newspaper industry

  • Fame and fortune and Jon and Kate

    Pedaling away in spin class this morning, and when I wasn’t thinking about possibly hurling, I was considering how fame can ruin people.
     

    I’m not sure how exactly I made this jump from queasiness to Kris Allen and “Jon & Kate, Plus 8.” But oddly, I have been feeling sorry for the whole bunch of them.
     

    Maybe it is because I have seen fame relatively close up. And I have observed how, in this country, the more famous someone becomes, the harder, seemingly, they must eventually be brought down. In a broad sense, the profession in which I have made my living has been largely responsible for this.
     

  • The Future of Journalism – Part II

    So it appears I filed the last blog a little too soon.
     

    I just discovered a Bloomberg.com report that the 136-year-old Harvard Crimson, which has turned out 12 Pulitzer Prize winners among its crop of future journalists, are “fleeing the ravaged profession.”
     

    According to the report, just 3 of 16 of the paper’s graduating seniors who were on the paper’s executive board, plan to pursue a career in journalism. Of the last 10 managing editors, only two are working at newspapers.
     

  • The Future of Journalism

    We were between innings at my son’s baseball game, yesterday. When he was younger, and the kid playing catcher needed half the team to help put back on the equipment, you could basically run home, have a snack, come back and not miss a moment of action.
     
    Now that Alec is 11, it has been cut down considerably. But there was still enough time for a glance at my Blackberry and the e-mail that had come in from an unfamiliar address.