Quarterlife

The other day my good friend informed me she had found her dream job. Before I successfully got any details about said job, however, she modified her statement: this was a job that she would never, ever, actually have. Not because she wasn't qualified or couldn't get an interview - she simply couldn't afford to think twice about even applying for a job with such a low starting salary. Entering her third year of law school, she's looking at a graduation present of about $1000 a month in owed student loan payments. She explained that the mere fact that she'd attended law school was essentially locking her into the profession indefinitely. "Now I have to be a lawyer just to pay off the stupid loans," she said, matter-of-factly.

Three years ago, before I'd graduated and entered the "real world" of student loans and credit card debt and unpaid internships, I wrote an article about the problem of student loan debt for my journalism capstone. For the article, "The Real Cost of Education," I interviewed a handful of experts as well as actual students facing seemingly insurmountable debt. After talking to my friend last week, I went back and re-read the article. Sure enough, her sentiments were exactly the same as those I had typed into my paper a few years back. "Many students go to law school right after getting their undergraduate degree, with little or no experience to allude to the realities of being a lawyer," I wrote. "But bridled with $80,000 or more in loans, they have little choice but to practice law in order to repay their debt, even if this means sacrificing their happiness."

It was funny reading over the article. I had poured months of my life into researching, writing and editing the piece. And yet, because my own student loans seemed such a far-away reality (it would be nearly 4 months before I made my first payment), I didn't really conceive of the impact its subject matter would have on my own life or my friends lives. Sure, the numbers were shocking and the experts' arguments were compelling, but the article was about adults: people who had the letters MD typed neatly after their names, or had completed the bar exam - people who were making grownup decisions about buying houses and having kids.

But now I don't have to scramble to find people to attest to the impacts of student loans. These are my friends. I could rewrite the entire article quoting my friends from our gchat conversations or summarizing sentiments expressed over beers at happy hour. Even now, as I find myself grappling with the decision of whether or not to go back and get my masters in teaching, it's hard to absorb the realities of being saddled with significant loans. I know full well nearly half of all teachers leave the position within the first five years. And that the degree will land me with loan payments amounting to much more than the $100 a month I pay right now for my undergrad. But while there's the potential that going back to school will be a mistake, really no amount of research can answer that for me. Fifty percent of teachers quitting still leaves 50 percent who stick it out - some, I'm guessing, even like it. For most of these jobs there's no real trial run. You can volunteer in a classroom, but you won't know what it's like to deal with the administration or standardized tests. You don't get to try out being a doctor for a year before you commit to the four (plus!) years of medical school. And how are you supposed to know at 25 what you want to do with the rest of your life?

Healthcare

I came home the other day to an invoice from Qwest Diagnostics. The bill – for just shy of $200 – baffled me: I have insurance, surely this had to be some kind of mistake. As someone who’s constantly reminded that I really shouldn't qualify as a grown up, I pored over the document. Sure enough, the $185 was the remainder from the test that had not been covered by my health insurance plan. The test itself had consisted of a "medical professional" taking my blood and a phone call a week later from my doctor informing me that I was, indeed, healthy.
I had visited the doctor after my health insurance from my job finally kicked in, to deduce whether or not I was gluten intolerant. Both my younger sister and I have had chronic stomach aches for well over a decade. She found that by eliminating gluten (adios, delicious carbs!) her stomach issues had been greatly diminished. Having far less self control and patience than a 19-year-old, I opted to take the easy way out and ask my doctor if he could just tell me whether or not gluten could be blamed for my stomach. Which is how I landed with a $200 bill and the advice (once again) to “stress less,” as that was probably the cause of all my problems. I guess here’s where I throw in the obvious ‘how can I stress less with $200 doctors bills?’ but I digress.

Obviously this does not even rate when it comes to the problems associated with our healthcare system. It's incredible how many people I know who have disaster-only insurance, or none at all. None of them would get that bill because none of them go to the doctor.

Since starting my new job, my free time for reading has shrunk significantly. After numerous recommendations to read an article on the state of healthcare in The New Yorker, however, I sifted through my ever-growing stack of ‘to-read’ magazines and found the June 1 issue with The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande.

So now it’s my turn to make the recommendation: you should read this article.

