NOW JUST 3% OF JUNIOR JOURNALISTS HAVE WORKING CLASS PARENTS
The majority of young people entering journalism today are from middle class ‘professional’ families, in what is becoming an increasingly socially exclusive career, a new survey has found.
According to the ‘Journalists at Work 2012’ study by the journalism body NCTJ, 65% of those who manage to break into the industry have a parent who is a professional, a manager or a director. (That’s nearly two thirds.) Just 3 percent of new journalists come from a family of ‘unskilled’ workers.
The findings are unlikely to surprise readers of Graduate Fog, many of whom are battling to enter journalism but finding they are required to do endless unpaid (or very low paid) internships before they will even be considered for paid jobs – even ‘cover’ or shift work. Not only are those who take these unpaid internships exploited – those who can’t afford to do them are excluded.
As a result social class is having a huge impact on the social background of people successfully breaking into journalism. Unpaid internships are common and the majority of new journalists say unpaid internships are a prerequisite if you want to break into this competitive industry. Four in five (83%) of young journalists said they had to do some work experience before getting their first job and, of those, a whopping 92% were unpaid for their work experience. The average placement lasted seven weeks, but many were far longer.
The industry’s endemic use of junior, unpaid staff has inevitably led to a situation where new journalists need family support to fund their careers. So it’s not shocking that many have parents who can afford to help, and those that don’t find they simply can’t compete. Journalism would benefit from a more diverse workforce. A newsroom needs people from all parts of society to thrive and produce balanced, inquisitive editorial. Unfortunately for many young people, it seems journalism is no longer a feasible career choice. For a career once considered a trade where anyone willing to work hard could work their way up the ladder, it is becoming more dependant on your parent’s social standing and wealth.
Want to read the full report? Click here: http://www.nctj.com/about-us/research
*ARE YOU BATTLING TO BREAK IN TO JOURNALISM?
How are you getting on? Have you been able to take unpaid internships – and have these led to a paid job? If you haven’t been able to work unpaid, what options have you been left with? Do you agree that it’s important that journalists come from a diverse range of social backgrounds? What are the wider dangers to society if it is true that you now have to be ‘posh’ to even stand a chance of becoming a journalists?
It isn’t just internships but the cost of study. After your undergraduate degree (now £9k pa) an expensive Masters at City University on their prestigious journalism course doesn’t come cheap either. A friend’s Dad is a journalist for the Daily Mirror and says it is a dying industry anyway due to the internet. Doesn’t seem to stop some from trying though…
Wow – this post was recently retweeted by the author and Times columnist Caitlin Moran. Thanks Caitlin!
If that’s how you found us, welcome to Graduate Fog! And we’d love you to comment below – especially if you’re struggling to break into journalism at the moment. Or perhaps you’re an established journalist, concerned about what’s happening. How have you seen the social landscape of your industry change in the last 10 years – and what do you put that down to?
Thanks!
Tanya
(founder of Graduate Fog)
I’ve been a journalist since the early 90s and also did a journalism degree. And yes, I did work experience after graduating.
The point was largely to create the illusion of useful experience on my CV so I made sure I did two week stints at well known magazines, the BBC, etc, just to get some good names on there.
There was little point doing more than a couple of weeks as I pretty much knew that there wasn’t going to be a job at the end of it at each place. It’s not as if Steve Lamacq was going to be so impress by how well I sorted out the CD cabinet that he would ask me to co-host is it? I just needed IPC, BBC, SKY etc on my CV.
I got into a lot of credit card debt doing this and it took me years to pay that off, but I’m pretty sure it helped. If nothing else, it should you want this bad enough to rough it on mates’ sofas in the city and live as cheap as you can.
Now, as a deputy editor at a magazine, we get people in doing work experience and I get to see it from the other side. The sad truth of the industry is, we’re understaffed but more staff costs money so we’re told to take on interns who’ll work for free. Then they spend their days transcribing interviews or returning things from shoots – helpful to us but not exactly useful to them, other than getting the name of an international mag on their CV.
