Ken Belson wrote an interesting piece for the New York Times about young graduates having difficulty breaking into the sports industry.

For decades, the sports industry has been largely impervious to the economic cycle. Through booms and busts, leagues and tournaments expanded, stadiums were built and attendance and television viewership set records. Revenue from suite sales, naming rights and television contracts boomed.

But Martin and other graduates are finding that the industry’s growth is slowing, if not reversing. Students are receiving fewer job offers this spring or are accepting internships instead of salaried positions. Many of those internships are unpaid. The worry, their professors say, is that austerity may become the norm, forcing students to scale down or abandon their ESPN-fueled dreams.

The article focuses on sports management, but the problem exists in every sector.  The current graduating generation is larger than the baby boomers, with a greater percentage graduating from college.  Combined with an economy that is hemorrhaging careers, the job situation in dire.

It is particularly bad in journalism.  Unpaid internships are convenient for struggling companies, but problematic when it is 25 to 30 year-old adults, not college students, working them without an associated job prospect.

One of my roommates (two years out of college) was ecstatic to get an unpaid internship at a prominent food magazine.  She fought to get the internship..  The “internship” was strictly office work and fact checking for 30 hours per week.  The magazine was not hiring.  Even if they had an opening, she was behind a cabal of former interns, continuing to do grunt work a few times a week to stay in line.

The practice is not only arduous and arbitrary, but it limits the profession to those whose parents have enough disposable income that they can work 30 hours per week for free.

I have a bachelor’s degree with distinction from a prominent university.  Like Mitch Albom, “I have a Master’s in Journalism.€Â  I was trained for this.  The best job offer I have had was to spend six months for minimum wage working the night shift, filling in the scoreboard for a paper in Brockton, Mass.  I moved to New York to be with my girlfriend.

Media entities are in preservation mode.  They must stay afloat.  They must stay afloat with minimal casualties.  They must be profitable.  We focus incessantly on cutbacks and layoffs and salary cuts.  But, the consequence of maximum preservation is a system that has broken down for those trying to enter.

The next generation of visionary writers will be emerging on the Internet.  They will get exposure but it will be with neither the stability nor the experience that working with an established outlet can provide.  The sports media can preserve the façade, but without an infusion of new talent and creativity, it will rot from underneath.