Everyday I see more and more journalists moving from mainstream media jobs to alternate new age careers. This evokes a mixed feeling within me. It saddens me to see the field of mass communication losing talented people to the IT boom in India. On the other hand, it gladdens me to see these same people carve a successful career graph for themselves in the challenging corporate world.

The strange part is that I am one among them. I trained and freelanced as a print media journalist and then gave up this wonderful career for a desk job as a website content editor in an IT firm. My reasons for the jump were mostly monetary. Moving to Bangalore made me realise that I wouldn’t be earning the kind of salary I anticipated as a journalist. Being at a cross road in my life, I was eager to get on to the corporate career fast track and the salary figures of IT professionals around me added to my eagerness. That’s when I came across the burgeoning field of content writing.

As one online journalist rightly puts it - the Internet gave the world a new word - content. The information highway opened its arms wide to writers of every possible ilk. Unlike before, writers now didn’t need to rely on the consideration of a few discerning publishers and editors; their options were split wide open with an unlimited audience of readers to boot.

The outsourcing phenomenon was another reason for the spurt in jobs for those with a talent for words. India, priding herself on a number of fluent English speaking citizens, suddenly spilled with more job openings than people thought possible. India was being seen as a place to outsource work and get cheap labour in the bargain. Call centers were not the only companies booming. More and more creative projects are now being outsourced to India, including writing. While they may pay peanuts by foreign standards, in India they were viewed as staggeringly high. In comparison, the local alternatives now looked uninviting.

Ravia Gupta, 24, completed her bachelors in journalism and went on to do her masters in communication from Bangalore University, intent on excelling in the field of print media as a reporter. In fact she moved from her home town in Jammu to Bangalore to pursue this dream. But her dreams were short lived as she soon realised she was only going to be paid enough to make ends meet. During her internship with a prominent newspaper she was pompously told by one editor, ‘Consider yourself lucky if you get a byline in the newspaper. You are too young to be asking for remuneration at this point.’ Ravia now works as a content editor in the IT sector. ‘The love for writing and journalism is still there and I would love to get back to it. But after the internship stint I don’t think I can look at it as a lucrative career,’ she says.

For Ravia’s colleague, Vijetha Rangabashyam, it was her passion for writing and an eagerness to positively influence readers through the written word that got her into the field of print media. But, like Ravia, she began to feel disillusioned by the way the media sector worked. ‘Journalists, in particular those from the print media, are not given due respect in terms of remuneration. Passion is what you bring to the workplace but your salary is what you take back home,’ she says. Vijetha says the print media needs to catch up with current trends, especially the way they run their companies and treatment of employees. ‘With the kind of perks MNCs are now offering us, its no wonder talented writers are opting for exercising their talent only as a hobby,’ she says.

After 5 years on the field, senior journalist Vijayalaxmi decided to diversify and add new skills to her portfolio. ‘I joined Oracle as a technical editor 6 months ago. It is an entirely different field from what I was doing earlier. Though I’d love to get back into writing, I haven’t given it much thought at this point in my career,’ she says.

‘Nothing can match the kind of job satisfaction a journalism career gives you,’ says Prabhudev whimsically. He moved into a content editing career with Logix Microsystems 4 months ago but misses his journalism career. ‘I worked as a reporter for 2 years but the low pay package forced me to opt for a career in content. Though the job profile might not be anywhere as interesting and creative as a journalism one, the career growth one can achieve through the corporate world is another major factor that pulls journalists away,’ he says. Although he pines for his journalism days, he says, it is the money that keeps him in the corporate world.

For Rathi Pradhan, who freelances as an editor for a UK based research company, her stint with journalism began in her college days. ‘I was a freelance reporter for a Bangalore based newspaper. Though I wasn’t paid much per article, I enjoyed the job. They then offered me a job for Rs. 6000 a month. It was then that I decided that I would have to look for an alternate career to use my skills and earn a good living too,’ she says. Rathi agrees that what she is currently doing does not give her the excitement and adrenaline rush of a reporting job. ‘I would probably get back to writing only as a part-time career but it is not something I can survive on,’ she says.

The views are unanimous. It’s time the print media clean up their act, in order to retain the very people that add to their clout. With the pace at which new career prospects are opening up for the present generation, it looks like time is running out.