wow I am a good blogger...not!

So I realize I haven't posted anything since last October. This just proves how I am a great journalist, but a sub-par blogger.

The problem is this:

My entire life I have talked about how I have wanted to be a music journalist. I started writing for my high school paper first semester of sophomore year, and it only took a year until I became the Editor-in-Chief my junior year and senior year. I wrote my college essay on why I enjoyed journalism so much. Some of the lines in my essay were as follows:

"Although being Editor is very time-consuming, there is great satisfaction when the newspaper is printed and I see the result of our staff’s dedicated effort. It is exciting to know that the entire school community reads our paper: faculty, students, and even parents. On the day The Prep Press comes out, I walk through the cafeteria and see the entire student body huddled over their copies and devouring the news."

This is what journalism is about; getting a staff together, sharing ideas, creating a final product, distributing the paper, and finding satisfaction in the fact that everyone around you is reading it. Journalism not only creates an awareness within a community, but it in fact creates a community.

In college I continued to write for the newspaper, but now that I am graduating in a year, it has become more clear to me that although newspapers still exist within campus communities, the life of a newspaper or magazine journalist in - a place I am still afraid to face - "real life" is becoming obsolete. As Bob Dylan said it best, "times, they are a-changin'". The economy has turned and newspapers and magazines everywhere are going under. Rolling Stone Magazine, THE Rolling Stone Magazine, the very magazine that has been a forum for some of the most important and influential artists of our time, has shortened to half its size due to funds and lack of readers.

I admit that I am a good networker - I know how to use the internet and how to get in touch with important people through sites like myspace and facebook. But I still can't fathom the fact that the journalism world has now become part of internet and no longer part of an actual product you once were able to hold in your hand. These days, anyone can be a journalist. When a news story breaks, it takes a newspaper journalist all night to get the story out by the morning; in the internet world, anyone can post a news story onto their blog and call himself a journalist. The internet stories aren't always (not to say never) researched fully and the sources aren't always reliable, but the stories can get out faster so that within minutes, the entire world knows what is going on. This has hindered the life of an old fashioned journalist. Graduate schools are starting to realize this, and with research, one can see how many schools now offer a masters in "new journalism." Schools are now teaching how to make it as a journalist in the internet world; one learns how to network, how to put together a website, and how to use internet dialogue so that readers can connect to you and understand what you are trying to say. Basically, these schools are teaching future journalists how they can still survive.

The internet has also changed the music world. With myspace, anyone can be a musician, with or without a record deal, and anyone can receive their 15 minutes of celebri-dom. As a result, there are thousands of musical artists on the scene all trying to make it big. Years ago, I asked my dad if all musicians back when he was growing up were known, since nowadays it is absolutely impossible to have heard of everyone out there in the scene. He wasn't sure of the answer, but he did tell me that there simply weren't as many musicians then as there are now.

With the journalism and music world changing, it is impossible to know where we will be in a month, or two months, or a year from now. I have had to seriously reconsider, in the last year (since I will be graduating soon) what type of profession I want to, or even will be able, to have. I don't necessary want to work for "the internet" - I don't know if I would want to go to graduate school and learn about "new journalism" - but if I want to continue to have music and journalism both continue to consume my life, I have to give in just a little bit and become more than a sub-par blogger.

Look for - gasp! - more blogs in the near future.