Gary Andrews

Heard the one about the journalism graduate offered a job for £10k in London? Yes, that is an actual position that came up in conversation with a friend the other day. The experience, work-wise, sounds excellent. The experience, life-wise, probably amounts to renting out a cardboard box under Hammersmith Bridge.

I only mention because ever since last month there’s been an ongoing debate rumbling on, started mainly by Ed Ceasar’s Sunday Times piece, Hold The Front Page, I Want To Be On It, where he details the lengths – and financial pain – journalism graduates have to go through to get onto a national paper. The picture painted was somewhat bleak and depressing.

Since then, others have contributed to the debate. Adam Tinworth notes that Ceasar is very narrow in focus and omits vast swathes of the media:

“Journalism is a very, very broad church – and it was so long before the internet came along to knock down some walls, pop in an extra transept or two, and generally widen the whole place. Radio, TV, newspapers (local and national), consumer magazines, business magazines, niche subscription-only titles. Online news sites. Blogs. And now the whole, growing world of hyperniche and hyperlocal sites.”

Roy Greenslade partly agrees with Adam on this point, but also says that in his experience, most of his journalism students aren’t interested in these opportunities:

“I may exhort them to think about entrepreneurial journalism. They may learn about successful online news start-ups. They often tell me that mainstream media controlled by big, bad, profiteering moguls is a danger to press freedom. But these so-called “digital natives” still want to work for mogul-owned media.”

And Laura Oliver from journalism.co.uk, who is one of those people who, hopefully, acts as an inspiration to other recent graduates feels that the focus of the journalism postgrad courses are too narrow.

“I graduated from City’s newspaper journalism course in 2007. I applied for graduate schemes on national newspapers along with the rest of my classmates, but largely because I felt I had to. I wanted to work online and for a smaller newsroom/company where I hoped I could make more of a mark. But from day one it felt as if the expectations of our course were national or nothing – and I know from speaking to other recently-qualified journalists that it wasn’t just my course that pushed this view.”

Of course, this is nothing new. I sketched out a few thoughts on the subject just over two years ago and it doesn’t seem like much has changed. If anything, the world for new journalism graduates is even more unclear now than it was back then.

There’s a lot I recognise in all viewpoints. Ceasar’s article is all too depressingly familiar and chimes with the experiences of a lot of friends and colleagues.

Even those who managed to get themselves onto the nationals did so with a hideous level of debt that they’re nowhere near to repaying, and jobs in the market aren’t really offering huge salary boosts. When I applied for a interesting position, with an unspecified level of pay, a while back, I backed out after realising I’d have to take an £8k pay cut. And this was for a relatively senior role.

But then again, there are so many more opportunities, so many more publications online and the boundaries of media and the online world are so vague that willing graduates could find themselves in an excellent job that gave them plenty of training and experience if they’re prepared to think beyond the usual suspects.

And these kind of roles don’t necessarily mean a job on the nationals is beyond you. I’ve met a variety of people from a variety of ages ranges who’ve all made it to national media through completely different means. And yes, while increasingly a postgraduate is necessary, the path post-degree is of varying length and direction.

But for me, still, what it comes down to is money. Or lack of.

No matter how many different opportunities and different media and organisations there are out there, you still have to pay the bills – and your student debts – somehow. And that’s getting harder to do these days.

Not that pay will rise anytime soon. Universities are still churning out a large number of media graduates and even when you take into account the postgraduate courses, the job-to-graduate ratio is still at the stage where employers can keep their wages low – they’ll always be another talented, well-trained eager young thing willing to get that first foot on the ladder.

This doesn’t even take into account the large number of websites and web-only publications. It’s unlikely many of these will pay vast sums of money, either for freelance pieces or permanent positions. Partly because a lot of these places are so small that they don’t have the cash, and partly because there are enough people who’ll happily accept the odd low-pay commission for a bit of extra cash.

Put simply, no matter what the ideal situation is or how many opportunities there are out there, the economics of media pay do not paint a rosy picture.

As for the national positions – the national papers, the BBC TV and radio prime reporting positions, those big name magazines – those with the talent and drive to get there stand a good chance of doing so, although those with some cash stored away and a place to stay in London will always have an advantage. Unpaid internships and just being able to have that flexibility to come into the office helps.

