Is our recession another blip in centuries of economic rises and falls or is something darker happening?

Part of me agrees with the recent post from media critic Jeff Jarvis, who voiced a concern I’ve been working through myself: efficiency-creating technology has continued to speed and, well, there are a lot of old people coming.

There is a real conversation happening that a new normal rate of unemployment should be expected, though there is counter to that — we’re just too close to the economic collapse to have any sense of what is normal.

But here’s one additional thought I keep gnawing over.

Whenever we have predicted the end — most famously, the common 20th century prediction that overpopulation would create wild hunger issues — something has happened. Well two things happened.

(1) Technology, in some form, created an answer. (2) Someone was born to make and harness that technology.

Now, yes, there is a very real possibility — sitting here in 2011 — that jobs are becoming obsolete (hiring sure seems to be at the moment).

But there has always been this answer about harnessing population: with more humans, we have more ideas, more creativity, more solutions to have a better, longer life with less an impact on the planet. In the case of the population bomb, hunger issues today have more to do with political instability than food shortages (though that impacts short term hunger concerns).

So, intuitively, as technologies reduce available jobs and we have more people who need/want jobs, we have an employment bomb. But, prognostications in the past suggest we live in a world of our own creation, so the answers may come in unexpected ways and from unexpected places.

“So forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this – the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast.”

While I write here for free and have given a great deal of sweat equity to startups Technically Philly and NEast Philly without much monetary return yet, I’ve taken a fairly firm stand that I won’t write for free and don’t think other freelancers should, which happens to be my biggest beef with the Huffington Post.

But Shirky’s assessment (which came in 2004, I should add) and other conversation about the cost of writing brings up a topic that continues to weigh on my mind.

Already on wringing my hand over the matter, I saw a craigslist posting that, after a laugh, seemed to further my acceptance that we’ll continue to see pay fall for writers, reporters and the like.

what is it with these supposed gigs which either pay close to nothing $6 an ARTICLE ??! !! or wait – $1 a rewrite !!!
why are writers so undervalued ?? or the ‘no pay’. If its so EASY to WRITE — THEN DO IT YOURSELF !!
I SAY WRITERS – IGNORE THESE IDIOTS . [Source]

I have to say I think I agree with what motivated that poster and that might frighten me.

So many tools have been built to find the cheapest source and the growing crush of unemployed journalists and continued graduation of aspiring journalists, not to mention people outside the industry who would take writing on as a hobby, all make for clear reasons to expect the continued devaluation of paid writers.

I don’t yet agree that all of this will evaporate, but it’s clear, I think, that we’ll continue to see the brush cleared out and only the highest level writers will continue to cobble together any kind of paid existence.

Are you going to be in that number?

The 21st century graduates of The Temple News at the 88th anniversary alumni reception: (Back from left) Andrew Thompson, '09; Chris Reber, '08; ; Alex Irwin, '08; Brandon Lausch, '06; Lucas Murray, '05; Christopher Wink, '08; Mike Korostelev, '09 (Second from back row) Sulaiman Abdur-Rahman, '07; Chris Stover, '09; Morgan Zalot, '11; Dave Isaac, '09; Anthony Stipa, '09; Kevin Brosky '10; Kriston Bethel, '10; Tracy Galloway, '10; Unclear (Third from back row) Brian White, '04; Holly Otterbein, '09; Leigh Zaleski, '08; LeAnne Matlach, '09; Jen Reardon, '10; Sherri Hospedales, '10; Stephen Zook, '10; Chelsea Calhoun, '10; Maria Zankey, '10; Brian Dzenis, '12; Shannon McDonald, '09; Sean Blanda, '08; Rachel Playe, '08; Brian James Kirk, '08 (Front Row) Brianna Barry, '08; Melissa Dipento, '08; Ashley Nguyen, '12; Malaika Carpenter, '08; Charmie Snetter, '07; Nadia Stadnycki,'06

You just aren’t doing everything you can.

It’s the seemingly unintentional, passive-aggressive jab that I sometimes get from older or otherwise more established journalists, writers and editors. Most often and in many ways, I’m sure the sentiment is pristine in its accuracy, often abutted by the never-to-be-defended-against “it takes time,” which, of course is always true.

But I can’t help but think what’s happened since, say, 2007 or even later, is something bigger that is changing the value of a lot of once rock solid professional advice for young and otherwise aspiring journalists, and making it awfully hard out there.

