We had an excellent London Girl Geek Dinner about science and tech journalism last night, hosted by the lovely people of Thoughtworks at their offices in Holborn. Big thanks to everyone who turned up and also thanks to Wired for free copies of their magazine.The topic of my talk was how to become an employable science journalist and, under that banner, the importance of not devaluing the profession. There's been a huge debate on the web for the last couple of years on blogging versus journalism, the role of citizen journalists in the media and whether old-school journalism will die and be taken over by spare-time writers and broadcasters who have day jobs as press officers, scientists or whatever. Both Connie St Louis from City University (one of the other speakers) and I made the point that journalism is a profession, with its own set of skills, laws and standards. Journalists need to be on the ground, exploring, experiencing, meeting people, producing, investigating... and this is a tough job that requires full-timers, with layers of separate editing, to be done properly.
The problem is that the profession is being devalued. Firstly, by magazines and newspapers that are turning to bloggers for content instead of experienced journalists. And secondly, by people who are willing to work for free or for very little (interns, bloggers, cut-price freelancers). Now this is fine if you're just running your own site in your spare time, but the media is always going to suffer if journalists don't demand fair pay for doing real stories. Editors will get away with undercutting their writers. Plus, they'll be much keener to employ legions of churnalists on the cheap. In the long-run, the quality of stories will fall.
The NUJ has a campaign running right now to secure a fair wage for interns. And I (for one) feel it's vital to get behind it, not only for young workers, but also for the profession as a whole. The Association of British Science Writers also has a a freelance pay survey to make sure that writers get the rates they deserve.
For anyone who says that it's impossible to survive as a journalist these days and get paid a decent wage, I'd say, if you keep up your skills (including multimedia skills), quality and standards, then you can. I have, as have many other writers and broadcasters I know. Whatever may happen to the industry, editors and readers can't resist brilliant, exclusive stories. So don't get sucked into the idea that journalism isn't a profession. And know your worth.
10 responses:
Firstly let me say that I broadly agree with most of what you're saying: that full time journalists offer something that other participants in journalism do not; and that publishers and editors see interns and bloggers as sources of cheap content.
But I think you mix economic value with editorial value, and that undermines the general thrust of what you're arguing.
What reduces the value of something economically? Increased supply or reduced demand are two key factors. And indeed, journalism as a profession has been consistently devalued economically as a result of one of those factors: increasing numbers of people who want to be journalists and who will work for free, or for low wages. The result is that the wages of journalists are very low - a pattern which predates the internet and the rise of blogging, etc.
Your point, however, is not about the economic value of professional journalism but the editorial value - the quality, not the quantity.
There's an obvious link between the two. Pay people very little, and they won't stick around to become better reporters - witness how many journalists leave the profession for PR as soon as they have families to feed. Rely on interns and you not only have a more unskilled workforce but the skilled part of your workforce has to spend part of its time doing informal 'training' of those interns.
So where do bloggers come in? You mention them in two senses: firstly as being chosen over experienced journalists, and second as part of a list of people willing to work for little or for free.
But, unlike the labels 'intern' and 'freelance journalist', 'blogger' takes in a vast range of people, some of whom are very experienced journalists themselves, and some of whom have more specialist expertise than journalists.
Does their existence 'devalue' journalism? Economically, it certainly increases the supply of journalism and so drives down its price.
But editorially? Well, here we have to take in a new factor: bloggers don't have to write about what publishers tell them to. And most of them don't. So while the increase in bloggers has expanded the potential market for contributors - it's also expanded the content competing with your own. Competition - in strictly economic terms - is supposed to drive quality up. I'm not going to argue that that's happening, because this is not a market economy we're looking at, but a mixed one.
I guess my point is that this isn't a simple either/or calculation any more. The drive to reduce costs and increase profits has always led to the 'devaluing of journalism' as a profession. Blogging and the broader ability for anyone to publish does little to change that. What it does do, however, is introduce different dynamics into the picture. When you divorce 'journalism' from its commercial face, 'publishing', as the internet has done, then you also break down the relationship between economic devaluation and editorial devaluation.
Thanks for your response Paul. I agree with a lot of what you say, but I'm not talking about blogging in general. After all, I blog. I think it's a great addition to the media landscape.
What I think is bad for the profession is when bloggers, cheap churnalists and interns are used by paid outlets to produce content instead of trained journalists. This isn't a supply and demand problem, it's about maintaining standards in a fragmented industry.