(Not that it’s much different outside of London. I got my first freelance shifts after essentially coming in and working for free every day for a month at my local radio station. Not that I begrudged this – they didn’t force me and I had nothing else to do that summer, plus I really enjoyed the work. But I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t done the unpaid, unrequested work.)

I can’t speak for B2B publications and websites as I don’t have any direct experience of these, although general impressions are these are an excellent place to start on a decent salary, especially if you know finance, economics, or science. They’re also probably a neglected option by many graduates, sadly.

As for locals – and here I definitely disagree – plenty of postgrads I know or have trained with have been happy to go onto the locals. I was delighted to get a job in local radio. It’s an excellent training ground and I’m immensely proud of my work and background there.

As much as anything, just as there were those who were determined to make it to the national media, there were also those who were happy just to get offered a job, or those who saw it as a stepping stone to bigger things.

Locals are a great training ground and, mostly, a great place to work but ultimately, again, money plays a huge part. Salaries are typically low and pay rises are rarely forthcoming.

This is fine when you’re fresh out of university with no commitments and the debt something that can be dealt with at some other time. But eventually you start having to make important decisions like settling down (with a partner), deposits and mortgages, kids, career and just how much disposable income you want.

It’s at that stage where idealism fades into practicality  - and pushing yourself to get onto a national has, perhaps, a slightly more limited window of opportunity, if that’s the way you want to go.

That said, I know so many different people who work for so many different media, all of whom juggle the issues listed above that it’s difficult to generalise, as I’ve inevitably done above. But that doesn’t mean that money doesn’t hang over most media professionals’ heads.

To paraphrase one journalist, as we were chatting post-twofootedtackle podcast about the diversifying new media and the number of people prepared to work for free, “The media is changing and I’m not sure if I like it. I’ve embraced it, but I don’t necessarily like it.”

I think all of us have had that thought at one point or another.

written by Gary \\ tags: Ed Ceasar, journalism, media debates, national newspapers, pay in the media, postgraduate journalists, Roy Greenslade

Ever since Murdoch brought paywalls back into fashion like bad mullets in indie videos, I’ve been wrestling with assorted pros and cons (having heard from both sides), so I thought I’d put them down here.

So, lets take this hypothetical. David Conn is one of my favourite football writers, and somebody I would be happy to pay to read his articles.

I also enjoy reading Gabriele Marcotti’s pieces and while I’ll make a point of reading them, I probably don’t like them enough to pay for them.

Let’s imagine, hypothetically, the Guardian put a paywall around Conn’s work. I’d happily pay for it as, I suspect, would other fans of Conn’s work. But his potential audience would be diminished.

Now, Conn is one of the few writers who consistently picks up on issues not covered elsewhere. His are articles that deserve the widest possible audience because of the content he covers and the financial implications for football.

But if you put Conn behind a paywall, these important stories reach a much smaller audience. Important issues that get casual readers thinking may be missed. He will, if you like, be preaching mostly to the converted.

But on the other hand the money generated from the paywall will most likely easily pay for Conn to carry on his excellent work, leaving the consumers (or Conn-sumers, if you like) satisfied.

Meanwhile, Marcotti is unaffected as he remains free to everybody, and may well pick up extra readers as a result of Conn and his colleagues vanishing behind a paywall.

Now reverse that. Conn is free and available to read for all, but Gabriele Marcotti’s articles go behind a paywall.

Marcotti is an excellent writer and provides quality analysis on the Premier League, a topic all too readily filled with hyperbolic dross that panders to the masses.

But by restricting access to his articles, it encourages readers to look elsewhere. For while there are plenty of people who write about the Premier League, both in other papers and on blogs, there are very few who cover the topics Conn does, with his investigative journalism.

So Marcotti will attract his devotees and subscribers but those, like me, who enjoy his work but want to save money, will look elsewhere. There are more likely to be other insightful Premier League writers than investigative football journalists available.

Marcotti, again, may manage to pay for himself through the paywall, but, again, we lose insightful analysis. As with the loss of Conn behind a paywall, it is readers who lose out, unless they want to pay. But he may well pick up less subscribers.

But then, in this hypothetical world, if Conn’s employers can’t fund all his work, that could also lead to a drop in quality or number of articles from Conn. But those that are written will reach the maximum possible audience.

It’s a really tough argument with many pros and cons here. Do you want to ensure your favourite writer can afford to keep writing? But what about the lac of impact a genuinely hard-hitting piece could have.

