by Sarah Torribio

Created on: April 06, 2009

Journalism isn't going away, but it is going through tough times. So far, those hardest hit by the shake-down have been journalists themselves. Media outlets are folding and downsizing and, thus, cutting jobs in record numbers. Some journalists whose jobs are safe, for the moment, are leaving journalism themselves, because they are tired of working in a troubled industry.

Would you want to stay in a job where you face constant worry about keeping your job, where you see fine colleagues lose their jobs and where you see bottom-line decisions that seem to jeopardise the very purpose of your calling? I can give two examples of journalism migration from my own life.

A few years back, I worked for a regional edition of a large newspaper which was bought out by a mega-company hoping to maximize profits and minimize fall-out from profit-eating developments like the Internet. Many fine workers were axed and the line between advertising and content seemed to be blurring, so much that the paper's seasoned and talented editor, a woman of great integrity, left her job. The next thing I knew, the advertising manager was positioned to become editor-in-chief. He was a fine businessman but had no journalistic background. Because I had done some work in the area of advertorials (This is content written expressly for special sections that do, indeed, blur the line between advertising and journalism. Stories sit cheek-and-jowl beside ads and even have advertising content embedded in them. Journalistic ethics that any such advertorial content be clearly marked as such, so that readers aren't mislead into believing they are reading objective content.)

Anyhow, the new editor-in-chief indicated to me that he was interested in hiring me for a full-time position, for which I would be nicely compensated. At this time, I was desperate for a full-time job in the industry. Despite a degree, numerous awards, a fat stringbook (a journalist's collection of printed clips), and two prestigious internships under my belt, I was having a heck of a time landing a reporting job. After a few false starts, which included the folding of one publication three weeks after I was hired, I was currently working as a part-time, night-shift page designer and earning a few extra hard-earned bucks through the aforementioned advertorial work.

I said no to the job. This was partially because I had just landed a part-time job at a nearby local newspaper, which I hoped would turn into something steady. (It did. I worked

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