Here’s my advice…
– If you want to do work experience do it for a couple of weeks, just long enough so you can put that title on your CV. You almost certainly won’t get much more out of it from staying for months other than debt. You’re almost certainly being hired as free labour, and not because journalists want to tutor you (we’re too busy) or because we plan to surprise you with a job and corner office at the end of six months. Some get a full time job I’m sure, but I’ve never seen it happen.
– If you want work experience, then experience working. Magazines/newspapers need filling so pitch ideas as a freelancer. We’re understaffed and rely on freelancers more than ever. This way you’re really helping us and you get paid. Eventually. 21-year olds are more in touch with many things happening in the world than experienced old hacks and publications always want to know what’s new, what’s changing, and it’s “the kids” (Oh God, sorry) that are usually in the know first.
I have something like 3-4 months of work experience in journalism – I have never been paid for my time or even for my expenses.
I want to get into investigative journalism. I’m nearing the end of a 3 month unpaid internship where I worked a 60 hour week, every week. I’ve learnt an unbelievable amount and really enjoyed it but that doesn’t mean I’ll get a job, it just means I’m better at doing certain things. I’m sure it must help to have parents who can help you, but it’s not limited to those who do – jobseekers allowance, couch surfing and learning to cook cheaply were what got me through. The culture of working for free is shit but then so many things are at the moment. I don’t agree that having to be ‘posh’ to get into journalism is a) true or b) new. I think, as with anything, that if you want something enough you can work harder than you think with a lot less money!
Based on what Matt’s saying sounds like most people’s best bet is likely starting a blog, getting their name out there and submitting free (and maybe one day paid) articles on the side whilst having a day job to pay rent etc. And getting a job as a paid, on-staff journalist is a bit like becoming a rockstar.
I keep trying to explain to my parents and grandparents (I think in my Grandad’s day a literate school-leaver could work on a local paper – didn’t Terry Pratchett?) that journalism is unlikely to ever provide most hopefuls with an income they can live off (and this was true in the 90s long before the most revolutionary change in the transmission of the written word since Gutenberg), but they don’t seem to always get it and think I’m being defeatist.
This story doesn’t add up. “Working class” has many definitions but nobody considers it synonymous with “unskilled”. 57% of people in UK consider themselves working class; only a minority of them will be unskilled workers. Are miners middle-class? The government categorises 31% of the population as working class. You categorise 65% of journalists’ parents as professional/middle-class. Unless aristocrats are seriously over-represented, there doesn’t seem to be much of a discrepancy between the remainder and the population at large. I’ve taught journalism to almost exclusively working class cohorts of students; there are more opportunities than ever to get in on the basis of what you know, not who. While the affluent certainly have an unfair advantage in today’s free-intern culture and that needs to be addressed, I suspect your headline is an example of bad journalism. (Source: BBC, 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6295743.stm)
These are worrying statistics. The Journalism Diversity Fund was set up by the industry in 2005 to address this problem but clearly there’s still a lot of work to be done. Newspapers and broadcasters need to reflect the communities they serve.
When you look at the report, Table 3.4 show the equivalent figure for professional, a manager or a director parents 10 years ago was actually higher: 68%.
And the figure for your definition of working class was exactly the same: 3%.
It’s still a vastly skewed situation, but to say it’s an “increasingly socially exclusive career” on the basis of the figures you yourself select is quite wrong. You could have sliced the figures a different way if you wanted to make that point, maybe … (big drop in “Associate professional and technical” parents since 2002, for instance). Also, you really need to be able to say whether this matches changes in social mobility in other professions, or is something particular to journalism. I don’t think the NCTJ report gives you this.
@Adam Banks “Unless aristocrats are seriously over-represented, there doesn’t seem to be much of a discrepancy between the remainder and the population at large.” — have a look at the table. It’s 29% for the top two groups in the population at large – far less than it is for journalists.
Is journalism a dying industry? Possibly, but I would question that. Yes the internet is very competitive, but a lot of people still prefer to read papers in front of the TV on Sunday afternoons and I personally still prefer to read articles in paper magazines rather than online – unless, that is, I am doing research while writing my own articles and need to consult academic/industry reports on PDF etc or cite articles in my own work. As for the middle class nature of journalism, I consider myself to be lower middle class, so I think it should be more accurately defined as upper middle class – i.e. with a wealthy family and privileged background and education and so on, and yes I would agree that things are increasingly being privileged in favour of the upper middle class, and not just with regards to journalism.
