What if people were too afraid to maximize their incomes because they thought doing so would require unethical behavior? I’m not just talking about grand theft, like the fraudulent $2.3 billion in UBS trades, the former Goldman Sachs board member indicted this week, or intentionally steering people to sub-prime mortgages when they qualified for better. As I do my reporting work on the economy across America, often what I hear is a reluctance on the part of individuals to “be a team player” because their teams and companies encourage behaviors that range from illegal to discriminatory to just mean-spirited. The number of individuals and families living paycheck-to-paycheck makes it very hard for ethical earners to be transformative actors in unethical workplaces. Instead, some people keep their heads down and hope they won’t be the next ones cut.

Can you blame them? A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor pointed out two important trends. First, we have significantly less cash to play around with than we did a couple years ago. Or as they put it:

Bottom line: The average individual now has $1,315 less in disposable income than he or she did three years ago at the onset of the Great Recession – even though the recession ended, technically speaking, in mid-2009.

Second:

The so-called misery index, another measure of economic well-being of American households, echoes the finding on the slipping standard of living. The index, a combination of the unemployment rate and inflation, is now at its highest point since 1983…

In order to have a real dialogue about the economy, we need to acknowledge that most people like and want money, and just want to earn it ethically. What does ethical enterprise look like? In some cases, it means choosing to work for a company that shares your values. In many other cases, it means standing up for shared values in an environment that may be unfriendly or hostile. For example, in the 1970s, my grandmother quietly fought for seven years for the desegregation of hiring at Social Security. She was denied her own promotions while she fought for others… but eventually was recognized and awarded by the same organization she had battled. Not everyone has the fortitude to mount that kind of struggle, and not everyone who struggles will be recognized.

Wall Street does not just have rogue traders, but ethical ones — even whistleblowers. Unfortunately, as an article from Pro Publica points out:

Whistle-blowers, truth-tellers and fraud-spotters pay a miserable price on Wall Street. They are vilified. They are fired. Sometimes they are even sued. Instead of being sought after, they become persona non grata.

How much un-tapped economic potential is there, among everything from big firms to one-person entrepreneurial ventures, that gets bottlenecked by the fear of money, or more accurately here — the fear of what it takes to make money? That’s a critical question we need to ask ourselves before the energy behind the Occupy movements fades.

This week I was struck by two very different tales about job-seekers.

One is Debra Dickerson, a writer who I respect and who I had the pleasure of having as a guest on News and Notes many times. Following a divorce, she has moved to Atlanta with her children and is broke: straight up, hardcore, broke. She is not hiding the fact and her writing is really wonderful, hard to read, and honest. From, “Brother, Can You Spare a Cone”:

I have the receipt from the returns in my hot little hands. My purchases total exactly $24.63. Tax included, thank you very much. Yet the clerk assures me that the card doesn’t contain enough money. How short am I? He can’t tell me. I should have told him I was using a store card. So the nightmare process of figuring out what to return begins. What good is bread without butter for the toast they consume by the loaf? Peanut butter or jelly? The claritin which allows me to breathe normally or…never mind.

It’s a recreation of that scene from Terms of Endearment when Debra Winger runs short at check-out, her kids are acting out and the cashier is New York City-rude. John Lithgow saves her but the kids and I are on our own.

Unemployment lines are shorter than the ones at Wal-Mart, with all it’s unmanned registers, and those snaked behind me are audibly angry at me and my unruly kids.

I want to cry. I want to give up. They kids won’t settle.

But I hold on. I hold on to moments of grace.

It is rare to see Americans write about struggles with money in this way, in part because of the way not having money is often framed as a moral sin. It is prosperity gospel turned inside out. If you are poor or broke, public policy and media debates often frame you as being deeply and inherently wrong in your behavior and perhaps in your being.

But in America today (as always) there are many people who are doing everything right… applying for jobs and working to save and still facing extreme hardship.

Then, there was a wonderful story by the New York Times’ Louis Uchitelle, who profiled a man who is floating, happily, on the bubble of his family’s money. Maybe a little too comfortably:

The daily routine seldom varied. Mr. Nicholson, 24, a graduate of Colgate University, winner of a dean’s award for academic excellence, spent his mornings searching corporate Web sites for suitable job openings. When he found one, he mailed off a résumé and cover letter — four or five a week, week after week.

Over the last five months, only one job materialized. After several interviews, the Hanover Insurance Group in nearby Worcester offered to hire him as an associate claims adjuster, at $40,000 a year. But even before the formal offer, Mr. Nicholson had decided not to take the job.

Rather than waste early years in dead-end work, he reasoned, he would hold out for a corporate position that would draw on his college training and put him, as he sees it, on the bottom rungs of a career ladder.

Future Darwin award winner? Maybe not, if his folks keep paying the bills.

I also think he does NOT represent his generation’s passion or common sense.

