A Milestone of Sorts

As you can read in on my About page, and as you will hear from me time and again on this blog and in other venues, making a living in the media is hard. And it's hard whether that's traditional print/broadcast or online. In fact, the online revolution is making it harder than ever to make a living in the media. Ad spending is being spread around more thinly, newsrooms are being cut back, online media are starting up with starving skeleton staffs, and so on. This is one of the realities I'm planning to explore in this blog and in my media relations work going forward.

I happened upon this post today, announcing the scaling back of the pioneering Social Media Club, which dedicated itself to "the purpose of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy around the emerging area of Social Media."

Excellent objectives, I would say. But as founder Chris Heuer explains:

"I have gone from the high’s of the dream and all its possibilities to the reality of not enough resources, mounting personal debt and the struggles of being overwhelmed each day with too much to do. In short, I am tired and ready to find another way forward, to take this in stride and make a course correction that will let us accomplish the goals of improving media literacy and hosting conversations amongst social media professionals and those seeking to learn.Unfortunately, I too must step down, or more aptly, I need to step back so that I might be able to make a living, pay for some of my wedding and pay for my monthly living expenses."

Yup, it's hard to make a living in the media. I do wish Chris and this group good luck going forward. They were on the right path.