I left the news business about a year and a half ago. I had been an editor at a metro daily paper, and I survived several rounds of layoffs because my programming skills were so valuable, but even those of us whose jobs weren't cut in one round always wondered whether we would be next, and the unpaid quarterly furloughs were no fun, either.
I loved journalism, and I continue to love journalism, so it was really difficult to leave it as a _vocation_. But it was not very difficult to leave it as a _business_.
Now that I'm doing full-time software development, it's easy to see that it was the right choice for me and my family. The salary and benefits are significantly better, as you might expect, and so is the morale and the job security.
I might have stuck it out longer if I had any confidence that the people who handle the business end of the journalism world had a decent plan to become profitable again as print dies out (or at least becomes permanently crippled). But I never heard or saw anything, internally or externally, to give me that confidence that there was a workable plan.
(As it turns out, I have been able to continue writing, not only for my employer but outside of work -- I have a book coming out in the fall and another in the works. That's helped to satisfy my writing itch, and my full-time job has helped to satisfy my "pay the bills" itch.)
It seems that news as a business is moving away from journalism, and towards sensationalism. Being first becoming more important that being accurate. Getting the most eyes on your ads.
I have a suspicion that what newspaper companies want is not what is taught in journalism school.
To be fair, this has always been a paradigm of the journalism industry. Freedom of the press was not an easy right for the founders to enshrine given how the penny press routinely slandered colonial leaders. "Yellow journalism" was so bad that the namesake of the Pulitzer Prizes is blamed for fueling the Spanish-American war.
> I have a suspicion that what newspaper companies want is not what is taught in journalism school.
You are correct, but not in the way that you intend. Journalism schools are even slower moving than the news industry. There are pockets of the news world who realize they need data analysis skills and programming talent (at prices they can afford).
Journalism schools, by and large, have no idea what to do about this, even if they recognize the need, and few plans on how to bridge this gap.
(In fact I'm one of the earlier programmers insnared by their machinations, and i now work on DocumentCloud at the journalism non-profit Investigative Reporters & Editors)
I loved journalism, and I continue to love journalism, so it was really difficult to leave it as a _vocation_. But it was not very difficult to leave it as a _business_.
Now that I'm doing full-time software development, it's easy to see that it was the right choice for me and my family. The salary and benefits are significantly better, as you might expect, and so is the morale and the job security.
I might have stuck it out longer if I had any confidence that the people who handle the business end of the journalism world had a decent plan to become profitable again as print dies out (or at least becomes permanently crippled). But I never heard or saw anything, internally or externally, to give me that confidence that there was a workable plan.
(As it turns out, I have been able to continue writing, not only for my employer but outside of work -- I have a book coming out in the fall and another in the works. That's helped to satisfy my writing itch, and my full-time job has helped to satisfy my "pay the bills" itch.)