Last night at the SFU Woodwards campus, an auditorium full of media professionals and student hopefuls sat down to hear Kai Nagata explain himself after setting the internet of fire in July with his blog post Why I Quit My Job, which effectively buried a promising career in broadcast journalism.

The presentation was fast-paced and witty with relevant video clips – all the things you would expect from a broadcast journalist – but ultimately uncontroversial. His critique of “the news” filling air time with consumer reports, event coverage and kittens in trees wasn’t new. Pointing out that psychology and statistics are used to keep audiences simultaneously entertained and anxious was no revelation. The fact that advertising space has been sold well in advance of the broadcast so that new (not quality) content production is driven by that money, fell flat. It became quickly apparent that Kai Nagata is a social crusader, who found himself in an upwardly mobile job that paid him to forget his convictions and abridge his journalistic integrity.

So he quit. So what?

Well, Kai remained true to his passion of story telling and wrestling with issues. He decided to take his training and experience and apply it to grassroots reportage to effect change in the world and everyone wanted to know how he was going to do that. What phoenix would rise from the ashes of his career? How will he lead the charge of socially conscious citizen journalism in new media?

His answer is to make sacrifices and make them while you are young, without obligations like a family and mortgage. Although there were a lot of young, nodding heads in the room, this answer didn’t sit well with me. Kai’s advice was the same you would give someone considering a stint on a cruise ship or spending a year abroad. It wasn’t sustainable.

Not that he isn’t leading by example. Kai took a 90% pay cut from his CTV job and is currently living out of a tent in his father’s yard while doing some writing for the The Tyee. His tent flooded the night before. He uses an iPhone and a borrowed laptop. He drives a pickup truck he’s obviously not proud of. He also advised young idealists to do other things to pay the bills while producing their own brand of responsible journalism. My knee-jerk reaction was to envision an army of journalist/barristas but surprisingly he suggested raising chickens and growing kale.

Kai Nagata is clearly a smart guy with an amazing skill set and experience to back him up, but until he (and by he, I mean all of us) finds a means to support meaningful journalism that hasn’t been diluted, focus-grouped and dumbed down, it is only a matter of time before he burns out or sells out.