A good friend in the media business took me out to dinner for my birthday. The group consisted of three journalists (not including myself) and a civil engineer. Three guesses for which one was happy with his job. And the first two don’t count.

The civil engineer had an all expenses paid trip to check out the Portland street car system and the Seattle transit system for his city. He talked about new initiatives and new technologies bringing exciting possibilities. Seems like when any journalist over the age of 35 talks about new technologies, there is a tinge of fear in their voice.

All the journalists at the table were thinking of leaving the business. One had just got a PR job with a non-profit. We talked about the future of the business, and agreed that it will take some totally new concept: beyond headlines and “articles,” something completely out of our context, to make news on the web profitable. It could come tomorrow. It could come in 10 years.

Indian Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav addresses a press conference in 2004

This is the exact opposite of what is happening in India. Media is booming. My journalist friends there are getting higher and higher salaries and doing excellent quality stories. Media companies poach regularly from one another. New publications are popping up all the time.

It’s a strange position, to see be intimately aware of the two situations. Before I left Delhi in 2006, I went to a media night at a local bar. I started talking with this fellow over drinks, who turned out to be the owner of a couple radio stations. Friends at the bar confirmed his identity, so I knew he was legitimate.

After about 40 minutes of chatting with me, he offered me a job as a radio producer. I informed him I had nearly no experience in radio, and he said that it didn’t matter — that I could be trained and he knew I would be good at it. I had to decline, as Sebastian’s visa had just been approved and we were off to the US in a matter of months. But it illustrated that kind of exciting atmosphere I was leaving behind.

Indian journalism is enthusiastic, often unashamedly biased, and its obviously doing something right. We’re working in different cultures with very different populations, but there has to be something American can learn from looking East.

Back at the dining table of confused Americans, I proposed a game. You know its time to leave journalism when….

My friend came up with a good one. You know its time to leave journalism when the writer of the “Ask The Recruiter” column on Poynter, who gives advice to young people breaking into the business, writes about his last day on the job after taking the editorial buy-out.

It isn’t pretty.

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