This past spring I visited the Medill School of Journalism (where I got my MSJ in 1999 with a concentration in new media) to talk to students in one of the new media courses. Rich Gordon, who runs the new media program, told me he was really surprised that people stayed as long as they did to hear about my dot com roller coaster ride leading to the launch of Ypulse. He was so surprised because it was "Career Day" at Medill, which meant reps from lots of big media companies were there recruiting at the same time I was speaking. My first job offer out of Medill was from CNN's financial network to be an online business reporter. I turned it down to pursue working as a web producer for a start-up television network called Oxygen and began my crazy new media ride. It's fun to think about where I might be if I had taken the CNN gig….

A fellow alum sent me this blog post about how young journalists are getting fed up with working for big media organizations. Why? The folks in charge just don't get it, won't listen, are too ego driven and afraid to cede power. From the post (definitely read the whole post):

Members of the wired generation say the process, bureaucracy and caution common to most media companies steals spontaneity and edginess away from ideas that could be appealing to their peers.

“Management is more concerned about who owns the change than they are about creating change,” said the online newspaper editor. “I hear people wail about journalism, when most of their arguments aren't about journalism but about their own job security and, more importantly, egos.”

It's easy for us Xers and Boomers to brand these young twentysomethings in the office as "entitled" because they insist on lots of responsibility right away, demand to be heard and don't have the same "dues paying" attitude we had to have to survive. The problem is by not listening to them and empowering them when it comes to your digital strategy, you're shooting yourselves in the foot big time. They will move on either to a new media start-up or launch their own brand, and big media will be left gazing at its own navel, still trying to discredit anything consumer generated and wondering where they went wrong.

Update: Derek Baird sent a few related links…

ABC News Sends Digital Reporters Abroad
Experimenting with Twitter: How Newsrooms Are Using It to Reach More Users

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