Two weeks ago, The Temple News, a college newspaper with ample history, held its semi-annual reunion. The reception pulled 150 or more proud Newsers from 1949 through to current staffers, fairly impressive for an 88-year-old campus mainstay.

It was a fine event held not far from where Temple University began more than 125 years ago, and, while mostly alumni clustered to those from their decade of graduation, there was co-mingling, which is always refreshing to see.

Before the reception, there were tours, mingling in the current newsroom and an alumni panel, of which I am proud to say I was a part.

Of the ten panel members, five had graduated this decade and the other half all had left the Temple News offices before 1981.

That means there quite literally was a generation a gap, at least 20 years between half the panel and, you know what, while the conversation quickly followed that track, the career advice that came later found a divide along more recent lines.

TALKING AND REMEMBERING

After everyone introduced him or herself, we were asked to share memories of our time with The Temple News. It felt natural  to let the older cohort take hold of the conversation, and it seemed my fellow, younger panel members agreed, none of us saying much if anything more than that first introduction.

It became a sharing of stories from the panel members — and then the older folks from the audience of more than 30. Stories from people who were working in or breaking into the industry during a past generation of the industry.

Most young journalists love the old nostalgic talk of hot press/cold press/teletype and all the other once technologies of newspapering. So we, the younger generation, both on the panel and in the audience, of Temple News alumni, listened to them remembering.

Reunions are about remembering, so no one blinked when Mike Sisak, a copy editor on the New York Times’ sports desk and a 1962 Temple News editor-in-chief, called for anyone from his generation in the room to identify him or herself and talk about his or her experiences.

That, quite frankly, is the divide I expected.

The panel members who could perhaps still pass for someone’s child would mostly listen, while those who might more likely be called a parent or more likely still a grandparent would talk about the past. That’s how it’s meant to be.

CAREER ADVICE

With the last 10 minutes of the nearly 90-minute pre-reception event, current Temple News adviser and 1998 graduate John Di Carlo called for questions from the audience.

One of the last and, to me, the most interesting question, came from former TTN News Editor and 2009 graduate LeAnne Matlach.

The bright, competent and hard-working aspiring broadcast journalist asked, as inevitably is the case at these types of events, asked for advice on grabbing that first job in the industry. Saddled with student loans and several hundred applications deep seven months past her graduation with not much to show for it outside a food service job, Matlach is, it seems, awfully frustrated by her lack of success despite, it seems, making a lot of the right decisions.

I almost cringed. Not because the question was unfair and certainly not because it wasn’t the time to do it — the room was full of the bright and excessively successful in an industry she wanted in on — but rather because I expected advice that wouldn’t help and, maybe, hurt her, in my opinion.

Here’s a quick review of some of the advice as I remember it:

1. A 1959 graduate said try spicing up your applications or clips you send in. To get one of his first jobs, he sent in a cartoon.
2. A 1962 graduate said reach out to alumni.
3. A 1968 graduate said not to ignore Web products and asked, with a laugh from the crowd, if NEast Philly founder and 2009 graduate Shannon McDonald or I were hiring.
4. A ~1970s graduate said to try public relations or other fields before finding a journalism gig.
5. A 1991 graduate said ‘be annoying.’ He “graduated in a tough economy too,” but he got a position by persistently approaching the editor at a publication for which he wanted to work.
6. A 2004 graduate said apply to smaller markets.
7. A 2005 graduate says freelance, freelance, freelance.

Mike Sisak, Phil Jasner, Shannon McDonald and I on the alumni panel.

You see, while the broad conversation was split along traditional generational lines, the conversation about career advice appears here to be affected more by the great big newspaper collapse that didn’t happen in its most popularly-recognized form until after 2006.

I think every since piece of advice above was absolutely viable even five years ago. I think they’ve all become more complicated since the quickened pace of newspaper decline, combined with a historic stall in advertising, the worst recession since before World War II  and a complete rethink of the industry.

