Our impending graduation has caused me to think an awful lot about my future lately. I might use the phrases 'existential crisis', 'anxiety attack', or perhaps 'crippling self-doubt' to describe my state of mind on any given day. One of the decisions I've been mulling over is whether to pursue the whole journalism thing, or head more toward the non-profit "save the world" side of things. For a variety of reasons, at this point, I see myself doing more with my policy studies degree than my magazine journalism one. A few days ago, Maureen Dowd's column affirmed my horror at the current state of job opportunities with the media.
You should read it, but I'll summarize for the word-weary or functionally illiterate. Basically, Pasadena Now, a lifestyle and news site in California, outsourced ALL OF ITS REPORTERS TO INDIA. I thought maybe it was a dinky site, and the outsourcing only meant that Indians would be surfing the Web, compiling event listings for the peeps in Pasadena. NOPE. It's a pretty legit site, and now, all of the stories are written by Indians, using Web searches and telephone reporting. Pardon me? I thought the whole point of city/regional sites, papers, and magazines was to give readers an insider's guide to where they live, dispensed by people who live there. But apparently you can provide that perspective from any corner of the globe?
I don't stand a chance.
Think I'm being pessimistic? Maybe. But two weeks ago I read this article, which says children of Indian parents, who moved their families to the States for more opportunities, are now going back to India. Because that's where the jobs are. To give you an idea, a quote from the article: "Exact data on émigrés working in India or spending more time here are scarce. But this is one indicator: India unveiled an Overseas Citizen of India card in 2006, offering foreign citizens of Indian origin visa-free entry for life and making it easier to work in the country. By this July, more than 280,000 émigrés had signed up, according to The Economic Times..."
Okay.
So what does this mean for me? India here I come. Although, maybe now isn't really the best time. Oooh, what about China? It's the future!! No, there's that whole censorship thing. I don't know how kindly they would take to my outspoken diatribes.
Maybe there's another solution. I have always been fond of harkening back to the days of the Depression and riding the rails. There's a lot of country out there to see people, and it's about time we took a look. I might look rather fetching with oil smudges on my face, and rocking a little Newsies outfit. And it really is about time I went farther west than New Orleans. Who's with me?
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