100 years after the industrial revolution the pendulum has swung back perversely. Instead of working class predicaments forging the assembly lines and construction-crews into the engine of low-cost employment (and the engine of our greater economy), with the recession, short-term profit-taking schemes, and slash and burn tough-medicine inside media empire board rooms, the flood lines have been moved higher up the wall.
These factors have cut a new channel in the riverbed our economy. The “owners of industry” have crafted a new way to pull the wealth UP from the bourgeoisie; through the unpaid labors of well educated, elsewhere-funded, “workers” who aim to move up the long-gone notion of the career ladder. The career ladder is mothballed in the same museum as pension plans.
The children of the bourgeoisie are the new assembly line. They’re working within the belief that the un-salaried benefits of “Social Capital” will lead to greater rewards, careers, and fortunes.
This transference (or value-suck) is happening all over as businesses, organizations, and the government (“we the people”), collectively try to move the economy forward without really spending any money (as money is both harder to earn and harder to come by). Whether this specific manifestation of Social Capital will bear a worthy ROI is being played out, in real time, but on whose dime?
Take the recent case of the New York Times and NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute partnership. The NYTimes and NYU in their joint effort to build a local online blog/paper/zine staffed by journalism students (who will set out to cover New York City’s East Village, once heralded home to punk-rock, poets, and a whole bunch of heroin), is a good example of this type of value-suck. The equation is this: if the newspaper can no longer make thriving revenues from their former steady market, they’ll shift focus and gain the value THROUGH the children of their market.
The monies of parents are being transferred to the owners through the un-paid intellectual labors of their children. The parents “invest” in their children (the unpaid) by paying for tuition, housing, and food. The parents are instilling their children with “potential” that is ideally compounded through education and life-experience. This stored potential is then (ideally) spent over time, leading to upward mobility and the reward of financial self-dependence. Instead this potential is being released prematurely, sucked-out, in the form of unpaid labor for entities that have decreasing future-prospect (or intent) of hiring these children in the future (when they’ve graduated).
In the case of the NYU/NYTimes partnership the students’ parents are transferring their wealth to the NYTimes through the labors of their children. It’s revenues in reverse! BUT, I have to admit, it’s an incredibly scalable opportunity. There are thousands of students who would be thrilled to add the NYTimes to their resumes. Local blogs will blossom all across the country like thousands of flowers. These kids grew up with the “grey lady,” gripped firmly and crinkly between the clenches of their parent’s wrists. The brand is super-strong in their minds even if they themselves don’t read it. Choire Sicha of The Awl, a local NYC blog/zine, argues this “trade” leads to a diminishing value within the journalism profession, causing the market to drop and drop. It’s a bit ugly for sure. I was never fond of crafty abstract algebra.
I’ve been offering-up my own social capital for years now, mainly through my blog posting, writing, analysis, even this post now, all with hopes that it develops into new opportunities. It’s a risk I leverage through allocating revenue from my company, speaking gigs, etc. But what about the people without revenues? What are they leveraging? If they’re leveraging Social Capital then they’re leveraging someone else’s money. Whatever rationalization any Social Capital utilizer wants to posit, either you have the funds or you don’t. Those with funds can support and partake within an ether-market of deeds and favors, but Social Capital without self-generating revenues is a proxy for other people’s money.
So what about these students? Are they shells for the transport of wealth? Carriers of potential that they themselves can’t attain, but eagerly release in their dire determination for a successful future? What’s their ROI?
They are being defined by the market as “revenue-unattractive” (I don’t want to pay them and I don’t have to) and as “revenue-poor” (their potential is in transference, not productivity). Their worth is valuable to outlets that seek to suck the potential right through them in trade for corporate branding. This is a scary economic scenario. Can outlets such as the NYTimes be so out of revenue ideas that they’ve decided to suck up the potential of students, and not even theirs really, its the parents’ potential, it’s their dime, it’s their investment! In trade for what? The potential of the diminishing brand.
As this plays out, here is how could this trend go horribly wrong for all parties…
For the brand, the more they seek these potential-trades the more they will appear to be in dire straights (which they undoubtedly are) and the tone that will resonate within the market is that they are squeezing young sponges for cash. For the university or the bourgeoisie parents, it appears as if they’re passing the buck (literally, through the children). For the students it’s worse. This paradigm could spiral down quickly into to a pure pay-to-play model.
When more students (and the underemployed) become hip to this trend the market will become flooded with all types of eager potential-releasers who will, and can, work for FREE. The value of potential will therefore diminish to nil as it is nearly limitless. The potential will then be swapped out for hard currency (cash) or greater subservience (yikes!). You want a job here? Pay up! Those with financial backing, as displayed throughout history, will survive this wave. Which leads to another spiraling-down (or winding-down of an era), who needs universities anymore if they don’t lead to gainful employment?
Imagine if the parents invested within the NYTimes directly to gain their children the opportunity (quid pro quo)? Should the NYTimes bypass journalism schools and have their own education division, a guild system? Do these students need NYU? What if the parents got together and pooled their resources into an investment fund that required investment-recipients to hire their children (once again, quid pro quo)? What if the students took their loan disbursements and tuition payments and on their own built this new blog/zine as a joint partnership, circumventing NYU and the NYTimes altogether (now that’s exciting!)? Do they really need NYU/NYTimes as much as NYU/NYTimes needs them? Would that provide a better ROI on their future employment, to make their own fortunes in an economy bleeding jobs? Isn’t that what they’re after? A position that pays well enough to provide them their own livelihood. Can the university journalism department offer that type of job security when they’re hawking a model based on the absence of revenues within a declining industry?
These students want to work, and I applaud their enthusiasm and efforts. Pay them. OR pay the professional journalists who should be the first consideration to begin with and give these students true internships (the legal ones). Don’t make the system suck the potential right through them all. It will bring us all down as the media balloon implodes.
As Dominic Polumbo, a master heirloom-varietals farmer (a potential-laden profession if there ever was one) once told me, “Price always needs to be driven up, or else you won’t survive.”
Creating businesses that grind the price of employment down will be a drag on the rising economy. We need more innovative thinking to build businesses that see the whole picture and continue to add value to the market for long term sustainability versus negating it for short-term draws. If the value-suck on the students of today spreads across the market it will become a virus that diminishes us all.
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I’d love to hear your comments and questions. Please feel free to add them to the comments area below and I’ll answer them ASAP.
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Special thanks to Sheila Shidnia and Sara McGuyer for their editorial assistance.
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