I don’t pretend to know a lot about the many nuances of the healthcare system. Even when (especially when?) I covered the health beat for the Free Lance, I consistently found myself baffled by its many complexities. This particular article looks at a city in Texas with one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. In looking at one of the most expensive cities, Gawande posits, maybe we'll figure out what makes our countries health care the most expensive in the world. The article really doesn't give any easy answers, although it's incredible thought provoking. I attempted to summarize parts of it initially and, in the end, decided that a summary is actually doing disservice to the article. So I'll just leave it at that. Read the article and please feel free to comment.

Apologies (Again)

I'm starting a new job, so I have been pushing 12 hours each day at work. The result has been me coming home to crash - not write - each day. Please enjoy these videos, until my return.

New York and DC

I spent last weekend in Washington D.C. with my parents - a trip comprised of patriotism and history - Americana-style, not nearly enough cherry blossoms to sate my yearly quota, and bookended by two long rides on the Chinatown bus.

While I appreciate a good monument as much as the next person, I have to say, the Newseum was really the highlight for me - albeit a bittersweet one (gosh, how many times have I paired some form of the word 'news' with 'bittersweet' on this blog). Having a museum for news in itself evokes images of an archaic field, but the museum did a nice job of acknowledging the history and importance of traditional newspaper forms and looking toward the future, whatever it might hold. So if anyone has plans to visit DC at any point, this is my plug for how you should spend a good half day.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed DC in all its historic glory, it really revealed how much of a New Yorker I have become. I felt strangely out of place in there: repeatedly commenting to my parents how clean everything was (and somehow this didn't seem like a good thing) and noticing how many people were wearing sweatshirts. Most of all though, I just felt like everything was moving eerily slow. Sometimes the pace of New York can be overwhelming, but it's something that I've come to thrive on. New York Magazine just published a piece talking with various famed New Yorkers about their first experience in the city. They also talked to new arrivals to the city. One person interviewed - Kit Schultz - a recent Ohio transplant, reminded me of my own move here just over a year ago:

In some ways, her story could have been told anytime in the last 50 years, and in other ways, it’s very typical of right now. She lost her job as a nanny late last year and found her prospects were dim. Before Christmas, she went out for drinks with some old college friends who are living in Brooklyn, and they invited her to come out and stay with them. So she packed a van, headed east, and arrived in New York on New Year’s Eve. A new year, a new life, she thought. Now she says, “I am having a great time here, but it’s also very hard. I’ve never been this poor in my life. I don’t exactly know what tomorrow’s stories will be or even how I will pay my cell-phone bill. But I am confident this city will continue to open up for me in ways that I cannot even imagine, and I look forward and forward.”

In January 2008, I was laid off from my job at the Free Lance and, serendipitously, Stephanie announced she needed a subleaser in her Bed-Stuy brownstone. I knew I needed a change from the small town in California where I had lived the past year. But I didn't know if I should do the impulsive thing - move to a giant metropolis with no job prospects, or the fiscally responsible thing - move home to my parents house and work at any number or jobs until I found a 'real' job prospect. That night, post-Chinese food, I opened my fortune cookie to find the message "Heads you do it, tails you go home."

Two weeks later I was on a plane with that fortune safely tucked in my wallet. Sometimes I'm not certain what exactly I'm doing here - but I'm glad the coin landed on heads.

Happy Thursday.

So I apologize for the brief blogging-hiatus. My parents are in town, so rather than write I have been traipsing about the beautiful and engaging city of New York serving as a mediocre tour guide (which basically consists of me trying to explain the difference between local and express trains and that no-I-don't-know-why-the-F-train-is-running-on-the-E-line-it's-just-Sunday-and-weird-stuff-happens-and-there's-no-rational-expression, and getting them repeatedly lost in Fort Greene, et cetera. Until my return, however, enjoy.

Money Trees

Around 2006, it seemed like every single magazine on the market was publishing ecology-centered issues. The Cosmo/Marie Claire/Allures of the magazine world featured articles on environmentally-friendly beauty products. Bride magazines talked about throwing a green bridal shower - I'm sure even Dog Fancy analyzed your puppy's carbon pawprint. Basically at that point if you wanted a new angle on an old piece, you just had to "green" it.