In that sense, I am glad the internet is here as an alternative route. In a way its a kind of opportunity for some payback on the part of folks like me who are pretty disgusted at the privileged bias going on in society. If the media is going to insist on becoming an unrepresentative, exclusive club for the wealthy, then perhaps it should die, although I don’t seriously think that will be the case.
Things are increasingly in favour of internet-based journalism, so if you want to become a journalist with good prospects for the future, learn to market yourself and develop your own internet-based business. It’s not terribly well paid, depending on how hard you work of course, but it’s surely better than being an unpaid intern.
I think it’s important to consider the role of postgraduate training in limiting access to the profession. Masters degrees at a very small number of institutions are seen as the best route into journalism (especially for national outlets in TV and the press). They are competitive to get into academically – nothing wrong with that – but also expensive. Postgraduate funding is very difficult to come by, which means those who have the family means to support them through a year with little income and a large tuition fee to pay are much better placed for entering the profession than those with very modest financial means.
It’s interesting how technical (software, finance, engineering) industries are way more meritocratic than the likes of jouranlism, PR and fashion.
…I wonder why…
I couldn’t do afford to do unpaid internships or a masters. I suppose it was a lot of creative thinking and risk taking and yes, the odd period on the dole, that added up to me being qualified for an actual job in journalism. I was speaking to another young journalist about this recently (also no nctj/masters) and we both agreed we took massive risks to get where we are and made decisions we wouldn’t recommend to others if they were in a similar position now. By risks I don’t mean doing unethical things, or even rooting out stories no-one else had. It was about resilience and tenacity, looking for the less obvious opportunities and exploiting them so that when we FINALLY got interviews, editors had no doubt about our r dedication. There is no formula, you just need to do things other people haven’t, and maybe haven’t even thought of.
I may not have been as lucky as some, but I’m still luckier than many. I believe the media would massively benefit from a more diverse intake, and I think it will be a long, hard struggle to get there. The voices we need may feel unwanted or underqualified, or may not even see any point in attempting to enter a career space with little economic benefit to themselves and their families. It’s a struggle, but I’m a fighter and believe it’s worth struggling for!
only just discovered this article, but reading through the comments the advice on freelancing as a way into full-time work is rubbish to put it frankly. Editors have traditionally not seen freelancers as possible full-time staffers. Editors prefer keeping good freelancing staff on their books as they know they can get decent copy in at minimal cost, especially when full-time staff might only comprise say an editor and his/her assistant plus advertising and production staff. And few make a good living out of freelancing. I’d agree that internships probably are useful and, unfortunately, the way it’s gone, but you need to work for decent companies for it to matter on your CV.
As someone who freelanced considerably during the beginning of my career in journalism, which I no longer work in, it did nothing other than getting my name in print at the time and getting more freelance work, but it was an utter waste of time other than if I had wanted to freelance as a permanent career, which financially wasn’t viable.
Pursuing journalism as a career is becoming increasingly more difficult, even when it was already fiercely competitive. It’s a dying industry and it’s now PR and marketing (which do encompass writing roles) that are the “in” thing. Social media, blogs, internal/external communications, press releases/articles to sell things and promote products – they are seen as more important these days.
Unless you are determined to work on a regional newspaper for a pittance or have aspirations of working for a national (which loads of people will want to do anyway so there will be VERY high competition and that’s probably why these statistics make sense), if I was advising a youngster to break into writing, right now I’d say dump the NCTJ course (or journalism degree) and go for something that is in demand employment wise, like marketing.
I would agree with Steve in the sense that freelancing is not a way into full time work, but it is an alternative to it, albeit not a particularly well paid one. One could argue that so is unemployment in that sense, but at least freelancing does have the advantage that you are getting paid for what you do (depending on which clients you choose to work for of course), as opposed to unpaid internships, on the one hand, while on the other you can at least control your own career choice to a certain extent, rather than being bullied by inflexible and over-stressed job centre staff.
