The Promised Land

Twenty-eight years ago this week I landed my first regular-paying job as a reporter. The parallels to what's transpiring in the industry today are almost frightening.

In 1981, the unemployment rate was soaring, the economy was in deep decline and newspapers across the country were folding at a record pace as the reading public lost its appetite for afternoon editions. The industry was going through a transformation toward the digital age. Touting myself as being literate in the use of computers - VDT experience! I boasted - got more than one potential employer to take notice.

Still, no one was hiring. The industry, many said, was dying. But there was nothing more that I wanted to do, and I was willing to do it for free.

Paul Danison, now of the Orange County Register, heard of me through some mutual acquaintances. I was a senior at San Diego State University, working full time as editorial page editor of The Daily Aztec, laboring from 7 to 11 at nights as a janitor and taking a full load of classes somewhere in between. Sleep was overrated.

I don't remember much of my interview with Paul, except that he was a Reds fan and I told him I loved the Dodgers, but it was my talk with a reporter at the paper that sealed the deal. We work hard here, Mark Petix warned me. The hours are long. We do everything except take out the trash. And the pay is crap.

Heck, I told him. I work about 60 hours a week. Go to school full time. As a janitor, taking out the trash was the easiest part of my night job. And I'll work for free.

Bring it on, I said.

I was hired. I had arrived. The fact that I was offered $150 a week was gravy. With three months left in my senior year at college, I began covering the unincorporated community of Cardiff for The Citizen of Solana Beach, a weekly paper affiliated with the daily Blade-Tribune of Oceanside.

Those of us who entered the business in trying times - and there have been many - have similar stories to tell, some way better than mine. But for me, the roles are now reversed. As an editor who has found a niche working with college interns, I see highly educated, gifted young writers everyday yearning to launch a career in an industry during a period of unprecedented transformation. The challenges facing newspapers do not to discourage, however, but serve to motivate.

And they're pretty damn talented, possessing skills far beyond what some publications consider necessary for thriving multi-media sites.

These kids are the future of the industry. They will lead us to the promised land. Just as my generation did during the last economic calamity some 30 years ago.