Well, that era has passed, it seems. And while I'm glad I won't have to see any more plays on "Green is the new [pink is the old] black", I'm not so happy the environment has been eked out of people's minds. Instead, a great multitude of articles now focus on saving money. Eco's been replaced by econ, and I guess saving green is the new black. These penny-pinching issues have become more and more frequent as the nation's economy has looked more and more bleak. Still, I was surprised to open my New Yorker Wednesday and find an article on the both the economy and the environment. The article, a short piece in The Talk of the Town, focused on the inverse relationship between economic prosperity and environmental responsibility. Author David Owen writes:

"The world's principal source of man-made greenhouse gases has always been prosperity. The recession makes that relationship easy to see: shuttered factories don't spew carbon dioxide; the unemployed drive fewer miles and turn down their furnaces, air-conditioners, and swimming-pool heaters; struggling corporations and families cut back on air travel; even affluent people buy less throwaway junk."

Even though the media and individuals aren't focusing on the environment, they're actually doing much more to prevent global warming than they were when it was the actual concern. I've definitely noticed this in my own life - specifically with my work. My company has prided itself on being green for quite a while now - but it's always been quite a battle for me, sometimes feeling like the sole eco-cheerleader (I know, Mom and Dad: you must be so proud/shocked). Getting people to reuse paper or make fewer copies is hard to rally support for, but when cuts are being made and you bring up the cost of all that paper, suddenly there are many more proponents.

While much of the article falls into the kind-of-intuitive-if-you-really-think-about-it category, it also does a nice job of taking things a step further. The article begs the question: if the environment and the economy do have an inverse relationship, how can we fix the economy without losing the footing we've made on the environment? For so long, the U.S. has been such a society of prosperity and excess. While many economists have suggested me may never go back to that level of superabundance (and I personally don't see that we need to go back), there is a happy medium in there. Is there enough money and jobs to be made out of green industries? It seems like now is the time to start looking for solutions that won't have us back to square one if the economy ever does go back to the "normal" of the past decade.

Cold Medicine and Media

Today Tommy, a friend from work, came in to start his shift and informed me he'd seen something on TV about the death of newspapers the night before. And thought of me. Overhearing this, another coworker looked at me nervously and hastened Tommy to be careful, as I might start crying - again.

He was only half joking. Last Tuesday, when the news officially broke that Wednesday would be the last print edition of the P-I, I sat at my desk reading article after article about the paper's demise. It was not a surprise, but it still was hard to swallow.

Sunday, an editorial ran in The Chronicle - conceivably the next big paper to fold - about the outpouring of ideas for how the save newspapers. John Diaz, the article's author and editor of the opinion page, wrote about how many conflicting ideas people have for what will save print media. On a daily basis, people email and write to tell him they have the answer for how to save the Chron. If the paper leans more to the right it will be saved; if it becomes a vocally liberal progressive paper it will be saved. If it stops publishing/starts publishing news on controversial subject matter...First big-city gay daily! one Gawker commenter suggested. The newspaper also gets its fair share of people writing to extrapolate on the solitary reason the Chron will fail. Diaz writes:

If we fail to run their favorite syndicated columnist or continue to run one they loathe ... "that's why you're losing money." If we are perceived as favoring the Giants over the A's or one political philosophy over the other or give too little or too much space to celebrity gossip ... "that's why you're losing money." My favorite link between personal interest and our financial predicament was the freelance writer who, after having his opinion-piece submission rejected, wrote: "That's why this newspaper is failing."

As much as these letters are amusing and, at times, frustrating, it's good to know that people - not exclusively journalists, editors, and publishers - are brainstorming on how to fix the current and predicament of print media. And that they care. I know many people have thought little about the impact of 'the end of days' for daily newspapers on their lives. And maybe it wouldn't affect them. I think my college journalism professor instilled and particularly romantic view of journalism in me, so I fall hard onto the belief that it will be truly detrimental to society. As a writer at salon.com advised a journalism professor struggling with the guilt at teaching students in a seemingly hopeless profession:

Journalists exercise power. Ideally, they exercise that power on behalf of the powerless...leave it to your students to create new modes for the buying and selling of this information. Their generation will do this. I feel confident about that. Teach them how to find out what is true and what is hidden, and how to say it so others can understand what it means and why it is important. Then you will have done your job and given them the gift of a lifetime.

But then, I've taken a lot of cold medicine tonight so maybe that's why I find that particularly stirring.

