Newsweek: Stepping Aside by Anna Quindlen

I just ran across this column again on a friend’s Facebook page. It is a good read…

Newsweek Stepping Aside by Anna Quindlen

http://www.newsweek.com/id/195657

Three big binders bring a message from a new generation about the future of the news business.

Anna Quindlen NEWSWEEK From the magazine issue dated May 18, 2009

[…]

But my second response to reading over the stories was delight. They were so thoroughly reported, so well written. Whether local, national or international news, they were just what journalism ought to be. The next time anyone insists the business won't survive I may bash him with one of these binders, which are heavy with hope for the future.

They also made me think again about my own future. These clippings thoroughly ratified a decision I began to make a year or so ago, that has led me here, to my last LAST WORD column for NEWSWEEK.

The baby-boom generation has created an interesting conundrum for this country. Born between 1946 and 1964, boomers take up more room than any other generation in American history. They now account for about a quarter of the population. And so, inevitably, they have created a kind of bottleneck, in the work world, in politics, in power. The frustration this poses for the young and talented should be obvious. In my personal life it was reflected powerfully on the day when, talking of the unwillingness of my friends to retire, my eldest child noted, "You guys just won't go."

Let me assure you that this is a well-mannered and thoughtful person who shows all due deference to his elders. But his perspective is not uncommon among the so-called millennials, those in their 20s who constitute the baby boomlet, the children of the baby boom.

When my parents were my son's age, there was an orderliness to how one generation moved aside and another stepped up to primacy and prosperity. It was reflected in the actuarial charts: in 1952, the life expectancy of the average American male was 65, roughly 10 years younger than it is today.

Even when I was the same age as my children are now, there was a natural transition from one generation to another. Retirement at 65 was normative. Every year a small group of reporters would leave the newsroom, to be replaced by younger ones. (With the harsh insensitivity of youth, I thought this was perfectly fine.) In many businesses this rite of passage is disappearing, and the number of people who work past 65 has climbed steadily over the last two decades. This makes for a simple equation: fewer opportunities for the young to move in or move up.

[…]

Throughout the country there seems to be an understanding that this is and ought to be a time of reinvention, in the economy, in education, in the office. But no one seems eager to reinvent on an individual level. Yet never has there been a time when fresh perspective and new ideas were more necessary. The linear path, the ladder, emphasizes stability, but too often at the expense of innovation and mobility. It's always seemed to me that running a company well ought to be like a variant of musical chairs; every few years everyone should move around to someplace else, some position where they will learn new things. I have changed jobs many times in almost 40 years (40 years!) of word work, including work as a novelist that I will continue. Experience often brings wisdom, but also sometimes torpor and fatigue.

Read the entire column here: Newsweek Stepping Aside by Anna Quindlen

http://www.newsweek.com/id/195657

20090518 Newsweek Stepping Aside by Anna Quindlen