- April 19, 2024
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A recent story in Forbes, mined from a CareerCast.com study, was written with the sole intention of making various sections of society feel depressed and alienated. The headline: “The Best and Worst Jobs for 2013.”
As always, you had the standbys topping the chart. Lumberjack. Oil rig worker. Dairy farmer. Military serviceman. They based their criteria for what makes a “worst” job on factors like pay, positive job outlook, work environment and stress.
And this year, based on meager median salaries, dwindling industry positions, long hours and deadlines — you guessed it — they named newspaper reporter as the “all-time crappiest job in the world that anybody anywhere could ever have because it stinks and I said so.”
That last line may or may not be paraphrasing.
The problem with this year’s study, though, is that these agencies got it wrong. They forgot one major factor that, really, can skew the whole thing. Sure, salary, potential job growth, stress and work environment are kind of important, but equally so — nay, more even — is a factor I refer to in my own study (to be self-published in the Cavaliere Gazette later this year) as The Martyr Variable.
Thanks to years in writing school — this part is important to stress: around people who enjoyed calling themselves writers — The Martyr Variable is a principle with which I am intimately familiar. The gist is this, and it’s simple, really: Suffering is romantic, and romance equates to full self-actualization.
“I know I won’t make enough money after school to date or support a family or pay off my student loans or live alone,” some of my fellow martyrs used to say. “But at least I won’t be some drone tied to some cubicle all day like some sucker!”
It’s the idea that working more and earning less than your friends somehow makes you more real than all those limey, superficial goons. We attended our writing workshops as if they were church services, poetry books in hand, waxing philosophical about how one well-written sentence could change the world. Little by little, we were becoming spiritual beings, learning to look inward instead of out for fulfillment, creating our own crazy concepts of reality.
And in this way, Journalism, like so many great —isms, became our religion.
You see, where CareerCast goofed is they never even once consulted me before going to print, and so they hardly even considered The Martyr Variable before making their final best/worst assessments.
Huge mistake.
Just put yourself in my shoes for a second. I can hardly explain how satisfying it is to stop one of the dozens of my bellyaching lumberjack friends in the middle of another one of their “a guy lost a limb at work today” or “a guy got crushed because I forgot to yell, ‘Timber!’” stories to interject, “Yeah, sounds rough. I mean, I’d kill to have the second-worst job in America instead of the first. But yeah. Sounds pretty bad.”
In actuality, Forbes did reporters everywhere a solid by publishing that story — it gave us a license to underhandedly complain all the way until next year’s study. “Wow, things sound super lonely out there on the oil rig, Gus. I mean, not quite worst-job-in-America bad like the newsroom. But yeah. Really rough.” From Forbes’ perspective, it’s better to be overseas, holding a rifle in the Middle East than it is to attend a weekly story meeting. And what can journalists like me do but stay in the industry because of the economy? It’s the perfect built-in excuse.
Goodbye, personal responsibility; hello, Sympathy Card! (But don’t get too comfortable there in my pocket, because I plan on pulling you a lot.)
You might not realize it, but talk to any reporter candidly and they’ll tell you: We’re living in the Golden Age of Journalism right now. The only reason newspaper moguls keep reporting figures to the contrary is because they don’t want to lose that license to whine. It isn’t even a question; nobody just gives up being James Bond.
Today, thanks in large part to Forbes, reporters everywhere are like kids in glimmering, castle-like candy stores, living out their college fantasies faced with shelves and shelves of sweet, delicious merchandise. Except, instead of sweets, the shelves are stocked with romance, struggle and delusion. And those have always been our favorite sins.
BY MIKE CAVALIERE | ASSOCIATE EDITOR
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