I Wanted to Be Carrie Bradshaw When I Grew Up: Grieving The Loss of Print Journalism

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Obviously, the second I could comprehend what I was watching, I started internalizing all of it. Once I watched “Sex and the City” and “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days”, I could only ever envision my adult self as a writer— turning my rambling thoughts into art and experiencing all the glamor tied to the media’s portrayal of print journalism in the late ‘90s through the early 2000s. 

As a teenage girl, it made perfect sense for 25-year-old me to lead a life of slinking out of bed at 3 p.m., throwing on a cocktail dress and going to a gallery opening. I’d, of course, be a niche, micro-celebrity, known mainly by the well-read of New York City. 

How could I afford my beautiful high-rise apartment in Manhattan, you ask? Obviously with my very liveable, if not extravagant, salary as a columnist for a newspaper and freelance magazine projects— duh. My other projects? Frivolous pastimes passed off as writing projects that help pay for my insane shopping sprees. What else? 

I envisioned myself sipping fruity cocktails at a “work event” (thinly veiled excuse for a party) on a Thursday night, using it as source material for my next opinion piece in my own spread at a huge lifestyle magazine. 

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Needless to say, it doesn’t seem like that’s what’s going to happen. Yeah, that’s what I wholeheartedly envisioned for myself at 25. But I'm 23, it's 2024, and print journalism is all but fully dead. As it takes its last breaths, I can’t help but mourn the life I had planned for myself. Realistic or not, at least it was a possibility, albeit slim. 

Now I’d be lucky to make a living wage by writing at all. So maybe I wasn't fated to be the next Carrie Bradshaw or the next Andie Anderson, but I at least wanted a chance. 

Being a journalist, an essayist, a writer—it's all the same. Sometimes it feels like I’ll be pursuing a dead dream and I fear falling out of love with my passion as it drags me into financial ruin. 

I grew up as social media was on the up and up. I got Instagram in the fifth grade and became a regular Tumblr user by the time I was 12. So, I clearly understood that we were entering a digital age, but to me, that never meant the death of print journalism. So why did the world abandon print? 

Over time, people started scrolling through their “morning papers,” clicking to the next page and getting their news through sound bites in ads. It was easier, more accessible. 

Journalists frame their writing around educating their audience or imparting their knowledge upon them. In the digital age, Information is so easy to come by that it’s almost hard to sift through and find what you’re looking for. People place less value on something that once held such prestige.

Journalists are written off as hopeless dreamers, and the starving artist stereotype is becoming a grim reality. Success in journalism is not even the dream it once was— low pay and media conglomerate censorship can make the job almost burdensome nowadays. All for our work to go unnoticed.

I know I'm not alone in my sadness to see print journalism wither away, especially as social media continues to push poorly-written, trite, messes in your face by marketing it as the best thing you’ll ever read. Not to sound totally dramatic, but it almost feels like the art of writing in general has lost its sanctity. 

I’m not saying I'm the harbinger of a golden age of writing. Nor am I claiming to be talented beyond my years. I simply yearn to hold a physical newspaper with an advice column on the back, I want to read the classifieds, scour the headlines, mess up the crossword…

Writing is the purest form of self-expression. Reading is the purest form of understanding. While not tied down by the social rules of conversation or the aesthetic restrictions of visual art, you can speak through your writing and hope your words mean something to someone, even if that someone is yourself.

Whatever, writing may not always be my day job. I may not live lavishly off my book deal or my weekly column. But, I will keep writing. I will write until the day I lose the words. Somewhere along the pursuit of the glamorous lifestyle I saw as linked to being a writer, writing itself became my greatest love. The glitz, the glamor, the prestige— it’s become an afterthought compared to writing itself. 

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If I’m being completely honest, I’d just be glad that two people care to read what I write, even if those two people are my editor and me. If I can’t make a liveable wage with my writing, I’ll seek out other work. But I’ll never stop writing. 

So what? Maybe I’ll never be Carrie Bradshaw or Andie Anderson. Maybe print journalism is even circling the drain for good. It doesn’t matter— I don’t have to fantasize about being a writer anymore— I am one. 

I’ll keep writing alive, even if it is doomed to remain solely on some niche corner of the internet where people gloss over my think pieces and absent-mindedly misquote them later, at least my words have reached somewhere; there’s somewhere to put my thoughts and my heart.

I don’t write for money or acclaim anymore; somewhere along the way, I started writing for myself— just hoping that my words might also mean something to others. I can’t be the only one who aimed to be a famous author, a respected reporter, or a fashion journalist, and expected the glitz and glamor along with it. But you’re reading this piece for the same reason I wrote it. The art became more important than the lifestyle I once felt robbed of. 

Strike Out,

Orlando

Writer: Krizia J. Figueroa

Editors: Olivia Wagner & Makayla Gray

Krizia J. Figueroa is a Copy Editor and Public Relations Assistant for Strike Magazine Orlando. The avowed writer, artist, and fashion enthusiast is obsessed with collecting weird or odd little experiences and turning them into niche diatribes through her writing. Driven by whimsy, she’s honestly just as confused by her life as you are sometimes. But at least she can turn whims into projects, poems, or paintings, for the sake of productivity and professionalism. For a good time, email kriziajf@gmail.com.