Breaking into journalism
- 15 Apr 08, 09:15 AM
Just back from Italy after being a guest of the . I'd been asked to take part in a session about the difficulties of breaking into journalism as a young reporter. The logic here being that , 1Xtra News and our new strand Revealed on أغر؟´«أ½2 as part of the teenage offering Switch, means that we employ many young journalists.
I feel the pain. It's never been easy getting into broadcast journalism - now it's even harder with a plethora of postgraduate courses and applicants with ever higher academic qualifications.
But how can journalism reflect society if our journalists have similar backgrounds and a similar view of life? It's a problem across our industry and certainly over the years أغر؟´«أ½ News has been guilty, in my view, of recruiting almost exclusively from a similar well educated, middle class background. Let me be clear: there's nothing wrong with being middle class or well educated - it's just that not everyone should be like that. It's not instead of - it's as well as.
In Italy, the picture looks similar. The wannabes I spoke to were from professional and managerial families - because, I guess, like in Britain, you have to be able to afford that pricy postgrad. I also observed a very academic approach to this business from the professors charged with passing on their wisdom. I've always believed this isn't an academic business: it's intensely practical and focused on what your audience - readers, viewers, listeners -want to know about or might be interested in - that is, if we took the trouble to explain it properly.
My current and previous trainees are working class in background - our current trainee told me she'd never have considered the أغر؟´«أ½ a couple of years ago because it seemed so lofty and remote as a potential employer and "they wouldn't look at me as I'm working class and Indian".
Thanks to people like Claire Prosser and Paul Deal, who set up the Journalism Trainee Scheme here, things are changing in أغر؟´«أ½ News training. Paul left school at 17 to work in local newspapers after being brought up in London's docklands, worked for many years in the أغر؟´«أ½ Newsroom and he freely admits he wouldn't have got into the trade today.
The scheme's director Claire Prosser believes the "who you know" principle still holds far too much sway in the أغر؟´«أ½ even now, and her aim is to recruit people from "different backgrounds and communities who we don't serve well at the moment". Her point is that أغر؟´«أ½ News has made some good strides on racial diversity - but much smaller steps in social diversity. People from different backgrounds bring different ideas, life experiences and perspectives to the media.
The Journalism Trainee Scheme has hired 21 young journalists on a 6 month apprenticeship. We train them and then help them with their job hunt at the end of it all. We don't set ANY minimum educational qualifications, and several have remarked that they simply couldn't have got this far through the established journalism postgrad system...in other words they'd have been lost to the trade. Their talents are obvious: intelligence, good storytelling ability, a knack of finding out news, persistence and a real connection with and understanding of wider audiences. We're not alone in developing this type of recruitment and is doing good work with .
As I watched a well known American journalism school attempting to recruit students in Italy this weekend - I was struck by a very different language and approach from them. Words like "semester", "thesis", MA, PhD and "dual degree" left me thinking their emphasis is flawed. A recent discussion with "an alumna" (her words) from this very university interested me: she appeared to be more concerned with proving to potential employers that she was in possession of a planetary sized brain than any real understanding of journalism - far less an editorial empathy with the people who are most important: those who pay our wages...our readers, viewers and listeners.
