Michael Miner was worried he’d have nothing to tell the young, aspiring journalists at an upcoming panel discussion. After talking to a fellow journalism vet, he’s come up with this advice:
Live like rats, I’ll tell the kids, and in time there’ll be some cheese.
(In other words, take that unpaid internship?)
More Miner:
[T]he public…has trouble accepting the idea that news could be in danger. It’s like believing in global warming when it’s ten below zero. There’s so much news—and noise masquerading as news—that people think the problem isn’t guaranteeing the flow of news but getting away from it once in a while. There must be half a dozen all-news cable channels. The Internet is relentless. Bloggers begin the slicing and dicing the minute a story breaks. Supply so far exceeds demand the mystery is why anyone would pay a penny for “news.”
…But sooner or later, when the foreign correspondents are all called home and the collective ant-colony style of citizen newsgathering proves unequal to our needs—if it does—the public will finally take notice, and a demand for actual news will exist that at the moment does not.
