Marina Shifrin and I both studied journalism at the University of Missouri, and at roughly the same age—she’s 25, I used to be—we quit jobs that didn’t suit our talents. I remember nervously approaching the guy who ran the ad department of the Disciples of Christ publishing arm in Saint Louis to tell him I was moving on. “I can’t believe you stayed as long as you did,” he said. The other day, Shifrin went into her empty office at 4:30 AM and made a video she called “An Interpretive Dance For My Boss Set To Kanye West’s Gone.” She posted her video online and it went viral. The Kansas City Star, one of the more than 300 news sites that commented on the video, said Shifrin has found herself a place “in the ‘Leaving My Job in a Blaze of Glory’ pantheon.”

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »

Shifrin’s video is close to friendly. Her interpretive dance finds her bouncing around cubicles, up on desks and down again, in and out of the john. “I work for an awesome company that produces news videos,” say her superimposed titles. “For almost two years I’ve sacrificed my relationships, time and energy for this job. And my boss only cares . . . about quantity and how many views each video gets. So I figure . . . I’d make ONE video of my own. To focus on the content instead of worry about the views. Oh, and to let my boss know . . . (dance break) I quit. I QUIT! I’m gone.”

On her blog, under the headline “Journalism Is Dead (To Me),” Shifrin expands on her situation. She begins, “I want to make one thing clear: I do not think ‘journalism is dead.’ In fact, I think journalism is the ‘Madonna’ of professions; it will get face lifts until it outlives us all. This is a post about my decision to stop trying to be a journalist.”

  • Private jet crashes into Indiana houses killing two
  • At least 10 dead in Somalia car bomb
  • Six men arrested in gang rape of Swiss tourist in India
  • British father and son in fatal accident on Mont Blanc
  • Two killed after race car careens into pit lane in California
  • Experienced Australian pilot killed in replica Spitfire crash

Forgive me for yawning, but how many times have we heard this beef? Here, for instance, is the 2000 valediction of an Arizona journalist, Rich Robertson, leaving the biz after 30 years in print and TV. He said then what Shifrin says now. “Journalists are forced to pander to the same gawker reflex that causes traffic to snarl near car wrecks,” Robertson wrote. “We want viewers and readers to slow down to see us, so we give them a whole bunch of car wrecks and other forms of mayhem.” If it bleeds it leads, in other words.

And now there’s the job she’s been offered by Queen Latifah as a digital content producer on her new syndicated talk show.