‘Hold the front page, I haven’t got a clue’
Thanks to friend and multimedia colleague Adam Westbrook to this response to a thoroughly annoying article in this weekend’s Sunday Times by Ed Caesar, which says that new journalism graduates might as well give up if they don’t have ‘luck, flair, an alternative source of income, endless patience, an optimistic disposition, sharp elbows and a place to stay in London.’
“Caeser gets one thing right: he realises journalism is changing, ” writes Westbrook.
“The advice he has sought, however, is for an era in the industry heading towards the grave.”
I suppose that the good news is that if new journalism graduates are as unimaginative as Caesar, those of us who have been around the block a few times don’t have much competition to worry about.
Category: editorial, journalism, media
Journalism is starting to look like the legal profession. You have incredibly competitive law firm jobs that involve insane hours for ok money. Then you have independent solo practitioners only some of whom are extremely entrepreneurial and therefore successful, but considered bad by for the profession (ambulance chasers). Substitute law firms for national papers and solo practitioners for freelance journalists and the dynamics are very similar.
It’s the same old story of supply and demand. Too many of a given professional results in cut-throat competition for jobs and similar competition but lower barriers to entry for the indy practitioner. Regardless, I think Ed Caeser makes good points viz the competition for jobs. He doesn’t really address the issue of entrepreneurial freelancers. That may be because he doesn’t know that emerging side of the business.
[...] over-eagerly in agreement as I heard what to me sounded like a rallying cry, especially to those doomsayers in the journalism industry who keep telling us that the end is [...]