Like many people, I have had to make my own decisions in this economy. I chose to roll the dice and freelance while exploring new business opportunities. I have been lucky enough to find various ways to pay for what was essentially a year of learning to be an entrepreneur. In this past year I have done everything from earning money doing social media consulting for media companies and nonprofits; lecturing at universities on the future of journalism and the role of participatory culture and social media in journalism’s evolution; taking technology classes; moderating events of many shapes and sizes and constituents (including TedxOilSpill); and taking a LOT of meetings just to inform myself about the business environment and what role I might play in it. What I have not been doing a lot of is journalism. I found it was actually harder to support myself doing journalism than it was to admit that I could make more money in less time doing other things and to focus on raising the capital for my new project.

Our new media project is in process. I don’t want to jump the press release someone is probably generating but it will be in public radio and be very much multimedia, participatory, and social media-enabled.

The nonprofit which initiated the project is called Pop and Politics, the same name but not the same organization as the blog I started many years ago. This organization is focusing on covering a changing America, particularly issues of race, diversity, and community. Our content will reach people where they are, on multiple platforms, and we’ll encourage people to participate in how we select and report stories. We have raised money for the pilot phase; are working on the actual project; and are gearing up to raise more money. I have an amazing business partner; organizational partners in this work; advisors; and supporters. We are building the machine. (We will ask you for money, too, dear public media supporters! More information will be online soon about our project once the Top Seekret label comes off of the storage crates).

I look forward to being a working journalist again, but this decision to turn my full attention to business was deliberate. I realized after turning down a few jobs that I really wanted to create my own organization. Then I realized that doing that was going to take at least four times longer than I thought. I have no regrets and I’m really excited. But it is no joke! It takes focus (and savings!). For a time at least, I had to focus on the business side and not worry I was missing covering THE BIGGEST STORIES OF OUR LIFETIME like the oil spill. Okay, I did worry about that but I remained on-task.

It strikes me that we are in the middle of a huge landgrab in journalism, and who has the money to stick out the unpaid entrepreneur phase of both for and nonprofit company-building will have a huge influence in what journalism looks like, feels like, and how it serves us. I would like to see more support for non-traditional entrepreneurs in media, and not just for my own selfish reasons.

By the way, Debra Dickerson is both applying for jobs and looking for new ways to do her work. She is launching a drive to get her readers and fans (and new ones) to fund her next book. To wit:

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the internet has body-slammed traditional journalism and publishing into gibbering madness. No one knows anything about what’s going on, and in an atmosphere like this, my options are a) to continue writing for free (see: blogging/writing for websites none of which can pay a living wage), b) get a real job (believe me, I’ve tried), c) or hope that my DIY attempt to self-publish will succeed.

So, here’s my brilliant plan: raise $75,000 to support three or so months of reporting then six-nine months of writing, exploit a college kid as a part-time, minimum-wage research assistant (plus all the coffee he/she can drink), hire an editor to save me from myself before it’s too late and — TA DA — master the mysteries of self-publishing and the beast of technology.

You can read more about how she’s going about this and her hybrid free/paid distribution model in different media. I wish her good luck in all of it.

As we talked about opportunities and challenges in journalism, I was asked for recommendations about what to do and what to learn. Speaking off the cuff, I surprised myself with a few suggestions. So, in no particular order.

1. Keep Your Money Tight and Right
Journalism is a game for innovators and survivors, and that means even if you are smart and committed you may be unemployed at some point in your career. Keep your personal finances in order. No one’s trying to expand your credit card limit right now.

2. Create Your Brand and Your Company
Consider starting a company, with a separate EIN (roughly a Social Security Number equivalent) that processes your freelance payments. It’s a little more work up front but creating a company, getting an internet domain, and keeping a simple, businesslike online site is part of the game these days. If your job disappears tomorrow, people should still be able to find you online; and ideally you should have a presence on social media. Even if you work full time at a larger organization, and do no freelancing, register a site which is your name or a simple, non-gimmicky version thereof; have your basic email contact (a form is better than a link), and if you can, link to samples of your work online.

3. Back It Up
In this business environment, you may do great work for employers who go out of business or who simply don’t keep an online archive of your work (because it is out of date for their purposes or for other reasons). Legally, depending on the work agreements and licensing, you usually don’t have the right to copy and cross-post all the work you have done for others on your site. Keep a backup (a .pdf, printout, .mp3, .mov, etc) of your work for your personal files. For your online branding, link to work as it appears on the sites you have worked for or licensed work to; or upload work you have the rights to. Also, if you work as a freelancer, consider negotiating your contracts so that the rights revert to you after a fixed amount of time… say six months.

4. Understand that History Lives and Breathes (and Fights!)
Learn as much as you can about history and also the places where history is being contested and rewritten. Those are good places to get stories. For example, the earthquake in Haiti unearthed faultlines over how Haiti’s independence struggle is/has been depicted. Haiti became independent in 1804, but the battle over how the tale is told continues today, as it does with many aspects of American history.