Certainly, with football content, I’ll be surprised if paywalls will ever be the answer, given how much coverage is out there. I’d happily pay for David Conn or Tim Vickery’s work, but I wouldn’t miss the Sun or even the Times’ coverage (although may pay for an occasional piece by Marcotti if recommended to me).

And therein is the crux. Conn and Vickery are popular writers on niche content. There are very few other journalists who cover the financial implications of football or South American football as well as these two.

They are more likely to succeed behind a paywall because there are very few other places you can go for similar writing. But this is a great loss to those who are yet to discover and enjoy the writings of Conn or Vickery.

Meanwhile Gabriele Marcotti, while one of the best writers around (in my view), writes on standard topics that generate thousands of column inches and opinion pieces. He would initially be missed, but there is more likely to be somebody out there who can fill the void.

Tough, isn’t it. I’d rather not have them.

written by Gary \\ tags: David Conn, football journalism, Gabriele Marcotti, paywalls, Tim Vickery

Earlier today, on an Exeter City mailing list I subscribe to (yes, such things exist), Mike Blackstone posed the following question:

“What if the only players who were allowed to play in the Premier and Football  League were to be born in England, Scotland, Wales, Northern ireland  and the Republic of ireland? Would this not make the respective  international teams stronger (eventually) as more home grown players
came through the ranks?”

I started replying, the realised it was turning into an epic consideration of all things foreign, football politics, and quite possibly ill-thought through economics of the sport. So, what the hell, I’ll post it on here.

Normally this would go over onto Soccerlens, but it’s very much a work in progress and I’d be interested for other people to throw their own views in here, as I’ve undoubtedly missed a few things or there’s a stunningly good argument to demolish one, or all, of the points. It might get shaped into some kind of article in coming weeks. Possibly.

Here, in all its unrefined glory (or lack of) is my answer to Mike’s question:

***

To go back to Mike’s original question, I think it would make more players available for the teams, but may not necessarily make it stronger. Ok, so there may be more players to chose from, but that won’t help if all the players are of a lower standard than the foreign players they replace. It will weaken the league and, in the long run, damage the international teams, no matter how good the short-term measure would be.

Blaming the foreign influx is an easy way to see a solution to the perceived problem, but there are wider underlying issues here that aren’t the fault of foreign players.

1. First of all, foreign players have benefitted the league. Having world class players like Henry, Cantona, Zola, Bergkamp, etc compete in England has made the league more attractive to advertisers and sponsorship and has resulted in more money flowing in. That clubs lower down have not benefitted from this cash is due to the Premier League and the FA, not foreigners.

2. Players such as Henry et al have provided inspiration for youngsters today to take up the game, and have given our game something different. Previously a player such as, say, Matthew Le Tissier, wasn’t fancied at international level despite being one of the nearest things we had to a continetal playmaker like Totti or Cantona. Now there’s much more of an appreciation of the different types of skills and players and such role models can only be good for the British game. Look at the likes of Aaron Ramsey – he could be that type of player in a few years time. Fifteen years ago, he’d have probably been discarded in favour of a workhorse who would put in energy and muscle but not as much skill.

3. The failure to bring through a generation of younger players is, again, down to the FA and the Premier League. By abandoning the idea of a national centre at Burton, there was no focal point and incentive for PL clubs to invest in their own homegrown talent – indeed, PL clubs weren’t overly fond of the FA taking off their brightest young talents on a regular basis. Owen, Joe Cole and others went through the old FA schools. Reviving Burton will give us a better chance at training and indentifying promising youngsters.

As an aside, the whole system of training our children is probably flawed. The emphasis is on putting them into a position as early as possible, stick to it, and win at all costs from a very early age. Other countries encourage children to play on all positions in non-competitive games in their pre-teen years. That way youngsters can enjoy the game without the pressure of having to win, and develop an apprecation of what their colleagues on the pitch can do, as well as enhancing skills they would not have got had they simply played as a striker week in week out.

4. The strength of our economy over recent years has played a part. Foreign players have an incentive to move here because they will often earn more than in their home countires due to the strength of the pound. Their wage demand and cost would be less than British players, so clubs would go for the cheap option. Although, there’s also a part of this whereby clubs have thought with short-term goals, seen the success of Cantona, Zola and Henry (and some of the players to progress through Arsenal’s ranks) and have tried to do the same, albeit on a cut-price level in line with their budgets. They were cheaper than British players to bring through.

