As Gary Moskowitz said in a lecture today, the money is minimal and everyone hates you (see 1 and 2), but more and more people want to be journalists. Seeing as how the dreaded credit crunch means we will all be unemployed and sleeping in bins when we graduate from City, I have compiled a list of why being a journalist is rubbish. This will make us all feel better when we are working in Dominos/KFC/Macdonalds/whichever other companies are laughing in the face of recession, while we dream of newspapers and magazines.
1. Everyone hates journalists. As I previously blogged, we are consistently voted one of the least trustworthy professions.
2. The pay. Or rather lackthereof.
3. It will swallow your life. No sleep, no social life. Only journalising.
4. We all know traditional media is dying and the future is in blogs. Anyone can blog provided they have hands. Actually, a cat could stand on a keyboard and perhaps put pressure on the right number and order of keys and post something. It might not make any sense, but neither does 98% of internet content.
5. Lack of stability, you’re only as good as your last piece of work.
6. Using twitter is practically in a journalist’s job description these days. I dislike Twitter. It confuses my simple mind. Sorry tweet fans. (Yes, I am aware of the irony of using twitter to publicise my blog, but I also drink Diet Coke and occasionally eat Nestle – massive hypocrit)
7. Journalism is one of the professions where you are expected or even required to do months of unpaid interning before getting a real job. Cue tidying the fashion cupboard, fetching lattes, doing endless research for articles and getting no credit. Hurrah.
8. You can never take anything at face value. You must question everything. You will not be able to read anything without analysing it. Kiss goodbye to being able to enjoy things innocently. Sigh. Your friends begin to hate you as you constantly question their stories.
9. You have spend much of your time fending off PRs. And if you’re not trying to get rid of them you’re trying to charm them into giving you stuff.
10. When you hear about a tragedy, your first reaction is “Fantastic. How many people died? Anyone famous/attractive/young/who had previously triumphed over adversity?”. Where is your soul?
Anyone got any more to add? Or conversely, what is great about being a hack?
Student Journalist, Magazine Fancier 