5. Apply Your People Skills
I have gotten some of the best reporting of my life done because I have been willing to go places that were at least somewhat dangerous. I trusted my intuition about people… intuition backed up by a lot of research first. So I have been to housing projects people told me not to visit; met face to face with white supremacists; been to “slums” in other countries. I have been lucky/blessed… but/and I also am an observer of human behavior. Most of us can tell the difference between people who are, for example, loud and talking crap, vs those who are loud and on the verge of violence. (Silent and on the verge of violence is particularly important to keep an eye out for.) Apply everything you know about human behavior to allow yourself the maximum flexibility in going places most people won’t. You’d be surprised at how much good there is in the world.

Many of us describe ourselves as our jobs. We don’t say “I work as a baker,” but instead “I am a baker.” Or “I am an accountant/engineer/police officer/cook.” There is a lot of “is” in our work. It’s part of the modern construction of identity, a construction quite pronounced in the United States.

Cultures are different, and in some parts of the world people don’t talk as much about their work or define themselves as much by it. It doesn’t mean they don’t place value on it. One scenario: countries used to economic volatility, where many highly-qualified people don’t work in their field. I met PhDs in Cuba who guided tourists or sold cigars at the marketplace. They didn’t seem to define themselves by the work they did as much by their regional and national identity, their family structure, their travels (many had studied in communist countries around the world based on Cold War-era alliances), and to a certain degree by their education. They shared a lot of wry smiles between themselves about the twists and turns of fate. I found another ethos in France, where occupation is one way of describing yourself, but people put a lot of emphasis on aesthetics, personal politics, and community. Parisians claim their arrondissements as fiercely as New Yorkers claim their own neighborhoods.

Americans work longer hours than people in most industrialized nations, including Japan. Until this recent economic adjustment, a lot of people also preached various (religious, political and secular) varieties of prosperity gospels that implied, if not stated, that you were literally a better person if you earned more money. (Folks still preach that, but I suspect some of the believers are questioning the message or at least the narrowness/judgment with which some people delivered it.) Our current state of affairs begs the question: what happens to the “is”-ness of work when work no longer is? Or, at the very least, if it is no longer what it was?

Well, for some people, it brings denial. For others, grief. (See research cited in Don Peck’s recent article in the Atlantic showing that six months of joblessness delivers a psychic blow on par with a divorce.) Other experience freedom, even elation. Most of us have some mash-up of the above.

I’m certainly not immune to the lure of “is”-ness. For years I’ve defined myself as a journalist. I still am a journalist, but I have other things I do for joy, and for money. I try to mix joy and money, but sometimes work is just work.

I’ve learned to diversify my revenue streams more than at any time in my life. In 2009, I made money as a:
– novelist
– print journalist
– online journalist (text-based and video-based)
– radio host (staff and freelance)
– radio reporter/commentator
– digital media consultant
– speaker/lecturer (on topics of race and/or digital media, mainly; at venues including high schools, colleges, and businesses)

I don’t believe I made any money doing television in 2009, but I also did it as a guest and considered that “work”… more of an exposure/brand building type of work. I hired a lot of freelancers to help me execute various aspects of what I do, so in some ways I am helping keep our economy afloat.

I realize my position isn’t typical. Over the years, I made decisions, some of them well-thought out and others by luck and inspiration, that allow me to work as a freelancer. What I miss the most while freelancing is the social nature of work, so for that reason (and healthcare!) I’m planning to move in a more structured direction in 2010.

But this period of dis-engagement from a traditional job-based identity has been really amazing. It’s allowed me to move in a more entrepreneurial direction, and to realize that I desire certain things from work that not everyone needs. For example, in addition to paying the bills, I desire work that’s creative, builds community, and has elements of experimentation and playfulness. That kind of personal evaluation of the different roles work plays in my life is something I couldn’t have done when I was working in a traditional full-time job. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. And that was okay, at that time. This time of evaluation is perfect for what I need right now.

As I look around at my friends and colleagues, and at the country as a whole, I see a lot of people who are figuring out the difference between who they are and what they do. I think it’s really important to see yourself as someone who is, just purely is, without making your identity wholly dependent on whatever you do for money. It’s critical to take an audit of your skills and an audit of the job marketplace, and to realize that what you’ve done in the past is not necessarily what you will do or should do in the future. If you’ve been volunteering as a counselor at your church or organizing field trips at your child’s school, you have skills. If you’ve been running a family, you have skills. If you’ve been learning how to navigate social media for fun… well, there’s money in that too. I’m not trying to preach a neo-prosperity gospel that says there’s a job just around the corner. Sometimes you have to walk a few miles in the cold to reach that job. But it’s there. You can find it, or you can make it. And when you find it, or make it… you’ll still be you, not just your job.

The idea is to ask: what’s worth more than money? In some cases, like Anna Deavere Smith, it’s mastery of craft and storytelling. In others, it’s adventure (in Antarctica!); service to people who’ve survived the civil war in Sri Lanka; or creating an urban oasis.

I’m limited by the fact that there is no travel budget, so the series has to be where I am: mainly NY, but also, in the coming weeks, DC, Baltimore, Miami, Northern and Southern California, and St. Louis.

I would LOVE suggestions for stories. Email me via the “contact” link on the top right of this website.

Here are the first four episodes of The Value.