5. By the same token, British players, for whatever reason, have been reluctant to move abroad. Part of this is to do with the inflated wealth whereby they can get more for bench-warming in the Premiership than playing football abroad in a country where the currency is weaker. Also, there’s a slightly suspicious attitude of Brits playing abroad, probably scarred by past experiences. Owen Hargreaves was widely assumed to be no good for a long period of time, despite a successful career at one of Germany’s biggest clubs. This also gave him a slightly different footballing education and exposure to a different style of play. Who is to say that, for example, Justin Hoyte, wouldn’t have been better served by going to Hamburg or PSV rather than Middlesbrough? As has been pointed out, we have a large flow of foreigners coming into this league, but very few going in the opposite direction. A more even import-export ratio of players would benefit British teams.

6. In the midst of all this, you have bad decision making, both from the clubs individually and the governing bodies. No matter how many rules and regulations you put in place, you can’t legislate for businesses making mistakes by buying bad players or overspending so they can only afford cheap foreign imports, and nor should you. Plus, nothing can ever account for Steve McClaren.

7.  Supporters too have their part to play in the current state of affairs. By wanting success instantaneously, they’re less willing to see a club spend time on developing and blooding younger players. Take Theo Walcott – wonder boy at 17, written-off at 18 when he hardly played, now seen as a key player to Arsenal and a huge blow when injured. Less single-minded managers than Wenger may not have given Walcott the time and patience he needed to develop. A medium-name foreign signing comes with little baggage and may temporarily appease fans, regardless of his ability.

8. As with most markets, this process is circular. Cycles come and go, and we may well see with the credit crunch, a return to home-grown players. With the pound a lot weaker in recent years, foreign players may find they’re better served with their careers abroad. Some British players may also decide abroad is the best option. Similarly, clubs that have kept faith in their youth acaemdies, such as Exeter and the likes of Villa in the Premiership, are now starting to reap the benefits with their long-term attitude. In this credit crunch era, with less cash available, many clubs may well start to look at those teams that are successfully bringing through young players and see it as the solution to cutting costs (and external pressures, such as the constant debates on foreigners, may convince clubs its politik to have more home-grown players).

Conclusion: Football is a business, like any other (but also one that does spend a lot of time operating outside the parameters of what most reasonable businesses do) and has now moved into a much more globalised world. This has benefitted the quality of football, globally, as a whole and the Premier League as a market leader in this product. Much of the problems with foreign players can be explained by markets – having restrictions on the market in the form of home-grown only players (short-term protectionism) won’t work in the long-term, no matter how attractive a solution it may seem now.

We’re moving onto another cycle of the market in footballers and this should even out over the next 12 months. English football currently appears to have the best available man for the job in the post who brings a different sensibility to the game and, you suspect, wouldn’t dismiss players from his plans if, say, they moved abroad.

I’m actually pretty optimistic about the long-term future of English future in this current climate. And, yes, looking at the current crop of Welsh players emerging, I’m actually quite optimistic about our chances for Euro 2012 as well.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Arsenal, foreign players, markets and football, The Premiership, youth football

Tim Worstall branded an online extremist and a threat to democratic debate after an argument about economics with Richard Murphy (that I won’t even begin to pretend to understand) gets a bit heated, and one person on Tim’s blog calls Richard some rather rude names.

Gawd alone knows there’s enough political bloggers who could be accused of being a bit suspect with the idea of a democratic debate and particularly nasty when it comes to (somewhat pointless) online spats, but Tim would probably be bottom of that list.

In the earlier days of blogging Tim was one of those people who did as much as anybody to try and bring the community together, largely through the Britblog Roundup, but also via various other initiatives. A lot of the stuff was a bit ahead of its time and would probably fall under the social media banner now – and he’s not even a PR, marketing or tech guy.

He’s also one of the very few (reasonably) high-profile bloggers I can think of who has earned himself regular writing gigs for most of the mainstream press at one point or another, and has kept the gigs going for a number of years. He’s also very quick to pounce on any kind of assault on civil liberties.

His politics may not be anywhere in line with my own but there’s no doubt the internet – and blogging in particular – would be a slightly poorer place if it weren’t for Tim.

The most bizarre bit of all is Richard stating that Comment Is Free (which both of them write for) is the best place to fight a war against online extremism. The abuse on CiF may be moderated, but it’s often far more vicious than anything Tim’s regulars post in his comments.

