The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as an

Investigative Reporter

Ahh--you’re one of those journalism kids that drove your teacher to the nut house… Well, let me explain your future in this biz:

First of all, you’ll either go to one of those pretentious ivy league programs where you learn about grammar and journalistic etiquette, or you’ll end up someplace less grandiose and you’ll hear guest speakers from the local “smart shopper” weekly paper explain how it’s all in the adjectives when one is writing about the opening of the new juice bar in the mall.

While at college you’ll be part of the staff of the university paper, and as such you’ll try to find your niche. You’ll share office space with the wannabe jock sports reporters, who steal catch phrases from ESPN and party with the football team after wins, the angry lesbian/feminist contingent who editorialize weekly about evils of patriarchy, the "Young Republicans" or "Young Democrats" or "Young Communists" who see the paper as their personal political soap box, and the ones like you--no real values beyond a desire to see your name on the byline of the article everyone's talking about.

There will be three of you--all devoted to exposing injustice or uncovering a scandal--whatever brings you glory. Unfortunately, when you finally do find something juicy enough to make a splash, the college paper gets cold feet, and in your frustration, the three of you start an underground publication to tell the stories the "legitimate" paper won't touch.

While you personally see the three of you as a team of crusaders, Jill and Mike, the other two, secretly will begin a romance and leave you out of the investigation of the more exciting stories. While they're uncovering the dark secrets around the origin of the med school's cadavers, you're blowing the whistle on the rampant use of MSG by the cafeteria staff. While they have to change their number and take precautions due to death threats after they show how the popular student night club is used to launder drug money, you merely get a certificate from the college environmental club for your revelation that harmful herbicides are used to kill the weeds in the faculty club's lawn.

After college you'll suggest the three of you start your own crusading newspaper, but they'll already have jobs lined up in the newsroom of a well-respected national publication. You, on the other hand, grudgingly accept a position with one of the more trashy supermarket-checkout tabloids. You meet the two of them for drinks once a month, and when they get married, the reception is a collection of "war stories" with daring journalists showing scars from mujahadeen rifles or white supremacist bombs while all you have is the dubious status of having more of your stories made fun of on radio morning shows than anyone else at your scandal sheet.

Then, a few weeks after your friends return from their honeymoon in Central America they tell you they spent it taking surreptitious photos of a secret chemical weapons facility being funded by the CIA. They fear for their lives, and give you copies of everything. When they perish in a suspicious car accident a week later, you go to their employer and publish the the whole story, suddenly earning you credibility that had evaded you while your friends were alive.

Unfortunately, you are never able to follow up on that story with anything meaningful of your own, and you are fired in six months. You will either drift into the pathetically-paid editorship of a small town weekly, where you will drink to forget your mediocrity, or worse, you'll accept a job as PR consultant for the Republican National Committee, where you'll help develop the cover stories that save the careers of the same politicians who were behind your friends' deaths.

Have fun.


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