Tynan's Anger

Let's hope she's resurrected with one of the many new media jobs she will be offered.

In case you haven't been following the story, Alana Taylor has been at the center of a prime recent controversy that has exposed the generational divide between purveyors of old and new media. Alana is a junior at NYU journalism school and blogger on the social media blog Mashable. She posted on PBS's MediaShift blog about how much old media was still left in her supposed New Media class, and how she was shocked to be the only blogger in the class. When I first read the post, I find it to be prescient and entirely benign. She didn't swear at her professor, nor did she even mention the professor by name. Nonetheless, a relatively massive controversy ensued. She was banned from blogging on the class by her professor, and received tons of hate mail (probably by the same people who lambaste the internet for allowing more hateful rhetoric). She also received a heroine's welcome among some newer media types, and was offered multiple media jobs in a time when few are being offered to anyone.

Some will inevitably see this as social climbing, but as a member of Taylor's generation, I'm pretty sure Taylor didn't write the post to start controversy. She probably simply meant to be informative, as the post was to eyes tuned into this discussion. Instead, the controversy was started by the old media types who hate this sort of thing. Now, she's a hero of the blogosphere, and her point has been proven. As print media journalists look to be collecting welfare checks sooner or later, Taylor already has them beat in the job search.

I was surprised, however, to find that the forum posts on Mediabistro were almost unilaterally against Taylor. I figured on an internet forum there would be at some supporting her, but the forums on Mediabistro are counterintuitiely dominated by old media types. The paranoid in me was wondering whether this was a Lee Siegel situation; I didn't post that after seeing that the posters all had multiple posts under their belts (It would have just validated the old media types, anyway.) Here's what I did end up saying:

I personally am shocked by the uniformity of the response on this discussion board, and this uniformity seems completely out of character for a website dedicated seriously thinking about the media. I am a member Taylor's generation (and I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who's posted so far who is), and from my perspective, what she has done is completely innocuous to the NYU teacher and a fair assessment of where j-school stands.

I was seriously considering J-School after graduation, but everyone who I spoke to said don't go. Most of the responses I got not only mentioned the lack of career doors that J-School would open, but also made the point that going to J-school may actually hurt me in the media job hunt, as publications would see me as a privileged kid looking to pay for media connections.

As someone who's just entered the media profession, one of my greatest strengths is my savviness with new media (I'm on at least 10 social media sites including Twitter, Facebook, and Digg), and that in part is what landed me my first job. At the same time, there are some older editors who actively hate any and all new media, and would not hire me at all even though they probably need someone like me to stay solvent over the next two years.

The single biggest generational gap between my generation and the ones before me is what we consider private information. Blogging on the details of a class seems completely innocent to people under the age of 25, as would posting a picture of a social gathering on Facebook or publicly blogging about personal relationships (even if in vague terms). To those over 40, however, blogging about the details of the class is an incredibly invasive and outrageous act, which explains most of the subsequent controversy. I am as baffled as to why there is a controversy as I'm sure older j-school professors would be baffled as to why I don't understand.

At the same time, I think Taylor was right to point out just how overhyped our generation's supposed investment in media can be. The vast majority of my friends are not on twitter, and a significant number haven't updated their Facebook profiles in months or years (and I'm probably more likely to have friends who twitter, considering that I flock to people interested in the media). I agree that people need to know how to write, and I've worked hard to keep up my grammar and clarity in an age of instant publishing. But there is a difference between good blogging and good newspaper and magazine writing, and the differences between them become especially pronounced over the generational divide. That there still exists an institution where people pay upwards of $40,000 a year to become educated on media practices that are at least 20 years out of date is particularly pathetic, especially considering that most of the old fogeys who rigidly adhere to those practices will be out of a job soon.

Of course, I started that post with a minor grammar mistake (I forgot commas, boo hoo), so some posters will dismiss me outright. Hopefully enough people will get the point.

Mashable has an excellent (if biased) summary of the brou-ha-ha.

Labels: alana taylor, journalism school, msm, new media, nyu, privacy, wtf