Fine, by all means try and sort out flaming (and other people have tried and failed) but at least start in the right area.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: Britblog roundup, Richard Murphy, Tim Worstall

Sometimes I fear I give the Express and Echo – the newspaper for my home city of Exeter – somewhat of a rough ride. Given I know the area better than most papers, their site is one I tend to visit on a more regular basis than others, hence my worry that any criticisms are probably no more than nitpicking on my part.

And then I get days like today, where the criticism is checked least it becomes too cutting.

Why? Like many others, I’ve been somewhat glued to the ongoing news around the economic crisis, and yesterday came the news that local authorities across the country had significant sums of money tied up in the Icelandic banking system. Devon’s council’s, at first, didn’t appear among them.

I was out last night, so didn’t get time to check again until this morning when the first place I read about it was on Exeter City matchday programme editor Mike Blackstone’s football blog (yes, I check my football feeds before anything else. Force of habit).

Seeing Exeter City Council’s name on the list made me search for more. Naturally, the first place I headed was the Echo’s site, only to forget they don’t post their full articles online immediately, so instead I found this:

COUNCIL leaders are battling to recover millions of pounds invested in Iceland’s troubled banks.

But they are attempting to ease fears public services could be affected, claiming there is “no short-term risk” despite the crisis.

The reassurance comes amid the news South West councils have hefty cash deposits in several financial institutions, including high street banks.

Despite initial reports that Devon’s councils did not have investments in collapsed Icelandic banks, it has now emerged that Exeter City Council has £5m invested, including £3m with Landsbanki and a £2m on deposit with Glitnir.

For the full story see Friday’s paper.

Which told me absolutely nothing whatsoever that I didn’t already know. 

Incidentally, in between starting this blog post ten minutes ago (11.10pm) and now, the full text has become available. A bit too late, really as I’d already found what I needed to know elsewhere.

A quick Google News search found much better articles on the Exmouth Herald’s site (which is a much smaller paper) and the sister site of Devon-wide paper, the Western Morning News. The latter was understandably Devon-centric but also told me, for the first time, that Mid Devon District Council – which covers where my family live – also had a lesser sum of money tied up in an Icelandic bank.

Had the full Echo article been online at that point in time, I wouldn’t have needed to go elsewhere to find this out. Nor try and fill in the Exeter-specific gaps that I simply couldn’t find anywhere else.

A cursory search of del.icio.us and Digg didn’t turn up anything, not was there anything more specific on the blog searches. None of these were a massive surprise (although possibly says something about social media, or lack of takeup, and Devon). Had I had time, I’d have searched WordPress tags.

As it is, I sent off a couple of emails to friends I was fairly sure would be in the know, and got most of the information through that. I did briefly consider ringing up the press office at the council to find out more, and then blog it [1] (which raises another interesting point about blogs and citizen journalism, but I’ll leave that for another time).

[In case you're asking why I'm so interested, it's because this used to be my reporting patch and was home for around 21 years, so I tend to take a strong interest, even if I don't live there any more].

So, you may say, what does this matter. In some respects, it doesn’t. I’m just one person writing on a probably not very widely read blog about something that irks me. Hell, it’s not as if there aren’t enough of *those* around.

But, on the other hand, it’s still a potential eyeball that they’re losing elsewhere. As soon as I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I wet elsewhere. Now they’ve actually stuck the article up, I clicked around the site without ever really thinking.

And, what really gets to me, is they have the news, but I have to spend a bit longer searching elsewhere to find it. As a result, I’ve now pulled together several Devon-related news feeds from assorted sources meaning I don’t have to go back to the site unless there’s something of burning interest.

I’m pretty sure I can’t be the only person with ties to Exeter who checks all their news online each morning rather than in the paper, and has a decent set of RSS news feeds relevant to their interests.

The world’s a global place. People have moved around. Yet I suspect I’m also not alone in being a person who keeps tabs on the news ‘back home’ even though I no longer live there. To be unable to access this news on the basis that you don’t live within the paper’s sales area is crazy. We’re global citizens, but we’d still like hyperlocal news for areas we’re connected to m’kaaay?

[Again, another question here - in this current economic climate would it be worth the site offering the paper online on a subscription basis? I'll leave that one dangling.]

This isn’t the first time I’ve had a little moan about this particular pet peeve, and it probably won’t be the last.

It’s a shame because, as I often point out, there’s a lot I like and respect about the Echo – both in the paper and on the website.

