For more than a decade, I have largely consumed media via electronic means. Since graduating from college in 2001, I have never subscribed to the paper edition of a newspaper. I get my news from the Internet and television, I download and listen to podcasts, and I’m finding myself increasingly watching TV shows and live sports online as well.
The last bastion of print journalism consumption for me is magazines. I subscribe to four of them, all of which, it seems, come two or more days later than they did when I lived in New York.
This morning, as I downloaded the latest Sports Illustrated onto my iPad (while the print version, which arrived on Friday, sat untouched on my kitchen table), it occurred to me that as long as magazines make their full editions available to subscribers in electronic form, I have no need for print editions. Paper magazines cost more money, they waste resources and they clutter my apartment. I don’t know if any of the magazines I subscribe to offer the choice to opt out of receiving print editions, but I’m sure that day is coming soon.
This is no groundbreaking revelation or anything. But it did get me to think about how the print vs. electronic media divide has impacted my life on a more fundamental level.
In the spring of 1994, I did a week-long “externship” at The New Haven Register, which led to a summer internship there later that summer. I was 15 years old.
I worked in the sports department, following staff reporters to various games and events, learning how to be the only thing I had ever wanted be since I was seven years old: a newspaper man.
My time spent at the Register was fun, it was exciting and it has helped guide me through my career to this point - but not in the way you’d think.
Instead of my time there being a celebration of the written word, a glorious glimpse into the ink-stained history of the newspaper business, the strongest piece of advice came from Sports Editor Richard Lord, who told me in no uncertain terms:
“Don’t go into print journalism, Dan. It’s a dying industry. Go into electronic media. Save yourself before it’s too late!”
Okay, he didn’t say the last line. But the first part is true. And again, this was 1994, well before the Internet came along to hasten the destruction of print journalism’s business model.
As I moved on to high school and later college, I remembered Richard’s words but did not heed them - though I expanded my horizons to include radio in college, I still thought of myself primarily as a writer. I expected to get a job out of college as a newspaper writer, with the hope of eventually graduating to a magazine.
But in the spring of 2001, as my university days were coming to a close, I came face-to-face with the print vs. electronic media quandary. My attempts to catch on at any of the big newspapers in the Northeast had gone for naught (“Call us in five years when you have more experience,” wrote the sports editor from The Newark Star-Ledger), and I found myself with two post-graduate employment options:
Become an Olympic researcher for NBC in New York or write sports for The New Haven Register. Because of my childhood desire to be a writer, I gave the Register more consideration than perhaps most would, but Richard Lord’s advice definitely reverberated in my brain. And in June 2001, I started my first real job at 30 Rockefeller Plaza for NBC in New York City.
I’ve remained in television production for the past 10 years, and it seems like every year writing — or at least the kind of writing I thought I would be doing — becomes less integral in my daily work life. And that’s a shame.
Recently, I was out with my friend Noah, who transitioned about a year ago from television production into feature film writing. A man at the bar asked Noah what he did for a living, and Noah responded, “I’m a writer.” The man then asked me if I was a writer, and I said, “No.”
It was the first time I had ever responded to that question in the negative.
Don’t get me wrong - I don’t question or doubt my decision to go into television over working for a mid-level newspaper, particularly since Richard Lord has proved prescient about the business of print journalism. (In fact, one of my mentors that summer of ‘94 was young sports reporter Seth Davis, who, despite writing for Sports Illustrated since 1995, now spends the vast majority of his time working in the digital and electronic worlds for si.com and CBS Sports.)
But there is a part of me that misses the challenge and fun of working on a long-form written piece. Maybe that’s what I’d be doing with my life had I taken the Register job, maybe not.
But I know this: if I were writing for a living, I’d rather download my articles and read them on my iPad than read them in print. You know, the clutter and all.