Economics for Dummies

Not to throw two radio shows at you in a row - but if anyone has yet to check it out, last week's This American Life is worth a listen. The show has made a name for itself examining the minute and unexamined - making even the most mundane life seem interesting. But they also do a really excellent job with hard news. Last year, they did the most thorough report on the mortgage crisis - detailing from the very micro to the very macro level about what went wrong. The report, The Giant Pool of Money, is absolutely worth checking out for anyone that hasn't heard it yet. I honestly think it was one of the best pieces of reporting I heard all year, not because it was uncovering anything profound or groundbreaking, but because it really explained something that so many other articles glossed over. With this week's episode, Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson, who produced the first one as well, do another great job - well, dumbing this whole "economy" thing down for people like me. Just today I was reading a New Yorker article that was talking about toxic assets and balance sheets and liabilities - and while I could generally get the gist of the whole thing before, it was nice to actually really understand it. Give those two a listen. And support public radio.

Finding Plan B

A lot of my hesitance to initially start a blog came from a stigma I held about blogging from when it first started - at least as far as my experience with it is concerned. The first blogs I knew were live journals. These were essentially a chance for people to post their diaries - complete with indulgent soul searching and melodramatic overshares - with, um, everyone. The voyeur in me would occasionally read these 'live journal blogs,' but not without a lot of tsking and judging. Blogging has clearly morphed and developed and grown up a lot. But it still easily becomes a platform to (over)share Feelings. Capital F. Which is, admittedly, where today's post comes in.

I was listening to This American Life on my train to work yesterday in a particular mood of frustration with my professional life. The episode that happened to come on my podcast was about life's change in direction and how, more often then not, we don't end up where we originally thought. Our lives don't turn out how we imagined them at 18 or 21 or 25, even. Ira Glass starts off:

There's a short story by the fiction writer Ron Carlson in which a guy loses his job after ten years. His boss tells him 'OK, go to Plan B,' and the guy says 'This was Plan B.'

Which is, I think, how it goes for most of us. We head off cheerfully to Plan A and Plan A turns out to be completely different than we thought it was going to be. And so we switch to a backup - and then the backup plan becomes our life.

Glass continued by telling about a speech he gave to a group of around 100 people. He asked them how many of their lives had turned out how they'd expected. How many of them were still on Plan A. "Out of 100, only one person raised her hand," Glass said. "Everyone else was like, Plan B? what about Plan C and D and F?"

I don't really think there's a lot of narration I need to add to this - especially with my desire to resist complete livejournaliness. With the current state of our economy there's a lot of uncertainty in the future holds. A lot of people that were pursuing jobs that seemed like safe bets are now forced to completely change direction. Journalism never seemed like the "safe bet" job, but right now its future seems particularly shaky. So the question is, at what point do you start to really think about Plan B...

P.S. Are you just mocking me now, Gawker?

Good thing I'm not in J-School, I guess.

Miss, Can I Take Your Coat?

My friend Anthony, a fellow reporter at the hanging-on-to-its-last-limb Free Lance, sent me a link to an article lauding his current, far cooler employer, VentureBeat, as one of the 25-most valuable blogs. I'm proud of Anthony for his successful foray into this crazy "new media," a none-too-easy feat. But besides being a nice little bragging piece for Anthony, the rundown of the economically successful blogs was also an interesting read. I do enjoy reading most of the top 25 (Gawker and The Huffington Post, No.1 and No.2, respectively, are both on my quick links tool bar at the top of my screen.)

Still, reading the article was also incredibly depressing. For one thing, the supposedly "most profitable blog" has a listed staff of 7 on its' editorial team (OK, OK, I know this isn't including the staff at Jezebel, etc., but you get my point.) So its' profitability is partially due to keeping costs, such as employing poor, lowly writers, to a minimum while simultaneously making a lot in page views and advertising revenue. They also just had cuts - folding both Valleywag and Defamer into Gawker. So even the most profitable forms of media are making cutbacks and having layoffs, a depressing idea for any unemployed writer. Also, while Gawker is an entertaining and enlightening round up of the day's news with some insightful analysis to boot, there is pretty much zilch original reporting. The Huffington Post, which does have quite a bit of actual reporting, still only has 50 full-time employees. It's hard to imagine, once all is settled with this new media that there will be many jobs for the overabundance of j-schoolers. In the epic game of media musical chairs, we'll be left with hundreds of players and only a handful of chairs when the song ends. Perhaps a friendly reminder that I should get out of the game now. Did you come with me on that metaphor? I'm thinking no, but ah well.

