Keep your eyes open: Your dream job might not always be dreamy

Magazine editor Ann Friedman, who says she’s been in the biz since 2005, writes in an essay at CJR.org, “Journalists my age and younger have never operated under the illusion that a staff job at The New Yorker or a New York Times column was in our future. But nearly a decade into the digital-media revolution, another shift has occurred. It’s not just that journalists understand former “prestige” jobs will be nearly impossible to get. Now we don’t even want them.”

Friedman writes about the recent trend of high-profile journalists leaving “prestige” publications to work for startups or even create their own.

“One of the arguments against older media and in favor of sites like Gawker and Salon used to be that you could find a far bigger audience online,” she writes after pointing out that Ken Layne had left a full-time reporting job at Gawker to start the environmental blog Greenfriar. But: “In an age of noxious comment sections, a large audience isn’t the draw it once was. Layne wanted to hand-pick the readership for his work—and set the editorial direction himself.”

The bottom line: The ground is moving. What it means to have a career in media is changing. What used to be a “dream job”—Friedman’s reference to that staff job at The New Yorker or a New York Times column—has become less attractive than some others. The headline of Friedman’s piece is “The new dream job: And the end of old-media prestige.”

That’s why I’m always bugging people to read up on the latest goings on in the biz if they’re trying to launch or sustain a career in media. It’s hard to get ahead in a business if your idea of that business has become obsolete.