I think it is perfectly possible to work as a freelancer and get by – just. My work as a correspondent for Renewable Energy Magazine, plus some sub-editing for IWA Publishing, pays my share of the rent and bills, but if I want spending money I have to go out there and pitch magazine articles. Nevertheless, I rent, do not have a car, do not go shopping and that much and am selective in where and when I go if I want to go out. However, that is as much to do with the fact that I also have a somewhat expensive hobby in the form of World War 2 reenactment as it is to do with me not earning as much as I would like.
At the end of the day it really all depends on what level of income you want and the quality of life you want, but there is another factor here which I personally hold to. As an environmentalist I am not particularly fussed about earning huge amounts of money, driving an expensive car, having the latest gadgets, jetting abroad on foreign holidays etc. For one thing, it is the western world’s obsession with rampant consumerism that is actually helping to destroy the planet. That is something I very much object to and will continue to do so. I don’t need an expensive car – transport is one of the major sources of rising carbon emissions, along with aircraft (another reason I don’t go on foreign holidays). As for gadgets, just read “The Story of Stuff” to see what consumer electronics contain – high levels of toxic heavy metals and all manner of pollutants, and that’s just in the materials, not to mention the processes used to manufacture them.
I would agree with Steve that PR and Marketing is becoming prominent, but I don’t see that journalism is necessarily a dying industry. You really think that all that most people want to do is read advertising and adver-torials all the time? PR and marketing is also invariably geared to selling more crap, and that’s why, largely, I avoid it, along with the fact that, as I am not really, and have never been, a salesman, and therefore not that good at writing sales material anyway, I much prefer reportage quite frankly, and that is something that is needed more now than ever before, because people really need to know what’s really going on in the world, rather than cosying themselves up in consumer doo-doo land and thinking it’s all going to be okay, which unfortunately, it certainly isn’t.
If I was advising a youngster to break into writing, this is what I would say: first, examine your motives for doing so – if its money and glamour, forget it, it ain’t gonna happen. If it’s because you are angry with the state of the world and have a message, then brilliant, because the world needs more people like you. I would, like Steve, say dump the NCTJ course – just start writing. Start a blog, write for free for the first year (and no longer) where you can’t find any paid work until you’ve built up your expertise, market yourself ruthlessly, be aggressive and tenacious, specialise in a subject and become an amateur expert in that field, be arrogant where necessary – you have a view and despite others attempts to rubbish it, you have every right to be heard.
Finally, if you want to add to the general ruination of the planet, then fine, go into marketing. But before you do so, go on to youtube and watch videos of wildfires, floods and climate change and observe the inevitable results of rampant, ruthless consumerism that is filling the world with glitzy crap that no-one really needs. And perhaps if you do that, you will think again. You might see the real reason for writing, subtly and appropriately enshrined in that old adage “the pen is mightier than the sword”.
My writing is an extension of my environmentalism. There are other, green careers available out there, but they involve masses of qualifications, low pay and high competition, so I might as well stick with freelancing. The other option is to just give it up and join the masses who are collectively sleepwalking the human race off the edge of the precipice on a one-way ticket to environmental disaster. That, to me, is not an option.
@Robin:
Glad that’s working out for you and keep up the good work 🙂
I’ve never been much as of salesman either – unfortunately since so much advertised work seems to be sales-related.
Never been convinced if I’d be up to freelancing, though I think some of that may be fear of failure and institutionalisation from so long in education and waged work?
After months out of work, I certainly crave a stable income I can live off more than anything, which seems to imply I’m probably not suited to freelancing.
How did you bridge the gap and pay by your bills when getting set up? At the moment it seems the only financially feasible way I could if I ever tried to get into it is to move back in with my parents.
The bureaucratic mess of JSA & Housing Benefit basically seems to disincentivise most (legal, declared) paid freelancing IMO, since in my experience you seem to risk financial chaos every time you tell the DWP and Council you’ve done a few hours of work (I may be wrong on that, but when I’ve asked about part-time work before they don’t give a straight answer).
Hi Alex, thanks for your comments.
