With the “woe is me” attitude we all have toward the current state of flux journalism finds itself in, it’s no wonder all we want to talk about is our own profession. Journalists have been criticized lately for writing too much about journalism, but I say if it’s news, it should be covered. (Although my bias must be noted, considering I write for the Ryerson Review of Journalism.)
That being said, just because we write about it doesn’t mean we need to conference about it as often as we do. As Craig Fehrman points out in an article for the New Haven Advocate, a two-day conference held at Yale to discuss the future of journalism was almost the mirror image of a conference held at Harvard just two weeks before. And Harvard wasn’t original either—its conference was strangely similar to one held at the University of California, Berkeley the previous month.
We might have issues to consider and ideas to tinker with, but listening to panellists in Ivy League schools won’t save us from becoming obsolete. If we want to keep our jobs intact and our industry afloat, we need to listen to the people we work with. They might not all be from The New York Times, but they know what our readers want.
Note: the headline is a quote from Salon CEO Richard Gingras.
About the author
Jill Langlois was the Chief Copy Editor for the Spring 2010 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism.