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The View (after Cataract Surgery) from 60

By Roy Peter Clark

Youth may be wasted on the young, but wisdom can be wasted on the old.

The culture of news, communications, media and education is experiencing one of the greatest inversions in memory. More and more, the old turn to the young to understand the world, American culture and, most of all, technology.

This is having profound impacts upon individual careers, family dynamics, business hierarchies and life as we know it in the new millennium. With a few crucial exceptions, this movement is a good thing.

The teaching in news organizations now more than ever is going two ways, not just one. Dynamic young experts in Web design, online reporting and multimedia production no longer have to jump through an endless series of hoops -- or pay their dues in the old sense -- in order to advance and influence the tribe.

As journalists from the baby boomer generation retire or take buyouts or heal from burnout, a youth movement rushes in to fill the void and assume the challenges of redefining journalism as a public service. Right now, they'll make less money than their predecessors, but that should change fast, for theirs will be the burden of creating new economic models to pay for quality journalism.

On this, the week after my 60th birthday, I recall that I owe my career to a newspaper editor willing to take an amazing chance on a young teacher. In 1977 I was a 29-year-old assistant professor of English teaching at a small college in Alabama. Although my specialty was medieval literature, I had written newspaper columns that got some attention, so Gene Patterson, then editor of The St. Petersburg Times and president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, asked me to join his paper for a year as something that had never before existed: a newspaper writing coach.

Needless to say, I never went back to Alabama. I changed professions in spite of my callow youth because Mr. Patterson saw something in me that no one else could have seen. And he put his authority on the line to help me establish my credibility among a tribe of skeptical journalists. Mr. Patterson, one of the great editors of the 20th century, treated me as a colleague, as someone he could learn from, and that made all the difference.

Years later I met a little girl named Jacky Johnson, who is now a married college student named Jacky Hicks. As a child, Jacky attended many of my summer writing camps and even at the age of 10 could talk about the craft of writing with great skill and insight. When she turned 15, she asked me if she could work at the camp to run errands or make photocopies. I hired her all right -- as a teacher. She worked with a team of 15 professional teachers in a camp with about 50 children. When it came time to work one-on-one with the kids, Jacky was the best. She listened, offered good suggestions, helped young writers see the unrealized potential in a story. Her performance was one of the most gratifying experiences of my teaching career.  

For the last several years, Poynter has been blessed with a series of dynamic young journalists who have served here on our Web site or as part of News University, our distance learning program.  Collectively, they have changed my life and the direction of my career. They have coached me on the use of new technologies, partnered with me on experimental projects, encouraged me to stretch beyond the narrow boundaries of my discipline. I still speak technology with an accent, but at least I'm in the game.

My tenure of 30 years has earned me fancier titles and a bigger salary. But these young journalists are my colleagues, squeezing the best out of me as they develop their own journalism muscles. I've got a few things that they lack: a deep institutional memory, a complicated and nuanced understanding of this community and an intellectual range that comes only with years of study and conversation.  People like me are leaving newsrooms in droves, and their absence will create a hollow feeling in the heart of many communities.

But I have confidence, based on my experiences here with Tran, Ellen, Matt, Robin, Pat, Elizabeth, Jeremy, Meg, Mallary, Ben, Leslie, J.D., Leann and Ellyn that the young guns are up to the challenge. It will be our job to help them compensate for the knowledge and experiences they lack, to give them the gift of helping us energize the final stages of our careers and then to stand back in wonder at the world they are about to create.

[Roy wants to know: What makes a 60-year-old journalist a geezer? And what makes a 60-year-old journalist as 'cool as school'?]

Full post as published by Writing Tools on April 08, 2008 (boomark / email).