A doctor wouldn't settle for a low wage, nor would a lawyer. So why should we? Companies will always want to cut costs, but journalists should insist that the quality of their work is not the casualty, and how much we get paid is a key factor in how good our product is. If I get £1000 to write a piece, I will spend more time on it and it will be a better product than if I'm given £100.
Thanks Angela - I do agree that as journalists we should stand firm on what we expect to be paid for a piece of professional work. However, I also think we cannot pretend that laws of supply and demand do not affect us.
On an individual level, we have to decide whether it is worth us doing a piece of work for the money offered. But we have to accept that other individuals may make a different decision because the money is not the only benefit they receive. They may receive exposure, experience, or access, for example, which could have future financial value. Or they may receive social benefits such as status.
One thing I like about blogging is that it actually reduces the bargaining power of publishers in offering those benefits because (supply and demand again!) they are supplied elsewhere. If I want exposure, experience and access, or social connections and reputation, I can start a blog. It's not as easily gained as if I was an intern, but it's easier than it was.
The further issue of maintaining standards is a separate one which I think is more complicated than the economic exchange you focus on, because the changes which are driving down the economic value of professional journalism are also driving new ways of doing professional journalism which may actually (if you'll forgive the economic jargon) increase value by reducing costs. I say "may", of course, and I need to think more about whether that is the case.
Sounds like we're on fairly similar ground.
I guess I would argue that no amount of exposure or status should also deny someone a fair wage for doing work. Bloggers choose to blog and they can stop, and still make a living, whereas journalists, we need our work to pay the bills.
This is absolutely analogous to what has happened to photographers since the advent of digital photography and (to a lesser degree) graphic designers.
Lower end work will disappear or be assigned to people who will work cheaply. Journalists will no longer be able to survive on thoughtless stories (like photographers can't survive on stock photography).
Quite simply, journalists' information monopolies are gone. You will need to innovate and create value through high quality work in the same way photographers and designers have, given the reduced barriers to entry.
Adam, I totally agree.
Interesting piece. I picked it up via Paul's response at OJB.
I don't agree that "journalism" can be a profession, or necessarily that it ever was one.
Yes - a set of laws, standards and ethics exist, but they are not exclusive to journalism; they are followed by good writers whether paid journalists or not.
To have your case stick, it requires that professional journalists consistently produce reporting of a higher quality than the best of the "bloggers, interns and cut-price freelancers".
Looking at UK national media at least, I don't think that this is the case. Factual and logical mistakes abound, we have lost the distinction between reporting and opinion, and separate editorial functions are declining.
If there is an edge for "professionals", I'd suggest that it is in familiarity with a specialist beat, though that is as true of specialists by profession who know how to write/report.
So where do I stand? The blogger vs journalist dichotomy has always been a false one, and we have a spectrum with media organisations searching for ways of surviving economically, while others emerge in a new landscape.
If there is one consistent management mistake, that has been in imagining that making employed staff work harder and harder to generate more output will not have an impact on quality; I suggest that it has done so already.
Editorial teams should insist on quality from whoever supplies their material, whether paid or not.
If it is now the case that quality material does not require payment, then the shape of the "profession" will adjust accordingly.
Matt, I do have to agree with you up to a point. There are a lot of rubbish journalists out there. Quality is clearly an issue in an industry in which it is so easily sacrificed.
But I maintain that what I and many other full-time, paid journalists do is a profession. I'm a specialist science journalist, educated in engineering science and trained at ITN. There are bad hacks and good, hard-working journalists... I wish we weren't tarred with the same brush. And this was the point I was trying to make in this blog post. Journalists, editors and publishers all have a responsibility to keep the quality of their work high enough to earn the public's respect and maintain the label 'professional'.
In response to Matt Wardman's point, while I also agree that there are some rubbish journalists out there, bloggers make mistakes too... it's just that they can change their copy instantly without a word of apology required, whereas the hack's mistake can't be erased once it's in print. There's more pressure on hacks to write accurate copy, though I think the circumstances in newsrooms now make it very difficult not to make mistakes - a miserable situation for anyone who cares about producing good work.
Maybe journalism is not so much a profession as a series of linked crafts. There is no barrier to entry for those who would call themselves journalists and no way to eject those who break the rules. But that is not to say that standards aren't important. As someone who spends a lot of time training journalists I believe they are vital. The trouble is those standards are all too often pushed and pulled in the search for a headline grabbing story. That started before bloggers and will carry on with them and whoever comes next. But, most amateurs (and the most is is important) won't do as good a job as the skilled crafts people. When they do they'll want to get paid for it. We'll have more competitors but that too has always been the way it works in this business. So, do we have a case of plus ca change?
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