On a completely different note - one that more directly relates to what is paying for my second cup of coffee today. Last week, the New York Times had an article about my second form of income - coat checking. I've been supplementing my shrinking office managing hours at Vento with two weekend shifts where I run up and down stairs (in heels, no less!) carrying piles of perfumed furs and Burberry jackets, praying for $2 in exchange for my efforts. The article notes wealthy New Yorkers' hesitance to part with their precious dollars for someone to hold onto their coats even after eating a $180 dinner. A true and frustrating observation. On an average Saturday night, when I check about 225 coats (450 times up and down the stairs) I usually average about $100 - 45 cents a coat. Keep in mind, there are some people who tip $5 and large groups who tip nothin' (French tourists! I'm looking to you, here.) I find coat checking to be a really interesting experience, mainly because - try as I might to find a rhyme or reason behind who tips me what - there are really no trends. For one thing, I think many people don't realize that that's my job: taking, holding and then retrieving his or her coat. They don't realize that their tips are essentially my only income - I'm not a host making $15 an hour, I'm making $4.85 with the assumption that I'll be making some money for each coat I check. It's interesting how many large, bachelorette-esque parties of girls, each of which checks her name-brand-wool-coat-with-matching-scarf-and-gloves, forget to tip the girl who ran up and down the stairs nine times to fetch each one of their coats individually. Even after they just spent hundreds on carafes of hangover-inducing sugary cocktails.

Internet ADD

About a week ago, I saved a link to an Atlantic Monthly article, "How the Crash Will Reshape America." I had read a short summary of the article on the Daily Intel, and was interested to read more (to summarize the summary, the author of the article argues that the economic crisis will be good for intellectual/artistic magnets such as New York, but bad for mass suburbs in the sunbelt, like Phoenix). The link was saved to my computer for several days - one of the many tabs I typically have open on my browser. But each time I would start to read it, something else would catch my eye. It wasn't that the article wasn't well written or compelling, but there were so many other distractions at my fingertips. Someone would start chatting with me on gmail, or a new photo would be posted of a friend on Facebook, or an interesting new blurb would appear on Gawker. While I consider myself an expert multi-tasker, I couldn't allow myself to really get into the article fully. Eventually, I broke down and simply purchased a copy of the March Atlantic and finished the article before the end of the day.

Although I had initially intended to blog about the article (it is a recommended read), I find myself more interested in the actual process of me attempting to read the article reveals. While I am not someone to shy away from reading articles online - the Internet is really only an adequate medium for certain types of articles. When I'm reading an article online, I'm generally doing 10 other things at the same time. This makes the short blurbs and links on Gawker and Daily Intel ideal, but anything much longer seem burdensome. If print media really does disappear entirely, there won't be much of an outlet for these in-depth "think" pieces (to quote Almost Famous) and features. When I took newspaper layout and design, we talked about how there are very specific statistics on how much of an article people read: who makes it past the lede, the nutgraf - the minute few who follow the article past the jump. I can imagine these percents are much smaller for those reading articles online. This seems especially detrimental to magazine and feature pieces, which are written to be read from start to finish.

I also can't help but pull a little Psych 101, and wonder what kind of impact this modern consumption of media must have on the brain. OK, OK, I know this is kind of a stupid supposition, and probably one that has had tens and thousands of studies done on it, but I'm nonetheless intrigued. I feel like my attention span has shrunk significantly since I've owned my own laptop. Grant you, I'm a much better multitasker, but I rarely have my full concentration on one thing at a time. Often, I'm typing, reading, talking, and watching an episode of CSI on Netflix's Watch Instantly feature simultaneously. Since I have no television, and watch all my movies, TV, on my computer - I've found that I can rarely actually watch a feature film the entire way through. Otherwise, I get distracted by the other tabs and other things to do. If this has noticeably impacted my attention span, imagine what it would do to a child whose brain was still forming?

Laundry Day Cut Short

OK, bad bad me I know I haven't written in a while. I had big plans to go to my coffee shop, do my laundry and write today...these were cut short, however, by a call to come into work. So much for them cutting my hours. At any rate, here are a few interesting links to keep you engaged for the time being.

For one, NPR did two short pieces on the current state of the media. One, imagined a city without a daily newspaper, the other, looked more at the future. I recommend checking them both out.

Also, on my new favorite blog - the Daily Intel - they quoted Anderson Cooper telling a elementary school-aged journalism hopeful to try to resist "becoming a blowhard." Priceless.

