I did read this article today in The Atlantic titled “How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America” by Don Peck that I wanted to share (h/t: Rod Dreher, who I don’t always agree with but always enjoy reading). Actually, my feelings on this article are about the same: I don’t always agree–the author of the piece is particularly critical of the so-called “Millenials” who graduated during the Aughts (2000s).

However, what particularly hit me hard, because I feel the same way, are these paragraphs, which I am generously quoting because they deserve to be read:

Lisa Kahn, an economist at Yale, has studied the impact of recessions on the lifetime earnings of young workers. In one recent study, she followed the career paths of white men who graduated from college between 1979 and 1989. She found that, all else equal, for every one-percentage-point increase in the national unemployment rate, the starting income of new graduates fell by as much as 7 percent; the unluckiest graduates of the decade, who emerged into the teeth of the 1981–82 recession, made roughly 25 percent less in their first year than graduates who stepped into boom times.

But what’s truly remarkable is the persistence of the earnings gap. Five, 10, 15 years after graduation, after untold promotions and career changes spanning booms and busts, the unlucky graduates never closed the gap. Seventeen years after graduation, those who had entered the workforce during inhospitable times were still earning 10 percent less on average than those who had emerged into a more bountiful climate. When you add up all the earnings losses over the years, Kahn says, it’s as if the lucky graduates had been given a gift of about $100,000, adjusted for inflation, immediately upon graduation—or, alternatively, as if the unlucky ones had been saddled with a debt of the same size.

When Kahn looked more closely at the unlucky graduates at mid-career, she found some surprising characteristics. They were significantly less likely to work in professional occupations or other prestigious spheres. And they clung more tightly to their jobs: average job tenure was unusually long. People who entered the workforce during the recession “didn’t switch jobs as much, and particularly for young workers, that’s how you increase wages,” Kahn told me. This behavior may have resulted from a lingering risk aversion, born of a tough start. But a lack of opportunities may have played a larger role, she said: when you’re forced to start work in a particularly low-level job or unsexy career, it’s easy for other employers to dismiss you as having low potential. Moving up, or moving on to something different and better, becomes more difficult.

“Graduates’ first jobs have an inordinate impact on their career path and [lifetime earnings],” wrote Austan Goolsbee, now a member of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, in The New York Times in 2006. “People essentially cannot close the wage gap by working their way up the company hierarchy. While they may work their way up, the people who started above them do, too. They don’t catch up.” Recent research suggests that as much as two-thirds of real lifetime wage growth typically occurs in the first 10 years of a career. After that, as people start families and their career paths lengthen and solidify, jumping the tracks becomes harder.

This is the sort of thing I worry about incessantly. A past job of mine, which shall remain nameless, paid me lower than a Walmart greeter, so I’ve been at a disadvantage ever since. Employers look to see what you are previously paid, then pay accordingly. Is there a way to catch up?

Also interesting is a brief paragraph about people the economy have left behind: journalists, for one, and how they will need extra training to remain competitive. I already know this, but it’s brought into perspective that I need to do it now. What’s held me back before is not knowing what exactly to get it in…

(The following is not verbatim.)

Female Co-worker 1: That Barbara Walters got around. I had no idea she slept with so many of her sources.
***Cross-talk with a another co-worker, who agreed with me that it was creepy, ensues***
Female co-worker 1: As a top journalist who is always busy, that’s who she’s exposed to. Who else does she see all day?
Me: Co-workers.

Actually, I don’t think that’s such a hot idea either. Dating a co-worker can lead to some pretty awkward moments if it doesn’t work out. (Yes, I speak from experience.)

But, hey, it works for some. Every newspaper I’ve worked at has had at least two married couples if not more. According to American Journalism Review’s “Married with Bylines,” that’s not unusual.

“If you go into any newsroom, you’re going to see couples that are married and if they’re not married, they are living together,” says Nancy Woodhull, a founding editor of USA Today who now heads a media consulting firm specializing in new media opportunities and audiences.

