers?" you might ask. Well, they do - if a hypothetical "newspaper.com" can be filed under "newspaper," too.

Ask those Central Michigan University students where they get their news. I guarantee that maybe 10 percent of students have picked up a newspaper for their own purposes in the last year.

So no, Mr. Telfer, we don't read newspapers - but we read the news. A lot of it. And we don't want to apply for newspaper jobs. We want to apply for news jobs. In this case, a news that is read and not heard.

But here's what I would like to know: as an employer, is a newspaper boss looking for a "newspaper" kid or a "news" kid? Is everyone looking ahead as much as you, Jack? I sure hope so. Because those crazy suggestions - "hey, let's start an obituaries blog" or "hey, let's start a graduations slideshow" or "hey, let's give David Carr a camcorder and send him into Times Square" - might be what saves the "news" from the "newspaper."

So tell me, Jack - what do guys like you, who are the products of a different method of news yet acknowledge a change in the tide, want from the young journalist? Do you want those "slick, magazine-style products" or simple enthusiasm and belief?

Our two generations, it seems, are still working out how to figure each other out. I, for one, don't think things are as surprising as they seem. As long as we're in step, the march couldn't be all that bad.