Status Anxiety

3 January 2009

My New Year advice to aspiring journalists: become accountants instead

Unfortunately, when he gets to the next cinema he will discover half a dozen other buskers jostling for the space. The bloodletting on Fleet Street was terrible in 2008 and promises to get worse in 2009. Circulations are in free fall, advertising revenue has fallen off a cliff and paper costs are sky-rocketing, thanks to a booming newspaper business in China. This means there will be more and more freelancers competing for work — bad news for the busker, and even worse news for me, since I am not in his class.

If you are used to plying your trade as a critic, things look particularly bleak. Last April, an American film critic called Sean Means published a list of all his colleagues who had been put out to grass since 2006. They numbered 28 in all — and since then the list has grown. So far in the UK, it is television critics who have suffered most, with several Fleet Street newspapers dispensing with daily television reviews. It can only be a matter of time before the rest of them are given their marching orders — followed by theatre critics, film critics and music critics.

As a case in point, I recently asked a Fleet Street arts editor if he would be interested in a piece called ‘The End of Criticism’. ‘It sounds like a good idea, Toby,’ he said. ‘Trouble is, we’re about to make all of our critics redundant. It might not sit too well with them.’ One of the reason critics are in the firing line is that newspaper executives can point to the internet and claim, with some justification, that bloggers are now doing the job of professional critics. Moviegoers, for instance, are just as likely to turn to an online critic as they are to a newspaper reviewer. They may not have the breadth of experience as professional critics or the ability to express themselves so eloquently, but people no longer value these attributes as highly as they once did.

It is not just critics that are being killed off by the internet. Last year, the Christian Science Monitor ceased publication in newspaper form and moved all its operations online. That is surely a harbinger of things to come. I sat next to the editor of a Fleet Street newspaper at a dinner party a few weeks ago and asked him if there was any possibility of his publication becoming an online-only affair. ‘I wish,’ he said. ‘Problem is, we’ve just signed a ten-year contract with a printer and if we renege on that we’ll be sued for more than we’d save by going online.’ If there are any students out there thinking of careers in journalism, think again. My advice is to go into accounting and specialise in the administration of companies that have gone bust.

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David Short

December 30th, 2008 2:15pm Report this comment

This has been on the cards for a long time, longer than the blogging boom.

Fleet Street has long employed lots of people who can work for very little, even for nothing, but can still afford to live and commute in London.

They of course come from a small inter-connected group of well-off metropolitans. Daddy and Mummy pay all the bills while little Johnny or Jenny go off to play at the newspaper.

An earlier change in the quality of journos was after Big Bang; you could no longer get into the City through family connections and despite the lack of a brain or a chin.

So lots of not-very-talented people chose journalism. At the same post-Wapping time, the union rules had also been relaxed.

Result: the national pool of talent was not being fished, and journalism became very poor, and some columns are so bad that Polly Filla reads like reality not spoof.

At the same time, paginations have been increased, so more low-paid, pisspoor guff is being printed.

That's a major reason for the fall in circulation; so much comment is just not worth reading, and when you do read it, you feel you've somehow wasted your time.

But one word of comfort. Those who enter journalism by the back door and because they are housed and fed in Notting Hill or Hampstead, rarely make it to the top.

Susan Hill

January 1st, 2009 2:35pm Report this comment

Friend of mine was made redundant from features desk of his newspaper. Quickly realised he was wasting his time looking for more of same so he re-trained as a meringue maker in a cake factory ... works nights so extra pay, loads of jolly fellow workers, two cooked meals a night and plenty of tea breaks. Free mis-shapen cakes to take home too only he says he can`t face them. He`s happy as a s.b.
You should try it Toby. The training isn`t as long and boring as for accountancy.
Apparently there are vacancies.

David Short

January 3rd, 2009 2:06pm Report this comment

What's the salary?

It's got to be enough for Polly Filla to pay the nanny.

Or of course Polly Filla could bake meringues for her kids.

Susan Hill

January 4th, 2009 12:10pm Report this comment

£7 an hour but alas, they call it Wages nor Salary. Only downside is you have to pass quite ferocious Health n' Safety training.

Ifor Smout

January 5th, 2009 2:08pm Report this comment

Oh dear - dear - dear. £150 for 500 words!!?
Before I weep further for you though - is that 500 new words or can you use old ones? Do they all have to be different? Can you use short ones?
Now you know how Ashley Cole felt. Lucky you have "multiple income streams"
(You were being ironic - mmm?)

Film Duffer

January 5th, 2009 11:01pm Report this comment

With US Domestic Total Gross box office of a rather pathetic $2,778,242 & worldwide of just over $16,000,000 no sequel to HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS & ALIENATE PEOPLE to perk up your finances in 2009 either. Looks like the world wasn't interested in the Toby Young life story after all.

I can't think why.

Herbert Thornton

January 6th, 2009 3:29am Report this comment

Now that Stephen Pollard has more or less left the blogs section, perhaps you could take his place there? You, in combination with the irreplaceable Melanie, would constitute an entirely adequate pair, though adding Mark Steyn - assuming the Spectator can afford him - would make a marvellous trio.

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