One of the Gawker comments expressed a similar position, a little less eloquently:

YOu end up fucking them [your sources] because you never really meet anyone else (except other reporters, and you’ve already fucked them).

Personally, I feel lucky to have escape the minefield. I think, with my love of travel writing, I lucked out on marrying a pilot!

What do you all think? As journalists, are there people you shouldn’t date?

Granted, it doesn’t say “journalist”–or “copy editor” for that matter–just “news reporter,” but I can tell you that we don’t get paid that much more. (The night differential is just $1.50 a day for copy editors at our paper.)

Here’s what the article by Jessica Dickler said:

Median pay: $32,900 (SM-I wish I made that)
% who say their job is stressful: 62%
Every minute is another deadline for those who report and write the news. While racing against the clock, reporters gather data, conduct interviews and analyze their findings all before writing about major events for a newspaper, magazine, radio show or television program.

An excerpt:

No one person can speak for us all — we don’t even pretend that’s the case anymore — and those who tried would be put in their places as fast as you can say Edward R. Murrow.

That can be a glorious expression of democracy, or it can lead, as it did Saturday morning, to the most e-mailed story on Yahoo! News being the one about the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile crashing into a house in Wisconsin. Democracy has a way of being quite democratic.

With that said, I’d like to introduce my new blog feature, Off the Wall, where I will show some of my travel photos, whenever/wherever I might have taken them. Guessing is part of the fun–plus, a shameless ploy to get non-spam comments in my blog!

First up, Cà d’Zan Mansion in …

Cà d’Zan Mansion, as seen in the 1990s film version of “Great Expectations” was the home of John and Mable Ringling. “Cà d’zan” translates to “House of John” in Italian.” The house is beautifully ornate and overlooks the bay. I sit there all day with such a view.

For more information, visit Ringling.org.

Speaking of reviewing books, my book review on “White Witch, Black Curse” by Kim Harrison published on Sunday. I really enjoy doing book reviews, especially since I can use my downtime at work constructively.

The chain that owns The Ann Arbor News and the Jackson Citizen Patriot offered buyouts and seriously encouraged people to take them. A source tells me that one woman at the Jackson Citizen Patriot, in her 30s, took the buyout, but it is not in effect until June or July. Meanwhile, the company announces plans to HIRE new employees in her department. She marches in to ask if she can stay on, but management turns her down. Apparently, they’re much more inclined to hire people at $26,000 that she will have to train.

No one likes what is happening in the industry right now, but there’s a right way and a wrong way to behave. Happily, there is a silver lining: my source tells me that most of the open positions remain vacant. No one wants to do all that work for so little.

Anyone else have any stories?

“I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as what an entire media company can on Twitter,” Kutcher says. “So I just thought that was just kind of an amazing comment on the state of our media, and I said that, if I beat CNN to 1 million viewers, then I would ding-dong ditch Ted Turner — because I don’t think it’s gonna happen.”

About social media overturning traditional media, he says:

“I think it’s a huge statement about social media for one person to actually have the ability to broadcast to as many people as a major media network,” he said in a YouTube video.

“I think it sort of signifies the turning of the tide from traditional news outlets to social media outlets, social news outlets,” Kutcher said.

“With our video cameras on our cellphones and our picture cams and our blogging and our Twittering and our posting and our Facebooking we actually become the source of the news and the broadcasters of the news and the consumers of the news.”

…and then he won:

“We can and will create our media,” he said.

Can you really? Can you really trust some blogger with no journalism background whatsoever to hold the U.S. government accountable?

I don’t think so. I think democracy is in trouble if wannabes are all we have left of the media.

That being said, I don’t think social media is a bad thing. I belong to almost every social networking site there is. I think it really enriches one’s experience and certainly helps with generating story ideas.

In my opinion, it supplements–not replaces–journalism.