Here are my concerns:

1. This might translate today to a solid multimedia presence, something Matlach is trying, though perhaps she could do more. She is building a bit of a presence on Twitter and has her reel on Youtube, seen above, which dominates a Google search of her name. The fact remains that journalism jobs have been cut at a historic rate over the past three years, so entry level jobs are now being absorbed by people with years more experience. The newspaper bubble is popping and no cartoon is gonna overcome that.
2. Reaching out to alumni is always valuable, and I saw Matlach wisely speaking to this alumnus after the reception. But in a room of 50 or more successful journalists at newspapers and news outfits of big and small acclaim, only one could even begin to speak honestly of any freelance opportunities for someone starting out — Barry Levine, the executive editor of the National Enquirer and a 1981 graduate.
3. The growth of Web news is, of course, a real one and likely we’ll see a huge hyperlocal movement in the next few years. I’m also a passionate believer that the most successful of these will be for-profit entities, but this is a surprisingly nascent movement. Without the real help of alumni in No. 2, a recent graduate would have to have a lot of luck to get on board with a profitable online news arm. Knowledge of this is simply way ahead of the actual businesses.
4. See No. 1. With so many unemployed people generally, and particular in the media industry, I think established journalists are underestimating how difficult it is to find that writing-related, but not-quite-journalism job. Still, the point should be taken, but keep these struggles in mind.
5. It’s frustrating for recent graduates to hear the folks from the early 1980s and 1990s talk about the tough economies they graduated into. Please understand that this is a new beast. Not only is unemployment for 20-somethings the highest since records were first taken in the 1940s, but when we’re talking the news industry, there is simply no generation of journalism graduates who have ever faced the entry-level obstacles that today’s graduates do. That 1991 graduate who came out in a “tough economy, too” came out to a newspaper industry that was still growing in some ways — the historic peak for the number of newspapers with at least 250k readers didn’t come until 1993. All that said, persistence sure is virtue, but the jobs, even those internships, simply aren’t there.
6. Sure, entry-level folks need to look outside Philadelphia if they are still going to try to play the newspaper/media climbing game, but, say it with me now, more than 30,000 newspaper jobs have been lost in the past two years. Matlach told the audience that she had applied for positions in Guam, and she’s also applied for gigs in North Dakota. She’s trying.
7. I agree with the sentiment of freelancing and I’m doing it myself, but having spoken after the panel to the alumnae who made this suggestion, I know there is a misunderstanding about how available that is for recent graduates who need money. You’re not supposed to freelance when you’re just starting out, when there’s a recession nor when the news industry is in a period of massive readjustment. They’re all happening now, so it’s harder than ever for young freelancers. I believe that, particularly because while the number of outlets for which to write has jumped, the number of paid opportunities has not.

Reality TV star Danny Bonaduce attended the reception that followed the panel to speak about his aunt Jackie Steck, who was a Temple journalism professor. I'm standing in the back left of this photo in the handsome green argyle sweater.

No one, particularly no one on a fancy alumni panel celebrating a college newspaper with a proud tradition, wants to give a bleak response or offer no real help. So you give the advice you’ve been given. You say things that have worked, but that doesn’t mean they’ll work now.

This is what I would have told Matlach, though she already knows my thoughts here.

1. Ride out this recession. Get whatever job you can now to pay your bills because the recession is lessening, some advertising money will flow again, business models will be rehashed, news orgs and other big companies will feel less of a pinch on their legacy debt, unemployment will reduce in the coming years and the like.
2. While you’re doing that, do three things so as not to waste your time: Do freelance. This is a lot more difficult than I think many established journalists want to believe, but you do have to keep your name out there. It won’t pay your bills like it has for others for reasons: there are more freelancers now because of unemployment; there are smaller budgets for it and you’re young so you’re least important, established and networked. Understand the pros and cons.
3. Do create the strongest multimedia presence you can. I am hardly a Web developer, but I’ve continually focused on trying to develop my ability to own Web news, writing and reporting and, though Matlach is strong in these areas, I know she, like most others out there, can learn plenty more. When this thing turns around, you’d be a fool to not be the strongest out the gate.
4. And, I think most important, start creating your own job. No one is entirely certain how long it will take for employment numbers to return to whatever was once normal. Even when they do, no one is entirely sure what the media landscape will look like. Hell, maybe the world isn’t ending, but this may be a very dramatic pardigm shift in the world of news. Find a niche and start trying to create a job, a business and a life around news and reporting and journalism if that’s really what you want. Learn to write a business plan.

A friend of mine, who is a bright young multimedia journalist by any standard, a fellow 2008 Temple News alumnus and even-keeled in his temperament, recently expressed, perhaps only partially in jest, his concern that he might be unable to stop from shouting down the next established journalist who tried to lay the claim that things were harder when he was starting.

It’s not that not-yet established journalists don’t respect their more accomplished peers. We do. But for every old timers story about how they didn’t have the Internet and other Web-based technologies and tools, it’s difficult to not hear any sympathy for how difficult it is right now.

