Journalists Are Angry, Too

So you think it’s just that people are mad at the media? Well, journalists have feelings, too. And that means journalists from those working on student papers, to weeklies to a journalist laid off at the recently-changed-ownership Los Angeles Times.

Can I prove that assertion? Just visit Angry Journalist and you’ll see. The site sets it up this way:

Why are you angry today?

Tell us what’s making you upset at your journalism job.
Anonymity guaranteed. One rule: no real names.

Here are a few:

Angry Journalist #1985:

Disorganization. Incompetence. Zero planning. Substandard storytelling. The editors’ – that’s plural, many plural – explain:

“Hey, you work at a big metro daily newspaper. Get used to it.”

What an excuse to fall down on your job, repeatedly. Any other industry and they’d be looking for other work. And rightly so.

Angry Journalist #1982:

I win an award for something I wrote and I write good articles that get published every month, and I bring home the school newspaper to my mother every month so she can see why I haven’t slept in three days. And she’ll nod, and say good job.

And then I will bring her my pink registration card, and she will ask my why I’m taking Journalism again. Later she’ll ask my why I’m not going into pharmacy, or radiology, or pediatrics. And then I’ll open up my acceptance letter to Northwestern, and she’ll hand me one from UCI.

Angry Journalist #1978:

I just got laid off from my journalism job of the last 4 years out in California, due to the ongoing “right-sizing” of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group (please feel free to vomit at reading that term). I consider myself lucky simply due to the fact I got a decent severance package. I am going to take 3 months while I can spend my severance on beer, whiskey, and baseball tickets, while also collecting unemployment as long as the Governator doesn’t try to kill me while I don’t really look for work.

Or something like that. See some of you, my disgruntled brethren, out at bars and ballparks across America.

FOOTNOTE: Over the years, in my time as a reporter in the news biz, invariably some editor would note that some reporters were always angry at something about their job. It goes with the territory when you have men and women who are doing a job where they constantly question as part of their job.