Journalism in the 21st Century

When The New York Times published an article about the dour job prospects for women over 50, I rejoiced - not because I find such things worthy of celebration, but because I could relate. As I write this, it dawns on me that some will think it's sour grapes or there is something pathologically wrong with me. Maybe I get into job interviews and step on the interviewer's foot, show up late, smoke in the hallway or tell him all about how I like to make queer kitten sounds at the office Christmas soirée. But no, no, that's not me, and hasn't been me for all of the 23 or so job interviews I've had in this wonderful field we call journalism. What I have suffered from, though, is middle-aged woman syndrome. No longer taut, I find that projecting I can still be "taught" is tricky. Unless I'm interviewing with women my age or older, there is clear prejudice. Wait, back up, no it's not clear, it never is. I just lost out on a job I actually wasn't sur...

Well, well, well. You're probably reading this on your smartphone, or the mini iPad or some other tablet. If you are sitting at a desk reading this on a computer larger than a loaf of bread you are probably also listening to "Afternoon Delight" and playing Pong while you're at it. For in 2014, the year when everything journalistic was consumed not only digitally and quickly but minimally, everyone competed to do things faster and smaller than the next guy. If you were capable of reading font on a one-inch screen, hey, you've got a leg up on me. I'm still enlarging fonts and begging PRs to only send me releases with 12-point lettering. Yet, the trends toward faster and tinier were innocuous compared to the tragic assault on our industry that came with layoffs. Fewer and fewer of us were making a living as journalists -- from reductions at The New York Times to CNN to smaller papers such as the Orange County Register . At CNN, too, it seemed that the tre...

I'll admit: I have some personal baggage (is there any other kind) that makes me react severely whenever a man lies to me. This is both good and bad - good because I run away from jerks but bad because I tend to suspect, perhaps more than I should, that a fair portion of the men out there are less than angelic. It would be unprofessional to launch into too much personal history, so I'll skip right to the professional aspect of my life, the part that enjoys male colleagues as much or more than my fellow females. I've always prided myself on being "one of the guys" one minute, a lady the next. This is one reason I think I did relatively well covering Wall Street. I knew when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, so to speak, never carrying a wink too far but then again, knowing when a skirt is better than slacks. Decent men in the businessworld understand this game, and never take it too far. They have wives, girlfriends, sisters, mothers and they are learning,...

New writers are thrilled just to see their name in print. I remember when I was just starting out, interning at San Francisco Magazine. It was the eighties and I was all of 23, full of enthusiasm and stupid good will. The idea of getting paid for what I loved almost sounded illegal. "Any time you write, you should be paid for your work," a slightly older and paid colleague told me. I had just written a little ad for the magazine's personals section:      San Francisco classifieds bring single bunnies up to date      Getting personal      Now! The graphics department added a bunny. After that, marketing brought me into a meeting to bolster copy for a Shell ad. I willingly obliged. I wasn't paid and didn't even think of being paid. Again, I was chastised by my older colleague. I was beginning to feel like a chump, but that feeling was soon overpowered by the thrill I got interviewing a local comedian for our special birth...

1. I resolve to never make mean faces when I read e-mail rejections from editors, or if I do, I resolve to not record them and send them as attachments; 2. I resolve to rely more on my brain and less on Spellcheck, unless of course I'm really tired; 3. I resolve to be nicer to PRs who interrupt my busy day with pitches that are 17 paragraphs long and are addressed to "Laura Weigler" (Never was, never WILL BE Laura, and it's i before e, thank you very much); 4. I resolve to be nice when checks are late. No, no I don't. I resolve to hunt down editors who don't pay on time, publish their names on my blog, and kidnap their puppies! 5. I resolve to encourage my fellow journalists in the same way I want them to encourage me: constant praise, heaps of praise, gushing to the point of idolatry; 6. I resolve to stop screaming when I read the way a 23-year-old editor has just ruined my copy; 7. I resolve to stop bragging when one of my edito...

Watching Ann Curry's heartwrenching goodbye Thursday on "The Today Show," I wept like a school girl. Who didn't? When was the last time viewers were treated to such honest, gripping emotion? First, kudos to the NBC executives who allowed her to have her five minutes. As critical as I am of her ousting, it could have been far worse -- we might have awakened to her simply being gone, like an anchor-cum-Sopranos victim. She could have been 86'd like the first Darren on "Bewitched" or the superiority of network programming over cable (oops - did I say that out loud?) Yet, we all know that what happened to her was merely what happens to all of us women of a certain age who are no longer desirable in the eyes of our male bosses - or in her case, the imaginary viewers these male bosses felt had lost interest. Their golden boy, after all, has to fight the drool coming out of his mouth whenever Savannah Guthrie or Natalie Morales are at his side. Is this a ...