Feels a bit weird to be in the back office of Adam's blog. I'm Martin Couzins, managing editor at Travel Weekly (but not for long), and have been asked - along with some other Reed Business Information colleagues - to guest post while Adam is away.
I am interested in training and deliver some at RBI. I also post at itsdevelopmental.com and tweet @martincouzins. So, here goes (for the second time as MT just crashed. Grrr)
Yesterday was my read the paper day because I commute from Bath to Sutton in Surrey. I read the Guardian and Metro.
Jon Slattery's piece on the diminishing numbers of opportunities for journalist graduates made for depressing but none too surprising reading. What was depressing is that more and more students want to study journalism at a time when there are decreasing job opportunities.
I then turned to Jeff Jarvis' column which made the point that newspaper proprietors have had plenty of time (20 years) to get their heads around the web and its impact on news. As either nothing or too little has been done too late, Jarvis says, we are now seeing the shift from print to digital unravel - this means job losses as old economy business models fail, a search for new business models etc.
The exciting thing here, Jarvis concludes, is that there will be new models for news and that the sooner these models are established the better for journalism.
But this will be of little comfort to journalists who are currently losing their jobs.
And then I came across the news that journalist Roy Greenslade is going to be writing a news blog about his local area (where he lives).
So much change but new models are emerging - hyperlocal blogs, for example.
And all would-be journalists have no barriers to entry for publishing - it is so easy and cheap (well, free) to set up a blog and to share and recommend content. The problem is getting paid.
But let's face it, that has always been a problem - entry level jobs on local papers for £6K a year. Why would you?
Changes in our industry mean career paths are less clear. You don't start at one point, junior reporter say, and follow a linear path to another more senior role such as an editor or desk head.
This means that all journalists need to:
- Track changes in how our industry is changing - load up your RSS reader now
- Have a plan - focus on what you enjoy doing, area of expertise etc and work out how to publish around that and start doing it
- Develop a profile and promote it
- Start to think in a more entreprenurial way - there are opportunities but they may not sit in the traditional publishing/journalism space
- Take opportunities to learn new skills and try out new (and free) online tools
I do wonder whether journalism courses are equipping students in this way. And I wonder whether we - journalists - are engaging properly with the way our industry is changing.
I feel as if this has been said a thousand times before, but I still see and hear journalists who are not engaging with this and that terrifies me.
Great list
I think J-schools are engaging with this stuff (though i would say that wouldn't I)
Part of the problem is the lack of consistent message coming out of the industry about how important the skills you listed are. The journalists who are not engaging are often also very vocally negative about those that do.
The damage that does to the motivations of students who could be coming in to the industry with a passion to keep it alive is something I battle with day after day.
It has to be a team effort.
Great point, Andy, and I agree it has to be a team effort. My experience is that there are far more who are vocally negative and not that interested in upskilling.
I have been involved in training at RBI and it amazes me how difficult it can be to get people to attend training - especially when so much effort goes into providing bang up to date and relevant skills and topics. In many ways we need to foster much more of a learning/can do culture - something that j-schools are doing.
I think it is a wake-up to all journalists that graduates/trainees are coming in to the industry and hearing a lot of negativity. We are all learning and we need to be big enough to learn from each other - more experienced journalists can learn from newbies to the profession. Fancy that?!
Great blog. JOMEC is definitely trying to equip students in this way. We have been trained to think of ourselves as multi-platform, multi-skilled journalists.It can be daunting when you consider how important technology is in the world of journalism today. But blogging is a good way of trying out new skills you learn: be it video, audio or something like googlemaps. What's disheartening is when you go out on work experience and people don't acknowledge a need for any of those skills. While it will be harder to get a job in the current climate, I believe in the long term we will be much better equipped to deal with whatever the digital revolution throws at us.
Hi Naomi, your thoughts also echo the points made by Andy. It must be very frustrating for students to go into the workplace to find new world skills are not being used. Maybe it is the entrepreneurial skills that are now most important. Time for students to start writing and making money for themselves . . .