What would you tell her?

Not too long ago a couple, friends of mine, asked me to talk to their daughter who is currently attending college and wants to be a newspaper reporter.

At first I said it probably would not be good for me to talk to her because I was at the wrong end of the spectrum. But they persisted and I talked to her, mostly by e-mail.

There's a part of me that believes there will be a place for reporters, just not in the form that I am familiar with. But this young woman, like I was at her age, is excited about the pursuit of a story, the feeling when it all comes together and then that exhilaration when it finally shows up in print, maybe even on the front page.

Older reporters know that the importance of a byline fades when you realize that no one beyond your mother, close friends and an occasional enemy even pay attention to it. Heck, I wrote a column for ten years with my picture on it and when people asked and found out I was a reporter they couldn't remember one story (other than the column) that I had written. When I would name various stories I had written, they would remember, but they paid no attention to who wrote it. No big deal.

But writing and reporting was always my work passion, I really loved everyday that I worked and it ended all too soon. Even before I was a reporter, I always wrote. When I worked for two police departments in California I produced a monthly department newsletter (underground) that made fun of our work and sometimes poked fun at those in charge. (See some things never change).

Last year when I met with some of my retired cop buddies, many of them still had copies of those newsletters. Go figure.

So what do I tell a young woman who wants to go work for a newspaper. My instincts told me to tell her to run. Are you good at math? Go work for NASA. Are you good with your hands? Be a carpenter or plumber.

Honestly, I punted. I told her I couldn't imagine what my work life would have been like had I not found my way to newspapers and covering news. I told her the future for print journalism looked bleak and the prospects for meaningful, financially rewarding employment looked very doubtful.

But in the end I told her she had to figure out what she was willing to put up with or risk. Life is all about risk. I left a steady police job with benefits in 1977 to pursue a career I knew I would like better. It was a sacrifice not just for me, but for my wife at the time and our two young sons.

My first few newspaper jobs paid less than I made when I left police work and frankly, had I stayed at the police job and retired, financially I would have been better off. But it would have been miserable, because I didn't enjoy the work.

Maybe my friend's daughter will find a way to make money writing. Right now, I doubt it. The business is eager for a young inventor to reinvent it, the current bosses are stuck in the old model even though they pretend to part of the new wave. Heck, they have jobs to protect too, you know.

Besides running in the other direction, what would you tell my friends' daughter.