I think it’s important to point out here that freelancing was only initially an option that I had to fall back on after about two years worth of constant applications following my graduation in 2008. Even during those two years, I got by first by temping for a year for the Crown Prosecution Service and others (I only got that by literally walking into an employment agency and DEMANDING that they find me something, anything) and secondly, after the election when the Tories started cutting back on public services and thus the CPS letting me and two other temps go, by going back to gardening (I was a self-employed jobbing gardener in Glastonbury for four years before I went to uni in 2005). In 2010, while doing gardening, I took the decision to fall back on my writing skills (I had written a number of articles in 1997-8, one for “The Lady”, two more pieces for “The Ecologist”, two more for “Prediction” and a whole load of book reviews for an archaeology and earth mysteries magazine).
During that two year period when I was looking constantly for work, at least 70 percent of the positions I was seeing on agency websites and elsewhere was sales and marketing. There was so much of it it was actually quite sickening.
Never been convinced you’d be up to freelancing? There’s only way to find out and that is to throw yourself in the deep end and try. If you can write well, you can freelance. Success though, in my experience, comes only with aggression – which breeds tenacity – the ability to never give up whatever is being thrown at you. Having a certain level of anger undoubtedly helps.
Wanting a stable income is fine, I do too actually. But if there is none, then you have to ask yourself what is the alternative? Let’s go through this. You and me both are no good at sales. So that’s out. I absolutely detest working in a call centre (I worked for BT Directory Enquiries in my twenties and call centres from what I can see are a hundred times worse) so if that resonates with you also, that’s out (and I haven’t even mentioned the competition for jobs yet – in Bristol not so long back over 170 people applied for just one job). You could shelf-stack in a supermarket, clean or work in a packaging or processing job in a factory or warehouse, but increasingly those jobs are on zero hours contracts, as are jobs working in McDonalds and other fast-food outlets, so that’s out.
Driving? Possibly. I went for an internet shopping deliveries driver job for Sainsbury’s last year, didn’t get it. FedEx and other delivery jobs I have no experience of, but I hear they are time-pressured and therefore immensely stressful, as well as being poorly paid. Bus driver? Stressful too, high turnover rate from what I can see with First, and possibly dangerous in certain areas of Bristol at certain times. My own mother doesn’t even want me to become a bus driver in Bristol and I kind of think she’s right there.
So, the alternatives are definitely limited, at least until the economy picks up. The only other alternative of course is benefits – and that’s now being rampantly attacked by Ian Duncan Twat supported by the Daily Mail and a half a nation of bigoted ignoramuses.
Paying my bills when getting set up was difficult. Fortunately, my partner works full time for the CPS and on a pretty good income too (well, around 16k actually). Although she paid the rent and bills, she demanded I pay my fair share, and so we had quite a few serious arguments over 2010-2011. I responded by signing up to three of these websites that want writers to write academic essays – which of course you absolutely know most of which are going to be used by cheating students and are therefore highly unethical – but they pay reasonably well despite the stress that comes from writing good 2/1 standard essays but to even tighter deadlines (usually just over a week if that) – in a way it was like going back to uni again.
Also, and my parents don’t know this, they would flip if they did, I dipped into my grandmothers inheritance. It was originally £15k, its now £2800.
So, the way you move forward with this is basically by gritting your teeth and doing whatever you have to do to survive, basically. That’s just it.
Not much else I can say really. It’s a war out there, and that’s the way you’ve got to look at it.
Good luck, and I hope you get a break in whatever you choose to do.
This is a very interesting article.
Unfortunately, this is a serious issue for young working-class people wishing to peruse a career in journalism.
I have a number of friends who have found it difficult because of this very reason.
Although becoming a journalist is a very desirable career path, it is viewed by many as a distrustful profession. An infographic I recently came across claimed that 74% of the British public voted journalism as a distrustful profession.
For anyone interested I will share the link below.
https://www.comparelegalcosts.co.uk/britains-most-distrusted-professions/
Yesterday I was thinking about how the Great Recession (though there was nothing much great about it!) has permanently changed my spending habits. One way is that I no longer purchase a newspaper. I can’t personally understand why people throw £££ at what appears to me to be a dying industry.