I Am A Career Necrophiliac; I'm Attracted to Dying Trades

Not long ago my mother told me, “I always worried about the fact that you were a music journalist. I never thought that it was a good career.”

I have to allow that it turns out she was right. But not in the way that she probably meant.

It has become apparent to me that I am attracted to dying industries. It’s not that my interest is piqued when I hear a business is doomed. I’m not that insane. Businesses just seem to fade as soon as I become involved in them.

I began my career writing about pop music. This was actually an exacta of collapse. Yup, two! two! two! collapsing  industries in one. I didn’t know that at the time. 

When I started out, print journalism was thriving. Almost every big city had at least two daily newspapers. It was preposterous to imagine a day when everyone would get their daily news on their phones. For that matter, phones were things that sat in your house with big buttons that you pushed, not computers the size of a candy bar.

Practically everyone got a paper, if only because it had coupons and the movie times.  When I moved to Los Angeles there were two dailies, the now deceased The Herald Examiner (which had once been two papers) and The Los Angeles Times. There was, and is still another one, The Daily News, but that one carries the taint of being a San Fernando Valley paper. (Cue shuddering hipsters.) When I started freelancing for the Times’ pop music section I thought I was on my way to, if not stardom -I was still a journalist, after all- but a regular paycheck.  At the time I was working for a number of print magazines as well.  (Musician, The Record, Creem, we hardly knew ya.) I was a real working writer.  Whee!

I supplemented my journalism with occasional forays into bio and press release writing for record companies. So when the magazines I wrote for slashed their freelance budgets I slid pretty easily into record company publicity. It was a fun time to be in the business. Records, (actually cassettes and then CDs) were selling like hotcakes, and we, in the record companies were part of the engine that fueled demand. Or something like that. Mostly we worked hard and played harder.

But that was then. Now most  people get their news online.  Bands use numerous different platforms to get their music heard; they don’t need a major record label to do it for them.  Case in point: Justin Bieber. I will never forgive YouTube for that one.  And you shouldn’t either.

So there went my career.  Most of my music biz colleagues have since changed careers. There’s a strikingly large number of former publicists who have become nurses. I’m sure there’s a correlation, but I haven’t figured it out yet.

Most of my journalist friends have also been made redundant. Papers and magazines folded, and in general, online sites pay writers next to nothing.  Websites lean heavily on ‘user generated’ content.  Which is free. And free doesn’t pay electric bills. To power computers. To write for free. You see where I’m going here?

Anyway as my career was falling apart, I once again became enamored by horse racing. Not because I like to gamble—a $2 bet is all they ever get out of me—but because I love everything about the sport. The people, the horses, the spectacle; it’s all great.  I started writing about it for a couple of outlets. Yee ha!! I was on my way again, or so I thought.

Silly me. If there’s a business that’s going the way of the dodo bird faster than print journalism, it’s probably horse racing.   Hollywood Park closed the very year it celebrated its 75^th anniversary.  Where they used to average 20,000 people a day, attendance of 10,000 is now considered a good weekend at Santa Anita. People have endless other ways to gamble now, most of them available online.

One of my big problems is that I’m either a luddite or just naïve. Maybe both. I still listen to CDs—I enjoy reading album notes and seeing who  played on what .  I still have about 3000 pieces of vinyl.  I like actual newspapers. The kind that get ink all over your hands when you read them in the morning.  I love going to the track and seeing the horses in real life, as opposed to gaming online.

I’m not sure I’m actually causing all these businesses to fail—I don’t think I have that kind of power—but there does seem to be some connection between me and doors closing forever.

Which means now that I’m writing screenplays, the movie industry is doomed. Sorry about that Stephen Spielberg

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