Column:

Journalists should beware of burnout

By John Hendel

Published Jan. 25, 2008

Hey there, MU! I'm back as a columnist and feeling fantastic.

To catch some of you up to speed, I spent a semester writing columns from London one year ago during the 2007 Spring Semester. I had a blast going on about foreign food, drugs and emotional, serious conflicts of culture. Good times, right?

But I also pointed out in my last column the clichés and pitfalls of what study abroad columns entail and pointedly told this newspaper to give the Forum section a break. Four such columns had appeared in The Maneater, three from London and one from France. Talk about exhausting. None have appeared since then, so I count that as a little victory.

I'm glad to be back though. It's a crazy year, after all, a new year: 2008. We've got an outrageous election going on, Britney's still nuts and Heath Ledger's tragically down for the count (which may seriously interfere with my enjoyment of "10 Things I Hate About You"). And has anyone else seen the leaked Tom Cruise promotional video for Scientology? Yikes. There's so much to write about.

Yet this first column will actually be spent honoring an MU alumnus and in the same breath telling you why a massive percentage of you (including everyone making this newspaper) might one day seriously hate your life and spend time jonesing for relief.

Scott Reinardy earned his master's and doctoral degrees in journalism in the last few years and now teaches at Ball State University. He conducted an interesting study that revealed rising burnout among journalists. After hearing from 770 working journalists, he learned something people have suspected for a long time: journalists tend to be pale, depressed folks who regret their career choice and live irritably and stressed to the max.

The younger the journalist, the more likely they were to suffer from burnout, he found. About 75 percent of those 34 and younger wanted to leave newspaper journalism or didn't know if they would stay, and younger journalists are also more likely to want to leave the profession. Copy editors and page designers working for small presses tend to be most at-risk for burnout.

The study's respondents talked about the stress of having to write well all the time, being trapped indoors, and the increasingly demanding world of Internet- and convergence-based journalism. Sheesh, hearing stuff like this makes one wonder why everyone's bending over backwards to get into the MU School of Journalism. Our noble alumnus, who spent 18 years as a reporter and editor himself, does a fantastic job of making journalism sound like hell with this study.

Honestly, the results don't surprise me. Who didn't already peg MU's journalism students as a little obnoxious and neurotic? Journalists bring both fun and craziness in equal measure, and when media explodes as it has in recent decades, people are bound to freak out a bit. You should keep in mind that many journalists are often fascinating people who are educated as hell.

The urge to leave journalism is just another element of the convergence age. People don't see journalism as one simple career path. They also see opportunity in PR, in politics, in film and other forms of writing and even in business. We want it all. The Renaissance man is a shadow compared to the ambitious bourgeois bohemian climbers of the 21st century.

Read the study and take it for what it's worth. Reinardy makes some valid points and freshman journalism students who read this should take note. Still, it's far from the doom and gloom; just be prepared for the midlife crisis.

jdh659@mizzou.edu