Should your daughter become a journalist?

Ours is a country where every cricketer thinks his son should naturally play cricket and represent the nation. In the film world, cinematic talent is per force presumed to flow in the blood. And doctors, of course, can’t even harbour the possibility that their sons and daughters may carry any other instrument in life but the stethoscope.

What about journalists?

Will you want your son or daughter to follow you in your profession?

Unlike cricket, films or medicine, it is a tough choice given the abysmal salaries. And with every new technological advancement predicting the death of newspapers as we know them, pretty uncertain too.

Jim Walsh of the Courier Post, South Jersey, faced the same dilemma. His daughter Tracy was a stellar student in school but she wanted to do journalism. What he told her by way of advice may yet surprise you.

Read the full story by following the link below:

http://www.courierpostonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007701080346

Very Useful Advice for young journalists

G V Krishnan, the former Times of India special correspondent, alerts us to an interview of Paul Steiger, the managing editor of Wall Street Journal.

Question: What advice would you have for a young journalist starting his or her career today?

Answer: Never be afraid of asking what seems like a dumb question. The dumb questions are often the best questions. And to write, write, write as much as you can.

As some other worthy put it, there are no dumb questions in journalism, only dumb answers.

Read the full interview: http://www.iwantmedia.com/people/people65.html

Why newspapers will never die

The death of newspapers has been predicted for about a century now. First, it was radio which was supposed to kill us. Then, television. Then the internet. Now, the mobile.

Whatever.

But, here’s the real reason why newspapers haven’t died—an anecdote reported by the Dorset County Chronicle, recorded by the novelist Thomas Hardy, and reproduced in the Facts by William Greenslade (Ashgate).

**

Some time in 1826 in Edinburgh, Scotland, two horsemen, the heads of rival county families, came face to face in a narrow lane.

Each asked the other to move aside, but both stood on ego and status, and neither would budge.

After a while, one of them produced a newspaper and proceeded to slowly read it from cover to cover, a process that took three to four hours.

As he read para after para, story after story, the reader expected his rival to get bored, tired or frustrated, and make way.

But…

But, as he finished, the other horseman courteously asked if he might now borrow the newspaper!

No such social intercourse is possible between two TV or mobile or PDA or whatever owners.