That’s going to change in coming years. But graduates from, say 2006 or 2007, particularly those in journalism fields, through to the next couple graduating classes have it damn tough, and it’d be nice for some of that to be respected and understood, instead of criticized.

Click to enlarge.

Americans aged 24 or younger could be part of a “lost generation,” says a new cover story from Business Week.

For people just starting their careers, the damage may be deep and long-lasting, potentially creating a kind of “lost generation.” Studies suggest that an extended period of youthful joblessness can significantly depress lifetime income as people get stuck in jobs that are beneath their capabilities, or come to be seen by employers as damaged goods.

It’s the latest stylish trend piece at a time when general stories on an economy that might not return for two or three years are already old hat. A lot of the numbers are fuzzy and the effect may be questionable, but there’s no questioning that it’s daunting for many 20-somethings.

We graduated and walked into perhaps the worst economy since before our grandparents were our age. A few more distinctions this author has taken on has made those statistics seem even more frightening, but outside of the occasional sobbing, I try to remind myself that there’s no better time or place in the world than where I am now.

First, how about five reasons why I should be professionally scared:

• More than half of Americans under the age of 24 are unemployed
  “The unemployment rate for young Americans has exploded to 52.2 percent — a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept… During previous recessions, in the early ’80s, early ’90s and after Sept. 11, 2001, unemployment among 16-to-24 year olds never went above 50 percent.”
• “The unemployment rate for men is running 2.7 percentage points higher than for women”
  A “just unprecedented” spread, according to economist Mark Perry at the University of Michigan-Flint.”
• Philadelphia has one of the highest national unemployment rates for 20-somethings
  “While national unemployment is at 9.4 percent, people ages 20 to 29 face jobless rates of 12.7 percent nationally and 14 percent in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, including South Jersey, according to figures compiled by Mark Price of the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg.”
• Nearly 30,000 newspaper jobs have been cut since the beginning of 2008
  Yup, while I am working on building hyperlocal news sites and my own small business, I am freelancing mostly for newspapers and have first come into the tragically dysfunctional journalism business at the most dramatic shift in its more than two-centuries old history.
• Nearly one-third of employees with 401ks are saving even less than they did six months ago
  I was raised a saver and did so quite obsessively throughout my childhood, well into college. I always had a job and rarely made any unnecessary purchases, so I left college in May 2008 with a fine nest egg for a middle-class college graduate. But after backpacking Europe and more than a year under performing in the earning category, those liquid assets have been… mostly liquidated. That leaves me vulnerable in a small way like millions of Americans deal with everyday and limits a lot of good behavior.

I am a (1) male (2) 20-something in the (3) Philadelphia (4) news industry with a (5) decimated bank account.

That’s a lot (5) stacked against any young professional, but there’s balance to be had.

I am blessed with great privilege and a great country of opportunity. I have been put in a time and a place in which I can experiment quite easily with new media models, relatively risk free. I have been forced into a state of entrepreneurship that I probably never would have executed otherwise. I am a thousand-times stronger manager and developer than ever before.

Lots of people are saying just these same things for the news industry specifically and shouting really loudly about what to do.

If I have to bus a few tables, make a few photocopies, talk a bit about social networking now for the opportunity to build a business, make my own schedule and choose what I want to do, can there be any hesitation about this time being a great opportunity?

If what I’m doing now is “sacrificing,” I’ll happily do that to build what I want to build. ….Now, if this whole ship is going down, well, then, damn.

At least when you fail, it helps knowing your entire generation is trying to figure this out.

Thomas Schuler is a man.

Since October, he also has been without a job, a combination of characteristics that some say comes with distinct disadvantages.

That’s because unemployment affects men differently than women – research shows joblessness often is emotionally harder for men to bear. And with the economy hemorrhaging high numbers of jobs, disproportionately in male-dominated industries, those disparate emotions – shame, anger, fear, vulnerability – are on display more than ever. These feelings often find their way into other parts of a man’s life, affecting relationships with friends, wife and children.

“Historically, men have been in the breadwinner role in families, and so their sense of self is wrapped up in their ability to provide,” said Jerry Jacobs, a University of Pennsylvania sociology professor whose research focuses on labor. “So even today, when men are unemployed, that comes as a different kind of blow than to women.”

Schuler was proud when he landed his job as a facilities engineer at a struggling hotel in Plymouth Meeting. But when his position became a casualty of his company’s struggles, he suffered.

