I was also very interested in attending because the discussion topic was “The Future of Media.”

As a recent journalism graduate and someone who is now working as an editor in what I’d consider to be on the way to the future of media, I’m really interested to hear what others have to say about this and how other young women (a demographic that seemed to dominate my j-skool classes, but which is sometimes scarce in traditional newsrooms) are shaping the future of media as well.

What Lauren and I found ourselves in was a room full of women who mostly work in the areas of media which are so broken that people speculate every day when the mainstream media’s metaphorical “end of days” will come (or if those days are already upon us). They are: radio, television, print and telecommunications, plus the academics who teach those subjects in our colleges and universities.

And that’s fair enough. Why wouldn’t these successful, technologically engaged, intelligent women want to be at the forefront of a huge shift in their industries?

(As an aside, from what I could see, Lauren and I were the only people who raised our hands to indicate we were both content producers and marketers. I’ll bring this up again in the later parts of this series.)

However, as led by these women, the hot topic of conversation was not “The Future of Media,” but the present of mostly social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, Facebook Connect, hype, digital literacy, privacy concerns, etc. You can read the list here.

At the end of the night, I felt let down and left the dinner thinking that the women driving these debates completely missed the point: social media is not the media we should be talking about.

We should be talking about the media that we all work in; the media that people who don’t know everything turn to in order to find the information they need to know.

The only aspect of “The Future of Media” that was actually discussed was the CBC’s Angela Misri briefly explaining CBC podcasts and switching the livestreams to mp3 format.

I’m a huge fan of CBC Radio One. I listen to the station live in the mornings while I get ready for work, but some of the best shows air during working hours or later on at night, and I miss the live broadcasts.

I also don’t enjoy scheduling my life around my favourite programs, whether on radio or TV. So I think of the CBC podcasts kind of like TiVo or online streaming video – I can listen to the shows when I want to, skip the interruptions (traffic, weather, hourly news, etc.) and pause when I need to.

Yes, the CBC is doing a great job and is potentially ahead of the curve, but it can’t be the future of commercial media because it’s publicly funded. It doesn’t have to make money. There are no ads, just information. Companies and products are often mentioned, and endorsed, because the CBC thinks they’re of interest to its audience, but no money changes hands because it’s a publicly funded media outlet.

To survive and thrive, media outlets will have to become more like the CBC, but advertisers will actually pay the content producers to turn the advertising into content that is relevant to the outlet’s audience.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series on The Future of Media, in which I will discuss what exactly I mean by this statement, how it will work and why content producers won’t have as much trouble avoid corruption as we think they will.

I still don’t have the Internet at my apartment, and I’m kind of getting used to it because it gives me the freedom and the time to do other things. But it also means I don’t have any time for blogging. And that sucks.

But I’m not going to beat myself up about it too much. I’m just going to post an article of mine that was published yesterday, and move on.

TalentEgg has been providing content for the careers and education section of the new free Toronto evening newspaper t.o.night, which is available in some newspaper boxes at major hubs (such as Union Station), but which is mostly handed out by old school newsies in the downtown financial district. For those of you who have access to t.o.night, our content appears every Tuesday.

I’ve simply edited some of the articles we’ve published in the past and passed it on to the editors at the newspaper, but this week I had the opportunity to report and write a short news story about the Canada’s Top Campus Employers rankings.

It’s the first thing I’ve had published in print since my stint at the National Post (which, dramatically, was almost shut down last week) and although I publish my own writing online through TalentEgg almost every day, there’s just something special about print.

So, here it is. (Somewhat surprisingly, they don’t publish any of their content online, so I’m going old school with a scan.)

These articles paint twentysomething students and recent grads, and even unemployed workers in their mid-to-late 30s, as idealistic slackers without a care in the world who – for a time – surf couches, take odd jobs and, God forbid, actually feel optimistic about the future while they’re doing it.

Indeed, the trend is spurred on by changing attitudes towards work, says Karyn Gordon, a workplace and youth consultant. Young people today are less likely to see work as their raison d’être. They are happier to stay jobless because they don’t base their self worth on their job, Dr. Gordon says. [The Globe and Mail]

While this is generally true, many of us still long for a life-long career we are happy in. Unlike our parents’ and grandparents’ generations, who often stayed at one job or only a couple similar jobs their whole lives, perhaps it’s not the individual jobs that make up an important part of who we are. After all, we’re likely to change jobs at least a dozen or so times in our lifetime. But I think a meaningful career that progresses steadily from Point A to B to C, etc. is still important to Gen Y. We want to know our dedication and hard work is paying off in the long run.

