Post Courtesy of Sara Shookman
Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Journalism. Show all posts
Friday, March 6, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Got A Journalism Degree and No Job? The Strip Club is Hiring
The Wall Street Journal - A couple of years back, around the time he was turning 50, Michael Precker was in his prime as a journalist. He'd never imagined himself doing anything else: "I knew in seventh grade I wanted to be a newspaperman."
A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, he was a foreign correspondent for 11 years in the Middle East and wrote feature articles on countless subjects for the Dallas Morning News. One year, the paper nominated him for a Pulitzer Prize.
Now he has a new job: running a strip club. "I feel lucky," he says.
Mr. Precker's career adjustment reflects the recent chaos of the newspaper business. It happened in 2006. Back then the industry was already pretty far along in its path to today's never-ending reports of bankruptcies and layoffs.
When the Morning News offered buyouts in 2006, he says the paper's leadership made clear that the reduction in staff wasn't temporary -- or necessarily complete. And maybe the next buyout offer would be less generous. Demand for the long-form journalism he favored was drying up. He could see "storm clouds" all around him.
"It seemed pretty clear that people of my vintage weren't going to get through retirement," says Mr. Precker, now 53 years old.
Around that time he found himself seated at a charity dinner near the owner of a Dallas strip club, Dawn Rizos. Hearing him mention the newspaper industry's travails, she offered him a job. "I like smart people. You could do communications," she told him.
He laughed it off. "I thought, 'I couldn't stoop to something like that,'" he recalls.
Soon afterwards, he was visiting Israel when the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon broke out, and to his surprise he found himself disinterested in covering it. "As much as I loved my job and was proud of what I'd done, I didn't have the urge anymore to run up to the border and explain it all to the American people and then come back and brag about how I'd been shot at," he says.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123447503728679243.html?mod=article-outset-box
A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, he was a foreign correspondent for 11 years in the Middle East and wrote feature articles on countless subjects for the Dallas Morning News. One year, the paper nominated him for a Pulitzer Prize.
Now he has a new job: running a strip club. "I feel lucky," he says.
Mr. Precker's career adjustment reflects the recent chaos of the newspaper business. It happened in 2006. Back then the industry was already pretty far along in its path to today's never-ending reports of bankruptcies and layoffs.
When the Morning News offered buyouts in 2006, he says the paper's leadership made clear that the reduction in staff wasn't temporary -- or necessarily complete. And maybe the next buyout offer would be less generous. Demand for the long-form journalism he favored was drying up. He could see "storm clouds" all around him.
"It seemed pretty clear that people of my vintage weren't going to get through retirement," says Mr. Precker, now 53 years old.
Around that time he found himself seated at a charity dinner near the owner of a Dallas strip club, Dawn Rizos. Hearing him mention the newspaper industry's travails, she offered him a job. "I like smart people. You could do communications," she told him.
He laughed it off. "I thought, 'I couldn't stoop to something like that,'" he recalls.
Soon afterwards, he was visiting Israel when the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon broke out, and to his surprise he found himself disinterested in covering it. "As much as I loved my job and was proud of what I'd done, I didn't have the urge anymore to run up to the border and explain it all to the American people and then come back and brag about how I'd been shot at," he says.http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123447503728679243.html?mod=article-outset-box
Monday, January 12, 2009
Let's Invent an iTunes for News
The New York Times - Last Tuesday, iTunes, Apple’s ubiquitous online music store that sold more than 2.4 billion tracks last year alone, changed its own tune, announcing that songs would no longer be sold with copying restrictions and that they would be available at various prices.The digerati crowed over the collapse of the hated digital rights management (which Apple never liked, either) and record companies kicked up their heels at the thought of leaving behind the tyranny of the 99-cent price point.
But lost in the hubbub was the fact that Steve Jobs and Apple had been able to charge for content in the first place. Remember that when iTunes began, the music industry was being decimated by file sharing. By coming up with an easy user interface and obtaining the cooperation of a broad swath of music companies, Mr. Jobs helped pull the business off the brink. He has been accused of running roughshod over the music labels, which are a fraction of their former size. But they are still in business.
Those of us who are in the newspaper business could not be blamed for hoping that someone like him comes along and ruins our business as well by pulling the same trick: convincing the millions of interested readers who get their news every day free on newspapers sites that it’s time to pay up.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/business/media/12carr.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
But lost in the hubbub was the fact that Steve Jobs and Apple had been able to charge for content in the first place. Remember that when iTunes began, the music industry was being decimated by file sharing. By coming up with an easy user interface and obtaining the cooperation of a broad swath of music companies, Mr. Jobs helped pull the business off the brink. He has been accused of running roughshod over the music labels, which are a fraction of their former size. But they are still in business.
Those of us who are in the newspaper business could not be blamed for hoping that someone like him comes along and ruins our business as well by pulling the same trick: convincing the millions of interested readers who get their news every day free on newspapers sites that it’s time to pay up.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/business/media/12carr.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
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