A Working Journalist

Initially after getting laid off from The Free Lance, I shrugged off the idea of ever working for a newspaper again. 'It was never my dream to work for a daily,' I told myself, along with the reassurance that I would freelance. For sure. As much as this was really me just trying to assuage my devastation at being let go from my first "REAL JOB," it also was true: I never wanted to work for a daily. Long form, magazine pieces were both my forte and where my interest lied. But after moving on from the Free Lance and into a less-than-academic profession (ahem, job), I've realized how much I enjoyed the daily. For one thing, it's difficult to write a long-form piece without initially writing a short one - after all, how do you go in depth on a topic without becoming initially familiar, as naturally happens when you're following a beat.

At any rate, I have been missing the daily paper world, and in the past couple months I have again begun applying to newspapers. It's been rough for multiple reasons: no one's hiring, I'm hesitant to return after my first experience, and - well, did I mention newspapers are dying and no one is hiring?

On Tuesday journalismjobs.com posted two links for Queens newspapers looking for reporters. These were both weekly community papers, but a real chance for me to get myself writing again. I quickly brushed up my cover letter and resume and sent them out. Surprisingly quickly, I received a response from the editor of one of the papers. In, what I'll assume was a mass email, he requested that those still interested pitch three possible stories they would write while working at the paper. He also cautioned: "First, let's be clear about the position. It is full-time, absolutely requires that you have a car and pays in the low-20s based on numerous factors. This is an entry-level reporter position. Have no illusion of clocking out at 5 p.m. or having your weekends free."

While I appreciate the honesty of the response, it really got me thinking: who can afford to be a journalist anymore? This position would require me taking a pay-cut from my current job and adding the (significant) expense of a car in New York City. The cost of living here alone would not be covered by that salary, and the post makes it very clear that a second job to help cover expenses would be out of the question. So essentially, this newspaper job would require some kind of financial support - probably in the form of mommy and daddy bank. So often life's roadblocks based on socio-economic class are analyzed at a younger age: specifically, money preventing people from pursuing higher education. But what about after you get that degree? My parents are by no means poor, and have helped me pass many of these hurdles with their financial support (OK, and emotional, and every other kind...) They paid for my college and helped me out during my two unpaid internships, and would be there for me if I needed them even now. I am aware of how lucky I am to have that safety net. But they are in no position to be providing constant fiscal support to their almost-25-year-old daughter. Nor do I believe this would meld very well with their beliefs about parenting. So, children of middle class families can't afford to be journalists, clearly no one coming from less can afford it either...but who can? And is this really how newspapers will be saved, by selecting from an incredibly narrow pool of applicants?

Gawker had an article last week about youth paying for internships. As I have looked for jobs on journalismjobs.com and craigslist, I've noticed more and more companies are trying to get by using unpaid interns, banking on the desperation of those freshly out of college (am I still considered "freshly out of college?") trying to get experience. A girl I went to college with told me about a week ago she was forced to lay off her first employee - someone only slightly newer at the job than she. This person was replaced, you guessed it, with an unpaid intern. I'm certain the only reason that jobs are asking for money for internships is that people are willing to pay. Just as someone will not only take the position at the queens newspaper, they will be grateful to have a job as a working journalist.

An Interesting Idea

France's President, Nicolas Sarkozy, announced this week that he would not only increase the country's financial support of print media, but he would also give out free newspaper subscriptions to french youth on their 18th birthday.

Read the AP article on Sarkozy's announcement here.

The idea is very interesting - although I wonder with how much success it would be met here in the U.S. For one thing, while many other industries are believed to merit financial support from the government, I hardly think that the media fits into this category. Because writing is something most people can do, and no explicit degree is required to be a journalist the profession is often viewed as a joke. There's an ad for some show on IFC that I've seen repeatedly in the subway that says "Now it can be revealed: THE NEWS IS MAKING YOU DUMBER." I understand there are a lot of faults to the media, and - here's where my bias comes in - especially with television news. But every time I see that ad I just want to yell at it, 'Listen! We're already dying! Please don't kick us while we're down!'

Anyway, I think it will be interesting to see what happens with the additional support to the media in France - will the 18-year-olds start reading the paper, now that they have the option of receiving it for free? Will the papers use the additional funding to create innovative new ideas to make the media fresh and interesting? It should be interesting to see. As Sarkozy noted:

"None of the proposed measures ... will be useful in the end if the profession doesn't meet its challenges. The industry has a future to reinvent. ... Time is running out."

