To paraphrase Charles Dickens’s famous opening words to A Tale of Two Cities, it is the best of times to be a young journalist; and it is the worst of times to be a young journalist. Veteran hacks tend to argue the latter, especially if they worked during the decades of advertising-rich, pre-Wapping, pre-internet Fleet Street where jobs were plentiful and publishers flung money around like confetti.
A great number of the journalists in those hallowed times past were working class. They got their first local newspaper jobs straight from school, at 16 or 17, and many later graduated to national papers without even passing the proficiency test. I know because I was one.
Nowadays, this time to cite Yeats, all has changed, changed utterly. Cash-strapped newspaper publishers, fighting to retain declining newsprint readerships while striving to build online audiences, watch every penny. Cutbacks are the inside story of newspapers. Incoming reporters are now expected to have a degree plus a master’s and/or a diploma from the National Council for the Training of Journalists. Those of us who teach journalism agree that it has become a middle-class trade, though we recognise it is due also to Britain’s post-war demographic transformation.
But do these changes justify claims that it is no longer worth being a journalist? Worth, of course, is a loaded word. It can refer to money, viewing journalism as a lucrative way to make a living. Or it can have a vocational meaning, implying that journalism is intrinsically a public service.
Those opposing views were aired in an interesting blogging exchange last week between the US-based, British-born financial journalist Felix Salmon and Channel 4 News’s chief correspondent Alex Thomson. Salmon claimed this is “probably the greatest era for journalism that the world has ever seen” because “today’s fast-growing digital companies are going to become the media behemoths of tomorrow, making their owners extremely rich in the process”. But, he quickly pointed out, “that doesn’t mean that life is good for journalists. In fact, life is not good for journalists”. Things are bad for them and will get worse.
Salmon, who writes for Fusion, a digital content platform that says it serves the “millennial generation”, and is also a MediaGuardian columnist, was candid enough to admit that he had prospered due to “a combination of luck and privilege”. Newcomers were unlikely to do as well. “Journalism is a dumb career move,” he wrote. “If there’s something else you also love … something else which makes the world a better place – then maybe you should think about doing that instead … enormous numbers of incredibly talented journalists find it almost impossible to make a decent living at this game.”
An incandescent Thomson was having none of it. Salmon wasn’t writing about journalism but about money. He wrote: “If anyone ever approached me about wanting to become a journalist for the money I would show them the door.” So what drew him into the trade? “People should want to be journalists because of anger. And when I see anger I give real encouragement … That alone should motivate journalists of any age.” He scorned the notion that people might become reporters “for the money or the middle-class lifestyle”. Journalists he admired “were doing it because they were angry at the way things are and they had the power to make it better”.
I like the passion and appreciate the high-minded ideals, but (as someone who teaches students at London’s City University) I don’t think anger or money are the original motives for many wannabe journalists. Fame (and its cash rewards) do influence some because there remains a whiff of glamour about the industry. Even if not angry, however, most do believe the job offers them the chance to do something worthwhile for society. And most, it should be stressed, believe they can best achieve this through joining traditional news organisations. Yet the reality they face after graduating is that those “big media” companies tend to offer only low-paid, screen-based, office-bound jobs, whether at national or local newspapers.
Instead, given that the entire intake at universities and colleges with journalism courses are now “digital natives”, they can take the plunge into the various online enterprises that might, as Salmon indicates, supplant big media. Several innovative outlets spring to mind, such as BuzzFeed, Vice, Vox and Gawker. The Huffington Post doesn’t pay its contributors but editors are on salary. Trinity Mirror has spawned Usvsth3m and Ampp3d. Then there are collectives, such as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, or outfits like The Conversation.
Start-ups keep starting up. There are more routes into journalism than throughout my 50-plus years as a journalist. The prospects for them may be uncertain but they offer both valuable experience and the chance to experiment in an environment where innovation has become of crucial importance. Young journalists need to know that they can make a name for themselves by showcasing their skills on outlets that appear to lack the prestige of established media. Talent will out.
And don’t forget perspiration. As the New Yorker’s inspirational writer Malcolm Gladwell memorably said: “Hard work is a successful strategy for those at the bottom because those at the top no longer work so hard.”
David Carr, the New York Times media columnist who died on Thursday, also thought reporting was enjoying a golden age. And he offered two practical tips to would-be journalists: “Keep typing until it turns into writing”, and “being a good writer doesn’t make you a good reporter, it takes hustle”. Hustle was important when I became a cub reporter in 1964. The platforms may have changed, but of all the skills required in our trade, it remains the most important.
