Confessions Of A J-School Grad

As a recent graduate of j-school and a currently "self"- employed journalist, I, like every other unemployed or young journalist, have decided to start a blog.

I'm calling this Hamilton's Experiment temporarily because I'm not yet sure of the content I want here or the tone I want to take. Right now I'm just asking myself the same dumb question everyone else asks themselves before they start a blog - what will I write about?

I expect this blog will reflect what I know and what I read. At it's best, it'll contain thoughtful analysis of technology and journalism which, I hope, will eventually allow me to do original reporting on the subjects. At it's worst, I expect it just to be a link to the things I've found that are interesting, funny or bizarre on the Web. After I've posted some content, I'll change the name of this blog.

So I'll start this off with a confession about I read, or rather, what I don't. I've stopped reading newspapers. This is a confession rather than a factual statement because I'm a person who should be reading newspapers and, for a long time, I didn't believe newspapers would ever die.

For every job interview I've been at, even as a student journalist, I've been asked "what papers do you read?" I've had to fib at every one of these interviews. The Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register were my standard answers given that those are the papers local to me. I'd occasionally throw the New York Times in there with the caveat that I didn't subscribe but read it whenever I could. I said these papers for two reasons. First, it was the correct answer to an interview question. Second, because I really did want to read them.

In high school I fell in love with newspapers and with the idea of telling stories and informing people. No small part of that was the feeling of pride when you see your name on the front page of the paper. I trained myself at my community college and university papers to produce a quality newspaper publication. I took great care in learning how to put together an eye-catching news page in every respect: a punchy headline, a compelling photo, a tight layout and a great lede. I learned and trained myself so that one day I could be a great newspaperman. Too bad I couldn't even bring myself to sit to down at the table in the morning and read the paper over breakfast. I didn't have time.

In college I tried subscribing to the OC Register and the LA Times, but they just ended up piling up in the corner of my apartment.

I'm not sure how an executive editor of a college newspaper, a person who should be consuming every paper every day to learn how to be a better journalist, couldn't bring himself to sit down and actually read a paper regularly. I'm honestly torn about whether that's compelling evidence that the newspaper is dead to my generation or whether I'm just a bad journalist. Either way, the newspaper IS dead to my generation and rapidly dying in all the others.

I was sold on the death of newspapers at least in their traditional sense when the Bakersfield Californian, my first internship, laid off an entire arm of their publication by hiring an outside company to run their printing plant and the Orange County Register and Dallas Morning News, my second and third internships, both laid off significant portions of their staff during the internships. You can only handle so many great newspapermen asking you "are you sure you want to go into this business?"

So there it is, I was training to work in newspapers but can't read the newspaper.

In my defense, I do read. I started in on Google Reader a year and a half ago and now have more than 100 feeds I read on a daily basis. No small part of the ability to read so much is thanks to my iPhone. I bought the original iPhone the day after it came out with a full paycheck from the OC Register. It has since become my personal newspaper. Google Reader mobile isn't the best solution and it isn't yet for everyone, but it is "good enough" to provide me with the ability to stay informed on everything I'm interested in.

Now, I read in the morning if I'm able to get up for breakfast and I'll read it over lunch or in the evening over dinner. I'll read while I've got time to kill riding in the car or I need a moment to relax while sitting at my desk. I'm now an information addict.

I'll eventually write a post explaining why my transformation from non-reader to reader is evidence that the written word still has a chance, just not in newspapers.

Hope this blog informs you and entertains you.