For the past few years, whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to do after graduation, I told them I wanted to be a writer. It was an all right answer, because it was, and is, true. But it was never a great answer, because it tended to get me a lot of smug, knowing smiles in response ““ smiles that none-too-subtly replied, “I see, so you’ve decided to move back home and mooch off of your parents then?”
So a few months ago I decided to switch things up. When people asked me about my future, I said I wanted to be a writer eventually ““ you know, short stories, novels and all that ““ but that I was thinking about trying sports journalism for a few years first. That’s true, too, and I figured it sounded like a more realistic plan than saying, “Yo, I’m gonna go get me some of that J.K. Rowling money.”
My strategy was working, too. People stopped smiling at me like I was one more patently unemployable English student. I had a future. I had a plan. I almost felt like a pre-med.
For about five seconds. See, that’s how long it took before I was introduced to another fun facial expression: the reluctant but sympathetic “Oh, haven’t you heard? The newspaper industry as we know it is dying” frown.
This would be a convenient time for me to tell you why that frown is wrong. I could tell you that the newspaper is timeless, that the printed word is forever, and that, no matter what else happens, the Daily Bruin will remain a shining beacon of journalistic integrity and excellence amid a sea of floundering publications and unread newsprint.
Well, I hate to disappoint. But we here in the Sports section have never been known for our optimism. The fact of the matter is that newspapers are, slowly but surely, going under. They’re an outdated technology, one being gradually replaced by the Internet, ignored by a culture that would rather be told its news right now than read it tomorrow, and one disdained by advertisers and bloggers who see them as obsolete, unnecessary middlemen.
I’m not refuting the reality of any of this. But I will say this in defense of those of us still hooked in to this business: We still matter.
Why? Because we’re ground zero. The source. We’re what’s left after the hype has blown over. There was a time when it was the newspaper that broke stories, but those days are over. Now the Internet and 24-hour TV news networks have stepped in to take care of that. By the time any story about Mike Vick ever went to print, it had already been streamed across countless TV screens and computer monitors, interpreted, reinterpreted and misinterpreted by pundits and talking heads and ranted about in innumerable blogs.
Breaking stories? No, now it’s our job to put the stories back together.
It’s almost like we in the print business have become the responsible friends to the journalism industry. There’s nothing sexy about what we do. We’re not flashy, and we don’t always talk that great a game. But the morning after a big story breaks, good or bad, and you’re worn out from the whirlwind of conjecture and knee-jerking that dominates up-to-the-second news, and you just want to know what really happened the night before, that’s when we’re there. Wake up and reach for your paper. Maybe we don’t always know everything, but we try to tell you what we know and find out what we don’t.
Is that an idealistic way of looking at what we do here at The Bruin? Of course. Do we mess up and fall into the trap of subjectivity we’re supposed to protect against sometimes? Sure. Are we doomed to some day fold or else go completely online? Probably.
But until then, we’re here for you. We’ll have been here all along, slamming away on our keyboards, printing our memorials to a technology on its way out, making phone calls, very slowly trying to adapt to your changing demands and, most of all, trying to figure out what’s really going on in the world.
Maybe right now that sounds important to you. Maybe it doesn’t.
But maybe tomorrow morning you’ll be glad we were here.
If you would have preferred to wake up to Lampros writing an actual sports column, let him know at nlampros@media.ucla.edu.