The Sunday Times on how to get a job as a journalist

There’s a great piece in today’s Sunday Times Magazine by Ed Caeser on the prospects for the tens of thousands of journalism and media graduates now looking for increasingly rare jobs.

You’ll find the full article, Hold the front page I want to be on it, here http://bit.ly/9rXzmA  (quick, before it goes behind the paywall)

 

First some stats from the piece

There are:

• 8,095 students on undergraduate journalism courses.
• 1,870 on postgrad courses
• 25,335 undergraduates and 
• 2,905 postgrads on media studies courses.

The piece doesn’t say how many jobs they are chasing, but there are 1,200 newspapers and about 9,000 magazines.

So that’s the context, here are the key points Ed makes:

 “The most sensible path into print journalism now is through the postgraduate journalism diplomas, particularly at City University and Cardiff University — where there are three applicants for every place — but a qualification is no guarantee of a job.” 

However: “Journalism is, to a large degree, a business where qualifications are less important than skills. Editors rarely care where you went to school, or university, or what training you received, as long as you can do the business.”

“You’ll need luck, flair, an alternative source of income, endless patience, an optimistic disposition, sharp elbows and a place to stay in London. But the essential quality for success now is surely tenacity.”

“1,200 people ... applied in September for one reporter’s position on the new Sunday Times website. You’d shoot a horse with those odds.”

“No two career stories are the same… Many graduates simply turn up on work experience and refuse to leave. It worked for me.”

“Journalism remains a meritocracy only to those who can afford it. Because work experience is so important, almost all aspiring journalists need to work in London, for free, at some point in their careers. Not everyone has the wherewithal to do this.”

Two milestones in the shift in power from old media to social media

There have been a couple of social media milestones during the year which show that old media and new are experiencing a shift in the balance of power.

They concern two big news stories that fit the old media model of an issue on which their readers will have strong views

In both cases the publication sought to chime with its readers views by producing trenchant comment about them.

One was the death of the pop star Stephen Gately The second was about a letter sent by the prime minister to Jacqui Janes, the mother of a soldier killed in Afghanistan.

In the first the Daily Mail columnist wrote that there was nothing natural about Stephen Gately’s death, and linked it to his homosexuality.

In the second it was said that the PM got the dead soldier’s name wrong, and made various other errors in a handwritten letter that was difficult to read. The Sun recorded a phone conversation between the prime minister and the bereaved mother, and published it on its website.

Trad media is used to having just the views of its own readers to worry about.

With social media the views they express are likely – if controversial enough – to reach a far wider audience; an audience that is not programmed with the prejudices that the newspaper confidently presents to its own constituency.

The Gately story was picked up, famously, by Stephen Fry and others on Twitter and Facebook

and resulted in a huge backlash from that community. As a result Moir apologised.

The letter story spread far beyond the Sun’s own readers and it seemed to some that the Sun was using this incident as part of a campaign against the prime minister.

Overwhelmingly, the view among those who learned of the story via social media was that, as a person of partial sight, the prime minister was being bullied. It resulted in a ‘give Brown a break’ backlash.

A majority of the Sun’s readers who commented on the website showed sympathy for Brown, Roy Greenslade reported.

What does this tell us?

Two things.

That newspapers such as the Sun and Mail, which pride themselves on having a finger on the pulse of their readers, can on occasion get things very wrong.

Second, that old media can no longer express views that chime with its own readers but which offend a substantial number of others. Well, they can, but if they do it openly on the web, without pay walls to keep these views from the general web user, then  they will be called to account for them.

This is a profound shift in the balance of power towards the wider community. It shows that social media has very powerful. The wisdom of the crown has been brought to bear in these two instances.

We are used to hearing of the negative impact that unfettered comment can have on the web. Here are two examples of how it can be a force for good.

How I made £750 by going shopping

Classified ads are at the centre of one of the various tussles newspapers are having with the web.

Here’s a personal experience of what is happening.

Years ago, when we wanted to go on holiday, we’d look in the small ads in The Observer. There you got owners offering their second homes for rent. The chances were that you got a well-loved family home-from-home, in a pleasant place, at a reasonable price.

For years that was how we found and booked our holidays. When we came to have a holiday home of our own, and wanted to rent it out to cover costs when we weren’t using it, we looked to the classified ads. From ten to five years ago, we could place an ad in The Sunday Times for thee weeks in January, and get around 20 weeks of lettings out of it.

But, in more recent times, the ads dwindled. We tried other papers – The Telegraph (Saturday and Sunday) and the Saturday Times, but to no effect. The lettings were down to ten, then eight, then three weeks. And the ads were costing around £250.

When the reps rang I’d point out that we were now barely covering our costs, and that my very basic home-made website was getting me more bookings than their expensive ads. They suggested using their websites. So we did, in both The Times and The Telegraph. We got not one enquiry.

Last week, convinced that there must be a market for a very nice, reasonably priced flat on the shores of Lake Garda in Italy, I did a Google trawl for dedicated websites on which to advertise. The one that looked most reliable was called Owners Direct. So I paid my £65, drafted my description, uploaded my pictures and waited.

I didn’t have to wait long. The day the ad appeared I got three enquiries. Out of that came one booking, at £250, which easily covered the cost of the Owners Direct listing.

I hadn’t expected to get any bookings for this year, it being rather late in the season, but this morning as I strolled around the farmers’ market I got two SMS messages on my mobile, forwarded from visitors to the website. When I rang the enquirers I got two bookings for next month. Later, at the garden centre, I got another call, and sold a week next August.

So, while I went about my other business, I took £750 in bookings. That’s more than my last Times and Telegraph ads achieved, at several times the price.

There is a lesson here. It is that the cosy and reliable community of owners and renters of private holiday homes has migrated to a place that serves them far better than any print publication could.

The print publications, being slow off the mark, have allowed dedicated websites to syphon off this business.

As we all know, newspapers are working hard and fast to make the web work for them as they fight to retain their classified lifeblood.

Will they do it? I have to say that, in my very limited experience, they don’t have a hope.