Run!!!!!!!!

I had a very interesting conversation the other day with a longtime newspaper guru...

This person - who shall remain anonymous - was talking to me about an intern he was thinking of hiring. She was young, bright, in college and very ambitious - essentially, she had a rough, undeveloped but promising nose for news and a look in her eyes that showed she was fired up about civic journalism.

Now, under normal circumstances, this person I know would have hired her in a heartbeat, then brag to his mutual circle of professional friends about what a great intern he's got. 

But we in the newspaper industry - and the news business at that - are certainly not under any normal set of circumstances. Our business is changing, dying ... whatever you want to call it, and of all us in it are struggling to survive.

So what did this anonymous person I know do with this intern? He hesitated. He thought twice about hiring this free, willing- and ready-to-work pseudo-employee out of fear she would get sucked in to the cyclone that is the news business.

"I just wanted to tell her to turn around and run. Run!" he told me, in so many words. "I kept asking her why do you want to get into newspapers? Why?? Don't you know what's happening to us?"

It's a typical reaction among a lot of newspaper editors now. But It's just sad to think that the same people who spent years of their life devoted to journalism, would now be advising the future of the industry to "Run! Run and never look back!"