The Bite Back: How the #HireAJournalist initiative is writing the media industry’s next chapter

Ex-journalists should be thriving outside the newsroom, what’s stopping them?

It’s no secret the journalism industry has been struggling to find its place in the modern media world. Once viewed as a credible and admirable line of work, the profession is now often weaponized – used to prove credibility in one breath and discredited in the next. The version of journalism I grew up believing in feels like it no longer exists, and with it, the place of the people who made it possible: journalists themselves.

From the day I expressed interest in becoming a journalist, before I even started high school, I was told the career would be a sacrifice. This was reinforced in all my undergrad journalism classes. The low pay, the long hours, the missed holidays, the unpaid overtime – none of that came as a surprise. What drew me in was the mission. In the same way teachers or doctors feel called to serve, I felt called to journalism as my purpose in life. I felt that reporting the news and investigating stories to inform local communities was part of a greater mission to serve the greater good. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I believed it would be worth it.

What I didn’t realize until I was in the field was that the “greater mission” I believed in was more complicated than any college class, freelance job, or internship could have prepared me for. The media industry itself was changing faster than any syllabus could keep up with. Newsrooms were shrinking, social media algorithms becoming more sophisticated, and the entire legacy news system was on a downward spiral–slowly transforming into something unrecognizable from what we idolized in the Cronkite-era.

As a result, over four years ago, I walked away from what I thought was my dream job as a multimedia journalist. I didn’t leave because I wasn’t cut out for it. I left because of disillusionment and disappointment. Every day, I faced accusations from friends, family members, and strangers in comments sections that I was pushing “fake news.” I endured politicians ridiculing reporters, myself included, for asking tough questions, and watched the public cheer them on. Meanwhile, unverified “influencer” accounts and social media algorithms fed audiences a steady stream of outrage and half-truths, eroding trust in both outlets and the journalists inside them.

Today, no one consumes news the way they did when I fell in love with the industry over 15 years ago. The shared-experience of the nightly news and centralized model of mainstream media has collapsed, replaced by personalized “news” feeds. The dangers of this new media world are obvious to those who created it and lived inside of it, but invisible to those consuming it: polarization, disinformation, and deeper societal division.

Read the full blog on the Bite Back Substack.