I intend to write a longer blog on the raging debate over Kai Nagata’s now famous blog about his resignation from CTV News, Why I Quit My Job putting it in a wider and historic perspective.
Throughout my career I’ve known people who have gotten fed up in the way Nagata did and quit. So quitting is nothing new and I will include that in a future blog.
As the backlash against Nagata grows, I think a crucial point has to be made now. As I said in some Facebook and other posts, Nagata’s blog wouldn’t have gone viral if it hadn’t touched a cord with a lot of people, including many of his generation. The blog has an audience around the world that is still growing.
A lot of people are now saying Nagata is a self-indulgent egotist in his mid-20s. Maybe. Elders have attacked restless, ego-driven 20-somethings since the first agricultural settlements in Anatolia seven thousand odd years ago.
Many influential voices in journalism are saying that Nagata should have stayed and fought. One of the latest comments comes from someone highly respected in the broadcast news industry, Howard Bernstein, Quitting Solves Nothing.
Nagata isn’t the only talented young journalist who has quit the business (although it looks like Nagata didn’t hold out as long some people). I know other people in their 20s in Canada, the US and the UK who have also quit but who haven’t voiced their dissatisfaction so eloquently as Nagata. So perhaps quitting does solve the problem of knocking your head against a brick wall. It feels so good when you stop.
The first question that has to be asked is: with jobs in journalism so scarce and competition
for those jobs so fierce that the managers who actually want talent have their pick, then why are so many of the best and the brightest who can quit (not married, no mortgages, not overburdened by student loans) actually quitting?
I have seen Facebook and other postings from very talented journalists and former journalists, I know, all in their late 20s, early 30s, (and whose work I respect) all saying Nagata is right. Most of the criticism appears to becoming from an older age set, from late 30s up until retirement.
The second and more important question is where’s that all important audience that the media managers keep telling us they are trying to serve?
The audience for news among the 20 to 30 demographic is dismal. Those dismal figures go beyond the supposed disinterest that age group has in news.
This is the demographic that the advertisers supposedly hunger for, supposedly would kill for: 18 to 34. Where are that audience? Not watching TV news, that’s for certain. Why are the news ads filled with safety bath tabs, reverse mortgages, non-medical life insurance and topical pain relievers? The advertisers aren’t that dumb, if the 20 to 30s were watching the news, you’d see a lot more ads than there are now for smart phones and tablets, computers, cars, adventure vacations and eco-tourism trips, starter condos and the furniture for those starter condos. Instead the ad dollars are going to attract poor, aging, arthritic, worried boomers. At the same time, in any TV newsroom, the managers go on and on and on and on about the “younger audience” while producing the kind of news piffle that led Nagata to quit and has driven that audience away.
The 20 to 30s are also not reading newspapers, at least on paper, they browse online at the free news buffet.
It’s not just that they are part of the download generation who expect free stuff. The news media hasn’t produced anything that they think is worth paying for. After all they will pay for music on iTunes and for non-pirated software or anything else they feel has real value. The news media doesn’t produce anything that would attract an 18-34 audience that would mean advertisers would throw money at the media to get their attention.
Among my non-journalist friends in their 20s, one thing is very clear. They don’t trust the media at all. Any media. While mostly aging conservatives attack the CBC for its supposed left-wing bias, many of 20 to 34s I talk to lump the CBC together with CTV, Global and Sunmedia as “corporate media.” I am surprised and disheartened that many young people believe that all the networks, including the CBC, and the major newspapers jump to Stephen Harper’s commands. (I am sure I can hear Harper saying, “I wish” especially when he is facing Terry Milewski.)
Like the rest of the audience, the 18 to 34 are titillated by Charlie Sheen’s self destruction and they did watch some of the royal tour by William and Catherine. But they are also concerned about the future of this poor planet and the crisis that climate change will bring and know that the media on whatever platform isn’t doing enough coverage of those stories.
The current News International scandal, the closing of The News of the World (as well as the likely cynical substitution by the Sun on Sunday) and the continuing revelations about the abuses of the media owned by Rupert Murdoch (as well as the fact that Conrad Black is going back to jail in the U.S.) will do nothing to improve the trust in the media among younger people.
So it’s not just Kai Nagata that’s quitting the media. It’s the whole damned demographic.
The real story is not Kai Nagata, it’s an entire generation, that all important audience, disillusioned by the metric driven nonsense that consultants tell managers this generation (that isn’t watching or reading) want.
The journalists in that generation who are quitting and posting on Twitter and in blogs that didn’t get as much notice as Nagata’s are voicing what the rest aren’t saying (and isn’t that the journalists job?)
For my friends and colleagues who are still in the business and are still fighting from the inside, good for them, they might (might) make a difference (maybe). However, we must remember the definition of insanity, if you keep doing the same thing over and over and get the same result, and you don’t change what you are doing and keep doing the same thing, you must be insane.
While there are small victories in those internal fights, the important strategic battles are being won by the beancounters and metric mad managers (who are picking up their huge bonuses on their way out of the office each weekend).
Some of those young people, some still journalism students, and many who quit their jobs without publishing their manifestos, who I follow on #futureofnews are working to create their own start-ups or exploring new forms of entrepreneurial journalism or are struggling as two-track freelancers (both working for the current media and working to innovate).
So it is likely that if anything saves journalism. it will come from one of those quitters who are free to create a new model and mode of news delivery. Maybe that’s why Kai Nagata touched such a raw nerve with the (the cliche) main stream media.
Excellent blog Robin. You, like Kai, are right about most of what you say. The difficulty is what happens to main stream media if it is abandoned by the best and brightest people?
You may say that mainstream media as we know it is passe and will disappear in the future anyways. But the fact is at best it will be replaced by a new form of mainstream media which will be taken over by the same corporate giants that own television and newspapers.
The real issue, and it was Kai’s issue, is the ethics and ethos of journalism. It is totally controlled by businessmen who are only interested in making money. They do not care about journalism, in fact they want to control the content to their benefit.
This has never changed. In the 30’s the same arguments were made by young people about the newspapers and people like William Randolph Hearst.
Radio and TV took over and the media barons didn’t take long to gobble up the then “new” media.
It is my contention that if people like you and Kai are not willing to put up a fight for what you believe in, you too will be doomed to face the same situation. The medium may change, but the ethics and ethos will be the same.
Oh, one final point, young people in their 20’s and early 30’s have never been news consumers. The young people of the 60’s generation had the same disinterest in and distaste for the media. Today they are the biggest consumers. When people become older their interest in news and journalism blossoms. If I knew why I would be able to harness it and make my own millions. The simple fact is that historically there is nothing new about young adults showing little interest. That has never meant they would not be interested when they get older.