Gen Y: Taking on the challenges of journalism

"I miss Oregon already, but classes are a whirlwind of excitement. I even kind of like our little apartment. It's cozy. I'm learning the bike route to work/school and the best restaurants for ordering late night vegetarian burgers ;P."

The e-mail arrived earlier this week from Lillian Mongeau, whom I got to know in the fall of 2007, when we selected her for The Oregonian's Community Writers, a program that gave a dozen citizens the opportunity to write an opinion piece every week for 12 weeks on a topic of their choice. Originally from Massachusetts, she was living in Hood River, following graduation from Columbia University and a stint with Teach for America in Texas.

This month, at age 27, she started graduate studies in journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

"I'm looking forward to next week when I get to write again. This week we're doing multimedia," she writes. "I probably shouldn't tell you this but they used The Oregonian's website (specifically the multimedia 'section') as an example of how not to integrate multimedia with text stories. Meh. If it makes you feel better, though, they didn't think many papers did it right, so there's still tons of opportunity for The O to fix that blundering old site!"

It's hardly a revelation that OregonLive.com, The O's affiliated web site, has its flaws, so I take no offense. Some, though, would question why a smart young woman -- someone who won a top undergraduate writing prize at Columbia -- would willingly take on thousands of dollars in new student loans in order to study journalism at a time when the industry is undergoing an epic transformation.

True, newspapers are shedding thousands of jobs and some metro dailies no longer even exist. But opportunities in online journalism, particularly for those able to combine multimedia skills with a traditional set of reporting and writing tools, continue to grow.

Working with Lilly for nearly the past two years, I've come to admire the intelligence and idealism that she embodies on behalf of Generation Y, the almost 60 million men and woman born in this country between 1975 and 1990. (All three of our kids also were born in that time frame, making them fellow Millennials, as they are called.)

I wrote a letter of recommendation for Lilly, and I'm confident she will emerge as one of the J-School's best and brightest. Lilly is curious, passionate and outgoing, and she welcomes constructive criticism -- all essential ingredients in the makeup of a journalist. Plus, she shares a perspective that lured many of us to this profession, as she explains in a July 25 column she wrote for The Oregonian.

Given the current state of the economy in general, and the news industry in particular, it is perhaps more important than ever that young journalists view themselves first as public servants. Hokey though it may sound, I can honestly say that service is ... one of the driving forces behind my desire to be a journalist. After two years teaching English on the Mexican border as a Teach For America corps member, it was clearer to me than ever before how many stories there are out there that need to be told.

In my past role as newsroom internship coordinator, I came to realize that only those with passion and perseverance would succeed in this highly competitive profession. More recently, as I've informally offered career advice to newsroom interns, both past and present, it's become abundantly clear that Gen Yers will need to be more resourceful and resilient than any generation that's come before theirs. There will be disappointments and setbacks en route to getting a solid foothold in the industry.

But for every discouraging turn, such as the former intern who got laid off this week from a medium-sized daily in Oregon, there will be a success story, such as the ex-intern who just landed a job as a national reporter at the Los Angeles Times.

All of us who value intelligent journalism in the changing media environment should join in wishing Lilly the best as she embarks on her studies at Berkeley. "In two years," she writes, "I'll let you know if J-School managed to eat my brain."