Journalism: from the bottom rung

IN JULY of this year, I gave up my treasured BlackBerry, a cosy circle of friends, a good job and a flat in London to move to Cardiff and study for a postgraduate course in Broadcast Journalism.

After three years of working as executive assistant to entrepreneur and Dragon’s Den star Peter Jones, I left to pursue my old dream of becoming a reporter. The abiding response was that I was slightly mad. Why journalism? A dying and difficult profession surely, killed by the advent of the internet and citizen journalists. More importantly, it doesn’t pay much.

It is hard work, and there’s no doubt it is getting harder as access to information becomes easier. My fellow trainees at Cardiff University are entering an industry which has been rotted by lack of investment. The local newspapers that used to be the training ground for reporters are closing continuously. Even the industry paper, the Press Gazette, no longer rolls off the press. ITV teaches its reporters operate their own cameras. Local radio news bulletins are produced by skeleton crews of one or two staff. The buzz words are multi-platform, multi-skilled and multi-careerist. But missing in all of these multiples are money and time.

http://waleshome.org/2010/02/journalism-from-the-bottom-rung/