A friend asked me the other day how I was scratching my media itch, having made the jump to agency land.

I was somewhat surprised to realise I just didn’t care anymore. Which is kinda surprising, given that I’ve been doing media since I was in highschool, writing for the local newspaper. Most of my adult life has been about media and journalism – Indymedia, EngageMedia, New Matilda, social media and journalism research at uni.

I think a couple of things have caused this:

I recently had to deal with the fallout of not publicly commenting on a legal battle that two people that I knew were involved in. I lost two friends over this, and in part this caused me reconsider a job offer as a tech journalist.

About the same time, New Matilda, where I’d occasionally had articles published, shut down. I was sad, and disappointed, and I realised I didn’t want to try and build a relationship with a new publication.

I have also recently gotten incredibly tired of the constant policing and snark on Twitter. I know this was partially because of the people I follow(ed), but I don’t know how many times people can send snarky tweets to politicians about Twitter being a conversational medium before they twig that people use Twitter in different ways, and that’s ok. Similarly, after some of my friends called for Nick Carr to be strung up for suggesting a different way of laying out articles, I was thoroughly put off. Ditto for the constant snark and pettiness.

I’ve also reconsidered whether I want to re-engage with academia. As a friend who I’ve written papers with pointed out, taking up a career in agency-land doing UX / business analysis seems to preclude following the academic path, and at least for now, I’m inclined to agree.

The last straw, ultimately, was an academic I respected, and considered a friend, calling me retarded for expressing some of my feelings and doubts about cultural studies and some of its utopian elements.

Ultimately, I think I’ve reached a point where I can let go. Cultural studies will do its thing with or without me. Journalism will be what it is with or without me. Politics will go on. Anyone who is genuinely interested in what I think can always ask me, and hopefully won’t call me retarded if they disagree.

…

Maybe this is a transitional thing. I’m not saying I’m never going to write again – I enjoy writing. But for now, I’m happy to leave it.

As some of you might have noticed, I’ve been evaluating my current career lately. I’ve spent a couple of years in Sydney now, and have had the luck to work at some great organisations with some great people. I’ve worked with WWF Australia and Earth Hour, I’ve worked at EngageMedia, I’ve written for New Matilda.

However, at the back of my mind has been a concern over what direction to head in. I love academic research, but academia’s not for me. I love journalism, but I don’t know whether it’s a career path I want to follow, what with journalism jobs drying up and some of my favourite publications hitting the wall. Similarly, I’ve had some great fun working as a producer and social media person, but I don’t know if that’s where I want to focus. There’s not really a career path there yet. While I’m inclined to agree with Joanne Jacobs that there genuinely are social media experts, and I respect quite a few people working in the field, the industry here hasn’t really had a shakeout yet – and it’s draining having to fight off both self-proclaimed gurus and naysayers at the same time.

Thankfully, right in the middle of this, the wonderful chaps at Happener pointed out that some of the other work I’d been doing – getting sites working, redeveloping sites for different users, functionality development and testing, SEO oriented site development – was something I might consider specialising in, and would I like to have a chat to the people at Sputnik?

So, one thing lead to another, and I start at Sputnik in a couple of weeks as a business analyst, focussed on UI. Thanks again to Happener for all their help and support! And thanks to everyone I’ve had the pleasure of working with so far in Sydney, it’s genuinely appreciated.

So the video editing continues apace. The story is still coming together – though the structure kind of makes sense now. I’m trying to convey the clash of frameworks that the COP15 represented – self regulation vs UN, green capitalism vs anti-capitalism, insider dealing vs direct action protest. I keep coming back to an interview with a Burmese activist who wanted to know how we could come up with a fair agreement when his representatives were his oppressors. And I can’t help but think that he’s right, but the alternative is to… do what?

Heritage media is as vacuous and useless a term as new media.