Economic Connections
by Elizabeth Johnstone
I haven't done anything "artsy" or "cultural" lately. I saw Miracle at St. Anna last week, watched two episodes of the first season of Mad Men (mostly because some guy in my class told me I looked like one the characters), and then I studied for my French exam. Today, I realized that the people in the apartment directly across the street from my building have a pet monkey. It was hanging out on the fire escape, eating a banana. It looked at me, and I forgot how grumpy I was about the disgusting state of my windows and basically melted into a puddle of cuteness.
What do these things have to do with each other? Nothing. But they don't have anything to do with the economy, either. As a journalism and screenwriting double major with parents who work in elementary education, I've been mildly intrigued but not very affected (at this point in time) by whatever crisis is currently uprooting Wall Street. But I've been doing some thinking.
Here's a sample of a typical conversation I have with someone who asks me what I do:
Person: So, what do you study at your fancy school?
Me: Well, I'm a journalism major, and —
Person: Oh, I'm so sorry.
They're referring, of course, to the sad state of print journalism. Recently, the New York Times consolidated its Metro and Sports sections into the main news section and the business section, respectively. They said there would be no cutback in coverage. Maybe not, but personally, I liked that Metro was a separate section because I could flip straight to it, take it out, and read the front page. But more on that later.
Now, I like to imagine that business majors are beginning to understand my plight:
Person: Oh, what do you do?
Business Major: I'm a business major, studying finance and -
Person: Oh my god, I feel so bad for you.
I'm not usually a particularly optimistic person, but I have some modicum of faith in a few things. The first is the power of circles. The economy sucks. Students, especially business majors, aren't going to get the kind of high-paying lucrative jobs they were expecting. I know that seems unfair, but the country has been through this sort of thing before, and much worse. Some of us weren't expecting to make millions of dollars, ever. We were just expecting to do something we loved. Movies and television, for example, are cyclical. We tell the same stories over and over, just re-inventing them constantly. Right now, TV show ratings are down. They'll come back, or the networks will try something else. And they'll try and try until they hit the mythical formula that makes a show a hit. It's a gamble, but a good and exciting one. And I think on some level, countries and business function in a similar way.
The second thing is in the news. As much as I absolutely detest the journalism major at NYU, I think journalism is still absolutely worthwhile. Print isn't dead, not yet, and I think there's still a ways to go.
This is what happens to me. Not ironically, it's a circle:
I give up, I hate journalism, I'm tired, I hate that I'll never make any money. And then I'll do something like open up the New York Times to the Metro Section. The main photo is of a man carrying his modern bride- she's wearing a simple white dress and black flats - out the double doors of the municipal building that houses the Manhattan Marriage Bureau. She's beaming, he's beaming back, and she's got an armful of smiling sunflowers. And then I read the story, "Drab Setting, But Joyous Work: Making 2 Into 1." It's amazing (the bureau, soon moving to a newer, prettier location, has seen 1.2 million marriage ceremonies since 1930) and only something that a newspaper could do.
The story, more than anything, reminds me that buildings are representative, not definitive. What defines an institution is its people, and what it does, and how it weathers the years. It sounds like an inspirational, feel-good, movie. But it's real life, sometimes.
If only we were all reminded more often.
