It dawned upon me today that being a graduate journalist is like being a struggling actor.
Though the two industries seem poles apart (one is glamorous, potentially astronomically well-paid, based on fantasy, the other is slightly scruffy, with teeny tiny wages and, ideally at least, based on reality) they actually share some common ground.
Firstly, as a freelancer, just like an actor, you have to become accustomed to rejection. I had my first taste of this today, after trying to sell an interview to the Observer Woman. I had spoken to the assistant editor over the phone and she sounded keen, asking me to email some more details about the article across to her. It all seemed positive. I duly did as told and shortly received a reply which said simply: "Thanks for this, but I don't think it'll work for us." Crushing. I felt like I had delivered my lines badly, or forgotten my script before the judging panel.
As my second point of comparison, from what I hear, everyone in LA is trying to be a film star. When you buy a cappuccino, coffee, pizza or glass of wine, the chances are that the person who serves you is one of these wannabes. In London, when you go for a meal or tarry out to quaff booze in some darkened bar, chances are that the person who serves you is a wannabe journalist.
At the magazine where I'm currently slaving away for free, I am surrounded by people in the same poverty-struck situation as myself, all of whom have second and even third jobs as waitresses to keep them afloat. As a fellow 'work-experience' girl said to me today: "Yeah it's hard having to work in the bar after working here all day but journalism is what I want to do, so it's worth it." I believed her; her eyes were all ablaze with a fervour and dedication verging on religious devotion. It was then that the actress comparison struck me again, since acting is one profession about which people say, 'Only do this if you can't imagine doing anything else because it's hard, unreliable and you may not make any money.'
It seems to me that the same can be said for journalism. Despite this, just like in the acting industry, there are unrelenting hordes of devotees willing to sign away their freedom, life, salary expectations and sense of self-worth, just to get a foot in the door. A former web-editor at the magazine told me recently that she didn't know anyone who hadn't worked unpaid for about A YEAR before they were taken on as staff by a publication.
Call me a broken woman but at this point in time, I can't help wondering: why do we do it?
2 comments:
I remember living in New York a few years ago, and dropping into Columbia University, home of the Pulitzer school of journalism. I went to the admission office there, and discovered that a one-year masters course would cost me $42,000 or thereabouts.
Obviously, I shelved the romantic notion of studying at the world-famous school there and then, and left. On my way out however, I passed the gilded plaque with Pulitzer's words, which were the following, or an excerpt of them:
"Our republic and its press will rise or fall together. An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalism of future generations."
A little something which always cheers me up when, like yourself, I'm told there's no jobs, and a hard slog, ahead.
oh my god i might as well kill myself now, not literally you inderstand as a near graduate journalism student i thouroughly hop the future is bright. although i must say my fellow students aside journalism dooesn't seem to be a popular choice of career, why do you think it is?
good analogy though i didn't think about it before but it is true
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