Journalism Jobs - The Great American Paradox

The journalism industry has been a battleground for several months now, but it seems that things are getting worse and worse. Rather than the hiring freezes thawing out (as I had hoped would happen, starting around now as the weather hypothetically thaws out ... in the Northeast), it seems that fewer and fewer opportunities are presenting themselves, and that any contacts you may have that aren't sitting pretty at the top of the masthead are too worried about their own hides to deal with someone they only kind of know through virtual connections.

It was disappointing, to say the least, when I found out yesterday that a magazine I contributed to, Louisiana Cookin', had a full editorial calendar completely booked up for 2009. This is partly due to the fact that a few of the issues are doing double duty on the newsstands, staying up for two months rather than just the one. For instance, this month's issue, the February--a delightful issue, might I add, chock-full of handy recipes from Heart-Healthy Creole (my own article) to blackening methods (written by Bonnie Warren, a legend in her own right with whom I had the pleasure of dining with at Brennan's when researching my dessert cover story for Where Y'at)--became available in mid-January, not to be replaced until mid-March. Next month, my Lenten Light article makes an appearance in this publication, but unfortunately, that's going to be it for me and this beautifully presented regional glossy for the rest of '09.

New Orleans Bride is just a quarterly, so there's not much brewing on that front for a while; and the other magazines owned by local periodical Renaissance Publishing, holder of titles like St. Charles Avenue, Mardi Gras Guide, and New Orleans Magazine among others can easily have their in-house editorial team provide pieces as sizes of publications around town, the dry, politically-leaning Gambit Weekly included, get smaller. New Orleans Living, headed by PR superwoman and managing editor Cheryl Lemoine, is hard-pressed to find pieces for their regular contributors, and Where magazine wouldn't return my calls. Granted, I only made around two calls and wasn't nearly as persistent as I am now, and didn't have the credentials I have now, but still. Same goes for Urban Dog.

So what's a gal to do?

In light of this local drought of work, I've decided to chase bigger game. I sent out some pitches to Taste of the South, a bigger publication similar in theme to Louisiana Cookin' in its focus on Southern food and recipe density. Alessandra Bulow, an assistant to the EIC at Food & Wine magazine in New York, helped me send pitches to the right editors, all of whom are out until ... well, basically next week. Bummer. I still need to buckle down and write the journal pieces for consideration for Southern Living, that warmer outreach of the hard-hit and badly hurting giant Time Inc., so that I can better petition for consideration for a position when their freeze lifts.

The outlook isn't that great, though, for any kind of hiring hold to be loosened at publishing conglomerates anywhere. MediaBistro's Revolving Door, their industry newsletter, grows more and more depressing every week as this web site is axed, that title is folded, and hundreds upon hundreds more in outposts everywhere get their pink slips. Advertising is down everywhere, which means the media industry, on the whole, is suffering in an unholy way.

In short, it seems that editorial jobs, freelance or otherwise, are the stuff dreams are made of these days ... more so than they were when I was a kid hoping to grow up and be a writer. Journalism jobs are more a contradiction than a qualifier now; more an oxymoron than a term.

This is a shitty, shitty time to be chasing a dream. But if I don't have a dream, what have I got to live for? It's the pursuit of happiness and fulfillment that makes life life, right?

If Looks Could Kill

This blog is proving to be a therapeutic medium, but unfortunately, due to the fact that it's a public listing and all, not quite as therapeutic as it could be.

To start off, yesterday was just a day gone completely awry. A job for my fiance that we'd had our sights and hopes set on didn't pan out, which was just devastating. Then my dog was attacked by another dog, completely unprovoked, and has a hole in his face. But anyway, I understand that with the downturned economy and the fact that the finance industry is essentially bleeding jobs right now, it's hard to get an advance offer. But the company was actively recruiting, and the Boy was the most qualified. I mean, think of it this way: actual real life work/managerial experience vs. part-time student employment; 3.93 GPA vs. your standard 3.5 GPA; work for the Burkenroad Reports, a serious analyst publication and candidacy for the exclusive Darwin-Fenner program at Tulane's internationally acclaimed Freeman School vs. UMiami jocks.

So what gives?

My only conclusion is that Boy was indeed overqualified, and that worked against him. They probably figured that he would have bad habits they'd have to break, or that since he had significant experience, he'd be okay if they didn't offer the opportunity to him. And companies that recruit straight out of college look for blank slates. Young, pretty, brainwashable blank slates, so blank that they can be molded into anything at all. Lumps of colorful clay.

Unfortunately, although Boy is a malleable medium, he's not quite as colorful as the bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked fresh meat that is now his competition. A little older, more mature, heavier-set, and without a doubt shorter, aesthetic plays its part as well. I've always found it interesting in my psych classes that the better looking, more fit people of the world would receive preference, even if a sloppier candidate was more qualified. Obviously, you would want your future leader that you're taking the time to groom to exude authority and project a certain type of image, but how much more brains do you need to beat out beauty?

Don't get me wrong -- I think Boy is adorable, his eyes are the sweetest shade of brown, he's smarter than I give him credit for, and I just think it's funny I get to mess around with him about his height and weight. But objectively, I know he's no European Adonis or statuesque swimmer, and to some, consciously or subconsciously, that matters to some people. No one wants to introduce their CEO, the Hobbit. And though Boy is far from Hobbit-like, the principle is still the same. Everyone likes their figureheads pretty. Now where does that leave the average American? Beauty is a more lethal weapon in the arsenal than intelligence in a society that values aesthetic, connections, and power more so than qualifications. As we grow fatter and lazier, the powerful and/or wealthy people that have the leisure time to spend on their appearance and first impressions get yet another advantage of standing out. Zoolanders of the world, your time is now.