What this "traditional media" expat has to say about the way the wind has blown
I am an ex-pat of traditional media. I came to my first job hoping that I would see my name in magazine bylines and book covers. Maybe I would get to share my work on TV, God willing. I left "print" by accident, not by any prescience on my part of its eventual declining significance, but more from an inability to fit in.
I'm sure if I had stuck it out a bit more and not taken a new media job five years in I might have made more of a go of it. But things discouraged me about traditional media. It had an established power structure that made it nearly impossible to get noticed. I wrote things I was proud of on the side, while editing more established writers in the waking hours and writing uninspired copy as a freelancer. But I hadn't really established a voice that was worthy of cashing in favors from editor friends of mine.
I didn't crackle with potential; I tended to get sleepy at work while copyediting and often had my edits edited. My favorite part of my job was reading magazines--a nice perk of working at a print media company--and going to parties, where a lot of people asked me for my card. Being employed by a large media company, I didn't have to go after editors looking for print work. But I had no ability to get published within my own company. When I was told I couldn't write good headlines it felt more like a sentence than a criticism. It was an indication of my inability to do well in this world. I wouldn't get to do what I really wanted--to write--because clearly it wasn't in my blood.
I read with fascination Lesley M.M. Blume's piece in Slate, "The Media's Lost Generation" about the travails of traditional media refugees who are being forced to have to re-invent themselves in mid-career. Her piece opens,
The meeting did not go well.
"The headhunter essentially told me not to even bother trying," says the executive. "He told me, ‘The old media model is broken.' The message was that there really isn't a next step to take."
I read articles about the challenges of print and television all the time, but this one really resonated with me, perhaps, because I'm relieved that through no particular flash of insight other than just a feeling to go where I can make a difference, I veered to where the action is. A direction now deemed "correct" in the world. I recall my decison to leave New York to take a new media job, ten years ago, and asking a trusted mentor whether it made sense for me to leave and relinquish my somewhat low, but higher than rock-bottom, place on the media ladder.
"You'll be back in six months. Don't lose any numbers," he said. My decision to go was one of the first logically inexplicable ones I'd made. It came from the gut and a voice that said, "Do it anyway."
I share this because I am not taking a self-righteous stance on the new relevance of new media, or social media. I make a living from it, I believe my company rides along the edge of best practices everyday, but I can't say that I knew this would happen; I'd only hoped I would be able to pursue this growing interest in a model counter intuitive to the people I used to work for. A model that democratized media, to a large extent, and made possible a notion terrifying to most people like me who hinged their self-worth on "making it" in traditional media: that there's a whole helluva lot of talent out there and it ain't all on the Hearst, Conde Nast, or Time Warner payrolls. Traditional media just took in whom they could fit, who matched the pedigree, or who had an uncle who could introduce you to the editor, or who had this random bit of luck and was seen for what she could produce, and sometimes bonafide talent. But so may others could not even make it to the filter, let alone make a living at it.
Back in my print days, there was something so alluring about being one of a few selected, whose name would be committed to print. And there's a whole community of folks, I'm sure, who still hold print sacred. I'm one of them, even as someone whose name has only made it via her work in new media. I fretted so long about being a part of it that even while it's suffering I promise to someday return -- if it will have me. Many bloggers who are doing just fine building platforms online still look at the book deal as the summit of success. I'll know I'm fully evolved when I couldn't care less about hardcover, softcover, or any cover.
Blume writes of executives who have dedicated their careers to traditional media and who now have no idea what's next. I recall from back in my editing days that the most likely way to "move up" in traditional media was to jump to a new company. I had friends whose resumes made me dizzy--they moved, often laterally, to a company, then another, sometimes even back to their original company. Anything to extricate them from a previously untenable working situation (untenable, meaning with blocked or unclear paths to promotion). Often their situation wasn't any better when they moved, but even the possibility of shaking lose a few additional thousand per year, or removing the word "associate" from their title was worth it. Movement in itself meant relevance.
But now, after swinging from tall building to tall building like Spiderman, these execs are finding themselves in freefall: The buildings have crashed down.
It's been difficult to share my thoughts on the overarching change that's going on, because it would be so easy to accuse me of advocating for the side on which my bread is buttered. But could any of us really read Blume's piece and think that we've ended up on the "right" or "wrong" side? I read it, felt lucky for a second, and then realized, no matter which side we're on, we can't stop moving. We must simply learn to love the freefall, even when at times someone throws us a net.
What I'm grateful for is not having ended up where I am, but for the voice that had told me, when I thought I should stay in the realm of the known, "Do it anyway."
