I know what many of you are thinking. "I spent four years in college and God knows how much money... for this?"
True, times are tough right now. Perception has become reality and everyone is in cutback mode.
Guess what, young people have been through this before.
I graduated in the middle of the '70's recession. I remember the final weeks of my senior year in college. We had 36 seniors on the floor of our dorm. By graduation day, one person had a job. 35 guys with college degrees and nowhere to go. Back then, hard as it is to believe now, there weren't even any jobs for teachers. I remember one young lady went a whole year before she found a job.
So I went back to my dad's delicatessen and worked there while I kept looking for work. Finally, almost a year later, I got something.
A part time job at a newspaper three days per week.
At least my foot was in the journalism door (though I was still making sandwiches the rest of the time.) Eventually I found a full time job in radio and then jumped to TV. Then the 1980's hit and everyone had a job, everyone had money to spend.
The 90's brought belt tightening and last year we hit bottom.
Point is, everything runs in cycles. The business is shaking out right now, and much of the dead wood will move on to other things.
I have no idea what the future will hold. I am pretty sure the salaries of the 80's will never return. But local news will never go away.
The new generation of journalists is part of the "instant gratification" generation. If you guys don't have something right this very minute you get frustrated. It's natural to want to hit the ground running when you're young and right out of college, but the real world doesn't work on your schedule.
Hang in there. If this is really what you want to do, just hang. You may not reach your goal as quickly as you imagined, but if you have talent and persistence you'll do fine.
This country has recovered from depressions and recessions before, and it will again. Television isn't going away. If you want to know how important TV is to people, just wait for the digital switch when you hear screams across the country from people who can't watch Wheel of Fortune.
If you believe in yourself, and you are truly passionate about working in this business, just be patient.
2 comments:
Speaking of instant gratification, why bother waiting for a TV station to pick you up? Grab a camera, do some stories, and put them on a website. If you're not doing anything else, might as well pick up some exposure to your own on-camera presence and pad your tape, right? Camera gear is so cheap, anyone can do it for $100.
Thanks for this note. I graduated in May and still have nothing... So until I find something I'm keeping in touch with my contacts and doing some projects on my own.
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