“Get out of this business while you still can.”
Those were the wise words of encouragement from a Boston Globe staff reporter during my stint as a co-op employee there last semester. To be fair, his melancholy tone seems justified. It’s well-documented that The Globe, and newspapers across the country, are feeling some strain as they compete with bloggers and citizen journalists for relevance and readership.
These days, everyone seems to be weighing in on the future of our beleaguered profession. As the Internet takes a choke-hold on the print world, we’re left scrambling. We’ve seen the studies, and have heard the focus groups. If anything could sum up the general feeling the public has toward newspapers, it would echo the New York Times Best-Seller about female dating: “He’s Just Not That Into You.”
And like that clingy date that won’t take a hint, neither will we. As journalists, we defend our craft voraciously, convincing ourselves that we serve a purpose and give the world an invaluable service that the Matt Drudges and the Arianna Huffingtons of the world aren’t going to replace.
Yet we’ve been slower to recognize another, harsher truth: we need you, the readers, just as much. Along with my daily routines of teeth-brushing and hair-washing, I religiously check the message boards on The News website to see which stories clutter Most Commented, Most E-mailed and Most Popular.
Among the most talked about stories of the past year were not about the Student Government Association or tuition increases or even a President Joseph Aoun address. The story awarded the most-commented distinction is actually a 400-word fashion piece about men who wear leggings. As it turns out, that trend never took off, but the article sure did.
And while this isn’t the hard-hitting investigative work that wins Pultizer Prizes, no other story has sparked more discussion about gender roles.
“A man or woman is determined based on how kind, helpful and positive we are toward others, not what we eat, wear, sleep in or how we act like outside of these pathetic gender roles created by society