“I felt grief, self-pity, a state of depression like [never before],” said Schuler, 49, of West Philadelphia. “Men like to feel that no matter the life situation, we can adapt . . . but this economy is something different. I don’t think Adam Smith himself could straighten this thing out.”

This kind of blow has become all too common of late.

In November, nearly 60,000 more people were unemployed in the Philadelphia area – what the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics considers 11 counties in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland – than at the same time in 2007. That was 6,600 more than in October, according to the bureau. Nationally, many male-dominated industries were hardest hit, including 10-year unemployment highs in construction and other heavy-manufacturing sectors.

Most people have been taught to believe that job security is linked to job performance. But layoffs often are indiscriminate, leaving men feeling disillusioned, particularly in a recession like the current one, Jacobs said.

Andy Hathaway worked in the same place for nearly a quarter century. He thought he was safe after surviving his company’s slashing of nearly 3,000 jobs worldwide in September. But the electrical engineer with a lifetime of good performance reviews got the ax Nov. 20 – along with more than 80 of his coworkers.

“It’s stunning, like someone calling up with the death of a good friend,” Hathaway said. “I went through all the stages: anger, depression, guilt.”

In single-income households during the first half of the 20th century, a man losing his job was a crisis, Jacobs said. Today, dual-income families can soften the financial blow, but the emotional threat to a male’s sense of self lingers. That, in turn, affects his interactions with others.

Schuler said he feared that his three children and four grandsons looked down on him now that he lacked a job.

“They think there’s something different about Pop-Pop,” Schuler said. “Maybe they think, ‘How come a grown man doesn’t have enough money to take his kids to Wendy’s?’ ”

Hathaway, the electrical engineer from Germansville, Pa., admitted to being quicker to anger now, even with his wife.

“She’s told me I’m not the same now, and I’m not,” Hathaway said. “I have a 10,000-pound gorilla on my shoulders telling me to get into a job.”

Carl Grant, 58, lost a good job, too – as an electrician with the city’s water department. This economy called for cuts, and incurring a DUI charge made him expendable.

The resident of West Philadelphia’s Haddington neighborhood said he was doing the best he could, but he recognizes that getting a new job will be tough – after all, having any criminal record in a sluggish economy “is not even an option.”

“We define ourselves by what kind of job we have and what kind of job we do,” Grant said. “My job – that’s the kind of man I am. I liked my job. Now what? You find another, like a man does. . . . But what if you can’t?”

Piers Marchant lost his job as a senior editor with AOL Time Warner twice: first in February 2003 and again in 2007.

“It got harder and harder to look your wife in the eye,” Marchant 42, said. “Wasn’t she looking at me and thinking, ‘What is wrong with this guy? Why is he incapable of biting the bullet and getting a gig that pays us a living wage?’ ”

After losing his job the second time, Marchant, who lives in Queen Village, took the editor-in-chief position at two.one.five magazine, a glossy periodical based in Northern Liberties. It’s a welcome position, though print media are no employment bomb shelter. More than 14,000 newspaper jobs disappeared nationally in 2008, the same year nearly a dozen major magazines folded, according to research by Samir A. Husni, a University of Mississippi journalism professor who follows industry trends.

Many workplaces breed a culture of complaining – people lament how the daily grind is a daily burden. But when people, especially men, are without a job, they can lose a sense of purpose, said Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple University who studies human motivation.

“You’re happy for the most part to go to work,” said David Clyburn, 52, of the Nicetown section of Philadelphia. “If you’re not working, you’re not happy as a man.”

Having lost his job as a packer at a chemical plant in August, he’s now looking for work in information technology, perhaps with a company’s computer help desk.

Clyburn and other unemployed men are in danger of falling into serious depression, Farley said.

“Keep perspective. There was more unemployment in 1982 than now. Then, like after the Great Depression, good times followed,” he said.

Farley recommends using job loss as a chance to change fields or go back to school. Try a new hobby or play your favorite sport, he said – anything to keep from getting down on yourself, “which solves nothing.”

Clyburn is spending his time leveraging resources at the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, a membership organization of low-wage workers and the unemployed. Until he succeeds, he watches with frustration as his wife has to work extra overtime as a client-care worker with the physically and mentally disabled.

“Women see it more as a family issue. For men, it’s more about getting out there and being part of a community,” Clyburn said. “Work, I think, will always mean something more for a man. So losing that job for a man is losing part of him. A man is what he does. Do you think any man wants to lose that?”