It recently dawned on me what I really want to do in life. I want to be Clark Kent… or something like Clark Kent. I want to write news stories, flash the press pass. But when the world is about to be taken over by evil mad men I would burst into the bathroom and fly out the window in my skintight super hero outfit and eventually save the world.

I think that’s the sort of thinking that drives journalists, that in some way shape or form we’re fighting to save the world with our pens, notebooks, laptops and Blackberries. It is semi-narcissistic and ego inflating but it serves its purpose. Superhero-ism is a lot like journalism. If you’re good enough at what you do, you become a household name, but you get almost nothing in payment, in comparison to the arch nemesis that seem to be made out of money.

Two weeks ago I made the trip to Seattle to visit a friend of mine. She gave me the grand tour of the city – from University of Washington to Pike’s Place Market and beyond.

On Sunday afternoon, we walked through the Sculpture Park, which was pretty much right next to the Seattle Newspaper, the Post-Intelligencer. The building itself is little awkward, with a giant rotating globe on top with the worlds: “It’s in the P.I” scrawled across the side. I wondered how much it cost them alone to keep that giant globe rotating.

My friend and I made the comment that it resembled Super Man’s Daily Planet. She then proceeded to tell me that they were probably going to wrap their print edition very, very soon.

Sure enough, the following day as I was touring the Music Museum my cell phone vibrated with a text message from one of my co-workers alerting me that Monday morning would be the last publication from the P.I.

When I first started studying journalism in college, the wiser, seasoned veterans of the field said I should get into something that would make me money – like science and math. Having spent a good portion of my time in school crying tears into my math and science homework, a career in either field wasn’t something I was aiming for.

With papers like the P.I. wrapping up its print publication, and the still unanswered fate of the San Francisco Chronicle I can’t help but laugh at the San Francisco State Journalism Department. The majority of students on the print side of the major verses the online section is almost three times over, while the multimedia online department is proof as to how far behind the journalism department is in the evolution of multimedia journalism.

On Monday morning, before the sun had even risen, I walked to my boarding gate at the Seattle airport and briefly saw the last edition of the P.I. The giant globe I had seen just a few days before staring back at me.

Later that day I went to school where my internship class was discussing the atmosphere at their various journalism internships, and how the recent string of layoffs had put a majority of the work environments in a stress bubble.

It wasn’t hard to tell that a majority of these students are scared. Nearly all of them will be graduating in May with a degree in journalism that will look all fancy behind a glass frame on their parents wall, but will be worth almost nothing in the real world.

When I first became interested in journalism, the idea of being a journalist resembled what Clark Kent embodied: being almost evincible, and the ability to put pen to paper.

If that’s still the case, then the slowing economy must be the kryptonite that’s resulting in the layoffs and dismantling of so many news organizations across the nation.

In spite the zero job opportunities available in the post graduation field of journalism, I have faith that things will start looking up eventually…

Worst comes to worst, maybe I can jump start my own super gig. All I need now is the Blackberry.
—Eming Piansay