But there is an increasingly dire trend right at the start of the business, where raw recruits are fed into the media meat grinder – there just are not enough of them coming into the business, and this will have long-term repercussions for the quality of the media product in this country.
There used to be loads of different journalism courses in New Zealand that were dotted up and down the country, and now there are only three – and even they are struggling to fill smaller classes.
The reasons for this are fairly obvious. Everybody - including the media - talks about how the news industry is a dying business, with little hope of a long-term career. You can't blame guidance counsellors and teachers for not pointing young people looking for a career in that direction.
The general growing distrust in the media also doesn't help, and neither do journalists themselves, and they way they frequently talk about the shit pay, terrible hours and little things like death threats (something Media Scrum is certainly guilty of, like the bunch of fucking hypocrites we are.) None of that would sound very promising to anybody interested in it as a career.
But the industry is not dying as fast as those fuckers say, and there remains a crucial need to create news content for the country's bulletins, publications and websites, and there are still plenty of entry-level jobs out there for somebody with the proper qualification and training.
Newsrooms need a constant stream of keen young staff to keep things going. They're an essential ingredient, as much as the crusty old court reporter who knows all the lawyers' names. You need the enthusiasm and drive and ambition of young reporters, or you're a dying newsroom.
But there is also the issue of the quality – when there are way more candidates for positions on a j-school course than are available, then you just get the smartest and sharpest, but if you're forced to take everybody, you're going to end up with people who might not be ready for the stress and demands of modern reporting.
As it is, j-school classes always suffer a loss of up to a quarter of students throughout a full-time course, with people who find they are unsuited to things like the disciplines of deadlines and concise writing, or are just plain useless at getting information from people. If tutors are forced to take anybody they can, just to keep their budgets, there are only going to be bigger levels of drop-outs, especially when they are thrown into their first actual job and have to hit the streets.
There is no easy answer to the dwindling supply of young, keen reporters, Maybe we just need to get back to those guidance counselors and teachers who have read too many Facebook articles about the death of news, and let them know that no matter how the industry changes, there will always be a need for people to create the content (even if social media sites tend to reap the rewards by ripping that content off).
As much as Media Scrum likes to turn this blog into a bitchfest about the state of the industry, we all fucking love being journalists, and wouldn't swap it for any corporate gig in the world. We get to be endlessly creative every day, and occasionally meet some of our heroes. There are always going to be a need for editors and writers to create content to fill society's never-ending hunger for the latest news, and we feel privileged to feed that hunger.
And as much as we moan about the conditions, we're still here, and have no plans to abandon the profession for the dark side of PR and comms, and we can only hope that more young talent is found, cultivated and given the opportunity to join us.
As a profession, maybe we should try a bit harder to talk about these kinds of benefits, before we lose all the qualifications and skills we barely have now.
- Steve Lombard
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