I can get Exeter City news elsewhere (and did a long time before I moved). Big national stories of interest occurring in Exeter I can also get elsewhere (although recognise the nationals probably will have a more general overview than the excellent local reporting you often get in these situations).

But this is the first time there’s been a specific local story I’ve been keen to read. I suspect that it won’t be too long before I can get most information on any further local stories I want to find out more about without having to wait until 11pm to read the full article.

A quick plea to finish: please, please, please, any local papers who partake in this habit – open your articles up. It really will help your brand and paper in the long run.

[1] Technically, although I work full-time in a non-journalism job, I can classify myself as freelance, even if it’s football and media writing and not reporting.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: credit crunch, economic crisis, Exeter City Council, Express and Echo, hyperlocal news, Iceland, Icelandic banks, local news

Hands up who remembers the dotcom bubble burst of the late 90s? Recently, I’ve sometimes mused to myself on the possibility of it happening about but with social media. Every day, there’s a new social media app, often with a ridiculous name, to be discovered. And at least half of them I haven’t got a clue what to do with.

So it’s with a small degree of relief on my part to read Livingston Communications muse on a similar topic and conclude social media isn’t about to burst, but scale back a tad, probably shaking out some of the worse/more unsustainable sites.

It’s an excellent post, especially the first point:

“1) Too many communicators have the shiny object syndrome, yet don’t have domain expertise. That means we’re seeing a lot of bad social media this year. In turn, you can expect corresponding failures and a reaction against social media.”

One of the saving graces for social media, though, is many of the sites and applications seem to be born out of an idea of how to make something better or improve communication – something that will work for the group rather than immediately designed to make money. Take crowdstatus, a neat little site still in alpha – it was born out of the creator’s desire to make communication easier and it’s easy to see the potential uses. The note on the about page, to me, sums up this attitude nicely:

“This is a personal project for the moment so don’t ask me about business models :p”

Social media at the moment feels like its reached a tipping point of sorts. The secondary and tiertary adopters are now using these sites a lot more while some obvious cases, like Facebook, have gone beyond any expectations.

To some extent these new users will follow the early adopters, but they’re also likely to be more discerning. They’ve not drunk the initial kool-aid and will be asking questions such as “How can this help me in a personal/professional manner?”

I’ve started training, in the loosest sense, colleagues on how to get the best out of social media and, along the way, they’ve fired some difficult, direct questions at me. Sometimes it’s easy to show the value of a site like Twitter to PR, or netvibes to your personal way of working.

But with many of the other sites it’s somehow difficult to justify exactly why it’s worth spending time getting to grips with it and often it’s just a case of play and see if it suits you.

And this is where the shakedown comes. If you’ve got an overcrowded marketplace, there will undoubtedly be some casualties and financiers tighten their belts and new users ask why they should be using two or three similar applications.

Take Plurk, which I like but don’t use often, against Twitter, which is unreliable but has embedded itself in my life. It’s hard to tell if it’ll become Facebook to Twitter’s MySpace or Betamax to Twitter’s VHS. The most common question I’ve had in the past few weeks is ‘why should I use site x over site y?’ And there’s no good answer. At that point, I drop my geeky semi-early-adopter mentality and start thinking about if site x or site y is more useful to me in a work setting. And I’ll confess sometimes I get overloaded with the amount of new sites that pass by my eyes and wonder how or why the hell I should keep them all going.

Blogging is now embedded in online culture. Sites like Facebook have become part of our everyday lives, regardless of how much you use it. Twitter’s becoming a great source of not just conversation but also breaking news and news gathering.

I’m not quite sure what the final point is, other than that social media is here to stay but will eventually fall back into line with the basic laws of economics and the markets. And, at that point, as Livingston Comms say, “a more measured, intelligent debate will take place.” It’s a debate I’m looking forward to, even if the enthusiasm for social communication tools is fun at the moment.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: blogging, dotcom crash, Livingston Communications, Plurk, social media, Twitter, Web 2.0

Independent columnist Johann Hari talks a lot of sense when he speaks out about low pay in the industry, although I don’t think you need rich parents – just well off ones. Even so, it can’t be good that the majority of new entrants into journalism come from financially comfortable middle-class backgrounds.

On one hand, there is increasing professionalisation of the industry. Although I’ve met some journalists who look down on postgraduate NJTC and BJTC accredited courses, most new entrants are increasingly going down that route, either to find their first job or to make themselves more employable.