Dancing About Architecture

I just listened to an older This American Life on my subway ride home from drinks with Stephanie in Hell's Kitchen. The episode, Numbers, was about trying to quantify things that are truly unquantifiable. Things like love, relationships, emotions... I thought the whole concept of the story was interesting, primarily because of how much emphasis we do put on numbers. As journalists, any story is better if it's backed with a stat. Sure, I can say 'macs are the computer of choice in Williamsburg' (and feel pretty confident about my statement) but I would have little grounds for a story just based on an inane observation. However, the second I find out that 76% of the electronics delivered to a 11211 zip code were Apples - suddenly I have the fundamentals of an interesting, albeit obvious, story. (Um, by the way: I made that up. But trust me, the hipsters love their Macbooks and I'm uniformly scorned for bringing my Toshiba into my local coffee shop.) I digress.

The piece was really interesting, because it looked at different people who had tried - via various methods - to use numbers or statistics to explain things much too vague for something so concrete. One story looked at a group of scientists who had used polling to try to create the most palatable song and piece of artwork. Another was about a man who, since the 1950s, had written down everything he had done each day of his life: Grocery store x2, talked on phone, etc. He did all this without ever examining the emotion of the day; he never discussed how he felt and what his feelings were. I think there are definitely a lot of things that over over-discussed and hyper-analyzed. Knowing that people like blue in paintings and like to see faces does not mean that you can create a piece of artwork that would stir the same emotions that I felt when I first saw a Van Gogh. Some things are not meant to be quantified. Although, honestly, while I feel much more security behind words, the same can be said for them. This may be why I never felt drawn to criticism; be it film, TV, books or food. While I have no problem holding a discussion about why I liked a movie or hated it, when I truly love something, sometimes I don't want to analyze that. When I go to an art museum - knowing very little about art history or critique - I can only go off what I feel. When I saw La Nuit Etoilee I didn't need to discuss what I was feeling, nor could I really put what I felt into words. I could qualify it by saying, 'I love how vivid the colors are,' or quantify it by saying I rate impressionism as a 10, in terms of styles. But really, all I wanted to say was 'wow' and keep staring.

Some things are really better left unquantified and some feelings can never be fully expressed with words.

What's Black and White and Read All Over?

There are a few types of articles that I will always read - always flip to first in my magazines, always click on to 'read the full story,' always follow after the jump. Self-examining, naval-gazing "state of the media" articles definitely fall into that category. Sadly, with paper after paper filing for bankruptcy, folding or cutting - these stories now litter gawker.com, slate.com and most daily papers. Who better than the print media to cover its' own demise? (Don't answer that.)

When I opened my browser last week and the Seattle Times (my home page) loaded, I was drawn - not to the story about the mass flooding in Western Washington or the jarring photo of destruction that accompanied it - but to the news of the P-I's impending closure. "Seattle P-I up for sale, but almost certainly it will fold, industry observers say." The headline didn't come as a surprise; the P-I has been in bad shape for almost as long as I can remember. Still, the news hit a lot closer to home than the other laundry list of closures. The orange P-I boxes were the representation of the paper business to me. As a kid, I recall asking my mom why there were two newspapers in one city (if there's one set of facts then there's one set of facts, right? Why don't they just put all the facts in one paper?) This, for me, was a lot of my initial understanding of the paper biz.

In addition to the closure/cuts/buyouts articles of late, there have been quite a few interesting analysis-based ones, as well. Particularly interesting was The Atlantic's "End Times". The article examines the potential that newspapers could fold (at least in their traditional "daily print" sense) much earlier than everyone has been estimating. Michael Hirschorn writes:

"But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May?"

Hirschorn cites the paper's significant debt, existing cut-backs and the current state of the economy to back the supposition. He acknowledges the impressive implication of the end of Times - including the ritual of Sunday morning tangible-paper over coffee, but also the role of newspapers as a watchdog for politics and society overall. "Internet purists may maintain that the Web will throw up a new pro-am class of citizen journalists to fill the void, but for now, at least, there’s no online substitute for institutions that can marshal years of well-developed sourcing and reporting experience—not to mention the resources to, say, send journalists leapfrogging between Mumbai and Islamabad to decode the complexities of the India-Pakistan conflict," he writes. Still, the article maintains some semblance of optimism. These cuts and the creation of a web-only Times could mean focusing on the quality. Sure, the T magazine and wedding sections might disappear, but the paper could focus on their best writers and creating the best, most-focused product:

"Journalistic outlets will discover that the Web allows (okay, forces) them to concentrate on developing expertise in a narrower set of issues and interests, while helping journalists from other places and publications find new audiences."

