When I hear young people say they want to work in news.....my reaction is typically...shall we say...less than enthusiastic. It's not that the job market is lacking for them. On the contrary, for fresh young people right out of college willing to work long hours for little pay and no benefits the sky is the limit. It's just that - where do you go from there? The trend I see is these young people (replacing people with decades of experience due to retirements or the company pushing people out to save money) end up burning out on jobs that offer little job security. A few lucky ones do end up getting full time positions, but the majority of them change careers.
And why should any of this matter to you - the news viewer? Because as stations across the country lose experience to make way for these low paid workers, the quality of your newscast goes down as well. In the past 12 months I have literally had 5 people train on a newscast....and I say train figuratively. There is little actual training. It's more of a 'let's push you out of this boat and see if you can swim' approach. So the next time you are watching the news and see a typo, or hear a story that just doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense....you now know the reason why. And get used to youtube quality video. With the invention of the portable live shot , where quality takes a back seat to convenience, and the influx of viewer shot video, it seems this trend is here to stay.
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