And that's okay - we all got into this business knowing this fact, and if it really does bother you, there is always work in PR or comms, where they'll pay you loads to hate yourself.
Instead, you can work for shit money in a profession that is, in general, loathed by the public who consume it, and that lack of financial remuneration is nicely balanced out by all the hate tweets and moans about your work.
Still, money is definitely one of the main reasons for the profession's deplorable employee retention rate - a journalism class of 30 students will be usually have no more than three or four of them still working in the news media a few years later - but it's not the only reason.
It's the hours. It's the awful, awful shift work, that destroys any kind of decent social or family life.
There are a lot of regular nine-to-five jobs in the news media - if you're not dealing with daily, breaking journalism, you can pick your hours to suit. Freelancers set their own working routine, it's easier for magazine journalists to be working when everybody else is working, and business journos, in general, get to do business hours.
But the news isn't always that convenient, and happens at the strangest times, so news reporters have to do some weird fucking hours, to fully cover the day. So do sports and entertainment journos, doing a job that looks light and easy, but is far from a cushy gig, requiring coverage of games and events that run long into the night.
There are some good things about shift work - if you're in the big cities, you get to avoid the traffic that clogs the roads; if you're starting at some ungodly hour of the morning, you get the afternoon to yourself; and weird hours do often work for a lot of young parents who can use early or late shifts to save costs on child care, make a little scratch and interact with other adults.
But it also fucks you up. In a surprising twist, journalists are human beings who actually like spending time with their loved ones, not having to work weekends, or sticking around the TV studio until after midnight because the Monday Night movie ran long, or getting up at a time when all the cool party kids are heading home for the night.
They're working through holidays, and while the rest of the world sleeps, and get bored on their days off on a weekday, because everybody else is doing normal hours.
And it's not just working unusual days or starting at awful times, it's being shifted around all over the day - many of the reporters in the big newsrooms barely do the same shifts every day of the week, let alone every month.They're starting at 5am one morning, and then working on the late shift until midnight the next day (or, even worse, vice versa).
And all this doesn't just mess up your social and family life, it fuzzes up the brain. For a job that requires 100% brainpower, it's no wonder dodgy copy and inappropriate headlines are slipping through to the final product when the head feels like it's full of cotton wool.
Journalists aren't the only poor souls who have to get up and go to work at abnormal hours, and thankfully, they're not working with lethal machinery. But their work is extremely public, and judged by everybody else, who probably got a decent night's sleep last night. That horrible typo you laughed at online yesterday was probably written by some poor fucker who legitimately doesn't know what fucking day it is.
No wonder so many journos ditch the profession, and the promise of regular, normal hours. Some reporters are still doing these goddamn shifts after three decades in a newsroom, so it's not like they're about to change anytime soon.
You can always spot the new person on the comms team, when it's someone who has just finally given up their dream of working in proper journalism. They're always a bit wistful, but also calm as fuck, and not just because they got an instant pay-rise of more than 50% by switching professions.
They're calm because they're not sitting in a newsroom on a Saturday night, waiting for a police release to come through, or for a rugby result. They're with the friends, families and other loved ones. Like a proper person.
- Steve Lombard
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