As a graduate of one of these courses, I learnt a hell of a lot that will stay with me no matter what media job I find myself working in. And unless you’ve already got yourself nicely set up with a journalism job, I’d recommend them to anybody serious about getting into the industry, especially the courses at Cardiff and City (and Falmouth for broadcasting as well).

However, at around five to six grand, these courses don’t come cheap, and a career development loan is often the only option to fund yourself through it. Chances are you’ll have done a degree beforehand as well, which comes with several more thousand in the way of debts.

Both postgrads and non-postgrads are then faced with low starting salaries, especially if they head regionally (which is usual – there aren’t that many jobs with the nationals for a newly-qualified journo). I know one who started on £11k, while £13-£15k was the common starting salary for a high-trained skilled professional. Pay rises were infrequent.

Even if you skip the postgraduate phase, most media jobs require you to do a lot of unpaid work experience before they’ll take you on. Again, living costs over this period mount up. You can rarely walk straight into journalism without plenty of work experience and/or training but it’s difficult to balance the finances without income.

And, as Hari notes, there are a lot of would-be or junior-level journalists who simply give up because its not worth it financially. At some point you’ve got to become decide if journalism is going to pay the bills.

There’s a few other aspects to factor in though. Journalism’s one of those jobs that has been a surge in popularity and, as is inevitable, there’s more would-be journalists than there are entry-level jobs so wages can remain low. For every trainee who passes on a low-paid position because of the salary, there’ll be another three who’ll bite the editor’s hand off for a job.

[Of course some of this can be traced back to the government's ridiculously arbitrary target of 50% of school levers to university, which has hideously depressed wages in the graduate job market and reduced the quality of graduates on offer, especially in the general area of media But that's another complaint for another blog post.]

There is hope. The web provides an alternative way in, not necessarily through the concept of citizen journalists (which is a bit of a loose definition) but through blogging and fan sites and all sorts of similar online ventures.

For example: when I was about 8 or 9 I used to try and create my own newspaper using glue, folded over sheets of paper and crayons (I was a bit of a odd child in many respects, this being just one of them). Sadly there was only ever one copy produced, as I hadn’t got access to a printing press, and the only computer was one of those old BBC machines with huge disc drives. Even sadder, nobody picked up on my front page scoop of “Fence being built in Gran’s back garden”.

But nowadays there’s nothing to stop an equally odd kid setting up his own community newsletter online, sent out via email. He won’t have to use crayons to illustrate a picture of his Gran’s new fence – he can upload a picture via mobile phone, or if he’s got access to some kit with video capabilities, a quick video report.

Now fast forward to the end of school. The old Press Gang idea will have changed somewhat. With wi-fi, Twitter, social media sites, and a whole host of Web 2.0 tools they’ll be able to beak scoops at any time of the day on their websites and blogs, and won’t have to worry about getting the whole thing printed and past the school authorities (naturally, it’ll be available for download though).

Now if a teenager approached me with that on his CV already, I’d be pretty impressed. Here’s somebody who wants to be a reporter, and knows and understands the web, and has potential. Ok, so they’d still have a lot to learn, and the unpaid work experience would naturally come into the equation, but it’s still a hypothetical example of how you don’t need to have money to enter journalism.

But back into the here and now, low pay is a huge issue for many of my ex-coursemates or friends from student journalism days. I can immediately think of around a dozen who’ve voiced ideas about leaving the industry because they’re demoralised and simply can’t afford to stick with it as a career, while others are freelancing every hour God sends outside of their job to get extra cash. And yes, a lot of them are talented and could make it to the very top, if they could afford it.

That’s not to say its all gloom and doom. I know just as many who love what they do, and wouldn’t dream of quitting, even if they’re not exactly flushed with cash, while there’s several others who’ve landed plum well-paid positions on regionals and nationals either on their first job or through sheer hard graft. But that has often involved a hand-to-mouth existence for the first couple of years in the latter case.

But Hari’s wrong about one thing – they don’t necessarily move to less-rewarding industries. Although I get twinges of nostalgia, and keep up writing and journalism when I can, I don’t regret moving on from my reporting job into PR for one moment – it’s a job with difference challenges but one that is no less enjoyable.

written by Gary Andrews \\ tags: first jobs, Johann Hari, journalism, journalism jobs, low pay