“Eighteen is the new 28”:

Excerpts from the Future of News interview with Evan Smith, cofounder, CEO and editor-in cheif of the Texas Tribune.

This is a generation that has grown up essentially with USB ports in the sides of their heads.

You’re first-generation tech journalists …

“Back in the day when I was 18, there was no technology all over me, all around me. I had much less access to information and I had much less access to disseminating my own thoughts. Eighteen is the new 28. The kids on college campuses today are much more sophisticated about the world, in large part because they have much better access to technology. This is a generation that has grown up essentially with USB ports in the sides of their heads. They’ve only known a world with filesharing and G chatting and social media, and all the things that we now take for granted. It is first nature, second nature as it were, to them; they’re first-generation.”

The barriers to access are down; exploit that

“The kids who are coming out of college today are so much better prepared to create the next great thing on day one. The barriers to entry have been obliterated. Cheap and easy access to technology means a kid coming out of any college in the country — not just Harvard and Yale, but Texas State, Texas Tech, doesn’t matter — on day one out of college can create something in his dorm room or in his apartment and be every bit as important as a national or international media organization.”

We need you more than you need us

“Those kids are so valuable when I’m hiring — they don’t understand this, but we need them more than they need us. They actually have the upper hand, they have the power in the relationship. And I think the 18-year-old me today would be so much better off because I would’ve had access to all the stuff and I’d be in a different position. I wouldn’t even need the 49-year-old me to tell me anything.”

Excerpts from the Future of News interview with freelance journalist Saul Elbein.

Professionals get paid

“I think what I would say to my 18-year-old self would be, if you are going to be good at this then you have to accept that it’s a job, and it’s a skill that people should and will pay you for, and your goal is to figure out how you’re going to be able to convince them that you can do the job.”

Embrace your brand

“You have to be your own brand, and that comes from the work you’ve done. And I think this is a really important point. We all, as artists, have this difficult relationship with money and the idea of making money, is it selling out? We should be doing it for the love of the thing not for money, but we are professionals creating a product that makes other people money.”

Excerpt from the Future of News interview with Steven Levy, tech journalist and editor-in-chief of Backchannel.

The best is yet to come

“The best is yet to come; don’t worry, hang loose. I have a son who is out in the world now, and his generation, I think, has had a tougher time. There were super wheel-to-grind people, when I grew up, but there weren’t very many of them. Most people who I know, at least in my cohort, we drifted along, we thought we’d do okay. I came from a middle class neighborhood, not a high middle-class neighborhood, row homes, and people just wanted a good job, like that. So for me, my expectations have been exceeded. I never thought I be doing anything as interesting as I do now, let alone covering what I think is the most important story of our time and getting a front row seat to it, and being able to get to know some of the people who are changing the way we live.”

Excerpts from the Future of News interview with Rich Jaroslovsky, Vice President for Content & Chief Journalist at SmartNews.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you’ve got it easy

“For young journalists starting out, I tell them a couple things. I tell them among other things that if they ever encounter any talk about how rugged things were in the old days, and how much easier they have it, that their response should be ‘Oh bull.’ It is far harder now to get started in the media business and in journalism.”

Acquire and develop as many skills as possible

“My advice to young journalists is acquire as many different skills as you can. Acquire a library of skills and then for each job, and really for each story, you’re able to pull out the skills that will allow you to tell the story the best way. That makes it very very complicated, but the good news is back in the day I only had one way to tell story. I wrote a story for the Wall Street Journal, and it appeared in print, and that was the only way I could tell that story. I was limited and constrained by the limits and constraints of print. Now you are free as a journalist to select the the best way among all these different ways, and all these different skills, to select the best ways to tell any individual story. It’s opened up huge new vistas, and it’s made journalism a much more creative endeavor than I think it was when I was starting out.”

Get comfortable with new technologies and skills

“When I got out of college, besides the basic ability to report fairly accurately and write fairly coherently, I needed basically one additional skill, which was the ability to type. I’m a very good typist. To this day I’m a very good typist, and that was basically what I needed to get started in journalism. Today you need to know and you need to have exposure and competence in so many different aspects. The business has changed and evolved so much that you need to be comfortable with AV, you need to be familiar with being able to take a decent video on an iPhone, you need to be comfortable on camera. You need to have multiple skills because you never know what skills a particular job demands, or a particular story will demand, because not all stories should be reported and presented the same way. So you need to be comfortable with data journalism. You need to be comfortable with all these things.”