Still, what the article does not address, is what is going to happen to the small, community newspapers. When I think about the news (read: corruption) goldmine that is San Benito County, the prospect of no one covering that once the Free Lance inevitably folds is devastating - not only to my "journalists are an important part of a community" sensibilities, but to the community and its' tax dollars.

Monday's Fresh Air also focused on the future of print media. One interview was with Leonard Downie Jr., the former executive editor of the Washington Post and the other was with John Yemma, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, about their move to web-only content. (Thanks to Megan for pointing these interviews out to me.) I found myself frantically typing up notes as I listened to these two editors talk (embarrassingly, I'm not joking).

For me, the most interesting part of Downie's interview was when Terry Gross asked him about how he talks to journalist-hopefuls. Now that he's retired from the Washington Post, Downie plans to teach journalism. I have often wondered how my Santa Clara journalism professors encourage students, with the paper business looking more dire, even, than when I graduated. To the best of my quick-transcribe ability, here is how he responded:

This profession is a calling and it is so very important to the American people...and it’s not going to go away, it’s going to take different forms.. The work is very long, you have to be very dedicated to it, but it’s very rewarding and it’s worth sticking it out and joining this great adventure in figuring out how we’re going to present news in the future.

India

Last week India, the little girl I babysit, told me - with the sincerity that only a 3-year-old can muster:

"Alice. We just have to keep finding ourselves over and over again."

Grant you, India was talking about our hour (and climbing) long game of Hide-N-Seek. But sometimes her wisdom can be baffling.

Culture Binge

I had a truly incredible past weekend full of museums and museums. The city of New York is full of exciting activities if you just look for them. Saturday, after cooking dinner with some friends, we headed over to the Brooklyn Museum for First Saturday (technically "Target's First Saturday. Gotta have a sponsor, right?) The museum was open and free until 11pm with music, ballroom dancing, DJs and wine. There was an incredible turnout and it was a good chance to finally check out my local museum. There's a permanent feminist art collection which I thought had some especially interesting pieces. The picture is taken looking in on a DJ'd dance party at the museum. Sunday, I went to the Met for the second time. The museum is so large that I managed to spend a good couple of hours exploring without going into any of the exhibits for a second time. Overall, a great (and free!) weekend.

A New Year

It's been a while since my last post, which I apologize for. The holidays brought an abundance of egg nog, credit card debt and - in Washington this year - snow. But what they did not bring was time and especially not time for writing. But that's just me making excuses.

The New Year (yes, I'm capitalizing it), as per usual, has left me questioning where I am, and what I should be moving toward. This time last year I was laid off from my first "real job" and made the decision to move across the country to what I had deemed the exact opposite of San Juan Bautista. Replace feral chickens with high-strung New Yorkers, sub mission-style architecture with skyscrapers and brownstones...then see what happens. The results have been somewhat mixed. Especially because I'm not doing what I came here to do: write. But I don't think my time here has been a wash. And I'm saying that now in spite of the fact that my apartment is currently without running water for the fifth time in my 3 months living there. Ah well.

While I don't love my current job, by any means, I do think it has been a good experience. Now, I can cite real office experience when applying to editorial assistant positions. I spent New Year's Eve at my restaurant monitoring the inflation of 5,000 silver and black balloons - and don't think that didn't go on the top of my resume. But seriously. I've been applying to more jobs recently and have broadened my search to even positions vaguely related to writing (if it requires crafting carefully worded emails, I'm there). New York Magazine had a feature chronicling "My Laid-Off Life" for several New Yorkers (out of the 33,000 who have been laid off since August.) The article is a nice reminder for anyone who needs it (don't we all?) of how grateful we should feel to have jobs in the current economy. And I say this knowing full-well that my position is somewhat superfluous at my restaurant and risks being eliminated if the covers remain low. Who knows where I'll be in 2010 - what coast, what profession, what coffee shop - but I'm excited to see what happens in the next year.