Although I usually favour the Globe over other Canadian publications, its article on this topic doesn’t hold up to the paper’s normally high standards. It focuses on Gen Y’s stereotypical Peter Pan-ishness (however, most of the sources in this article are in their 30s for some reason) and doesn’t acknowledge the fact that young people currently have a lot of competition for jobs due to the recession, and there is also currently more reliance on short-term contract work which might leave people unemployed, then employed and then un/underemployed again.

Now, aside from the fact that I know more people who are working hard (or at least working hard at trying to get a job so they can work hard) than not, in previous generations the “funemployed” were simply free spirits who needed a little extra time to “find themselves.” Weren’t they? I don’t think this is something new nor do I think the funemployed should define our entire generation.

In the more recent Maclean’s article on the same topic, I think the reality of Gen Y not being able to find meaningful work and pursuing other valid options is more accurately represented. For example:

• realizing it’s a tough time to look for a career-advancing job and working a service job to finance a vacation before taking international internships abroad;
• getting laid off and living on the severance package while keeping an ear to the ground until another meaningful opportunity presents itself;
• working on hobbies and projects that make you happy, such as art, music or blogging, which can also help with networking and preventing the isolation that typically occurs when someone is unemployed.

Although the article is still peppered with a few Gen Y stereotypes, it’s much more kind than the other. And as for our generation being more accepted of unemployment than previous generations, let’s just say we realize there are different paths we can take along the journey toward a fulfilling career. Sometimes it includes travel (for business or for pleasure), or exploring different interests, or just being unemployed for a while because it can be tough to find a job.

And it’s OK!

(However, I have to mention that I think time off should include something that is potentially relevant to your career path, such as volunteering/unpaid internships or creating work for yourself through some sort of project or even just a blog.)

The only huge news I have is that my face was on the “front page” of GlobeandMail.com on Friday! And not for some random reason, but because I wrote something that The Globe and Mail published on their GlobeCampus site. That’s huge, right?

TalentEgg recently partnered with GlobeCampus for a blog/column called From Class to Career. Lauren’s article went up early last week and mine, “It’s been two months since graduating … now what?”

Needless to say, it’s a very exciting (or eggciting as Lauren would say) time for TalentEgg and for me personally/professionally. Already this year I’ve been published in the National Post multiple times and now something I wrote was featured on the Globe and Mail’s homepage. Two national newspapers in the span of a few months. Not bad!

You don’t have to be hired by a media giant to be published by one!

If someone points me in a direction, I will go at it full throttle without much assistance. What I’ve accomplished happened mostly by me seizing chances and opportunities. The truth is, I probably could have ended up in any number of fields and done fairly well at each of them. Journalism was just one of many possibilities for me, including psychology, graphic design, advertising, web development, photography and more. I considered all those options before I took a leap of faith into journalism.

I don’t believe any of this makes me dumb, unambitious or unsuccessful. I think it just means there are different types of brains which face the world in different ways.

Today, I’m employed by an entrepreneur.

She’s young (but still older than me), she’s smart and she has about a million ideas each day. Since she runs a small business, she wears a lot of hats. She’s not just the president, she’s also the accountant, the public relations rep, the company spokesperson, the manager and a hundred other things. She’s being pulled in every direction at once and, especially as the company grows, has very little time to sit down and perform every small task which allows the business to run from day to day.

And that’s where I come in because I’m more of a do-er and a problem solver. Although by nature Gen Yers like me are multi-taskers and procrastinators, I typically attack tasks in a certain order without really planning to do so and then “wing it” if/when it comes down to crunch time. Everything I do happens in a sort of organized chaotic way that probably only makes sense to me.

I’m also not a Yes (wo)man. I’m not afraid to tell my boss I don’t like one of her ideas, or that I think it needs to be tweaked, or that it doesn’t mesh with our brand, or that it will take way more work than she thinks it will, or whatever. We have a good rapport so I can voice my opinions (respectfully) without fear of retribution.

If or when I ever do stop working for TalentEgg, and if I have to get a job at a big corporation … I think it’s going to be a very hard adjustment. Instead of saying, “Yes, good idea, I didn’t think of that,” my manager would probably say, “Who do you think you are?”

Or, hopefully the TalentEgg Way will be widespread by then and collaborative, laterally structured, Gen Y-friendly workplaces will be more common. A girl can dream.