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Status Anxiety

3 January 2009

My New Year advice to aspiring journalists: become accountants instead

Like many people in the media, I’m bracing myself for an annus horribilis. I have multiple income streams — film, television, radio, books and journalism — and all have been decimated by the Credit Crunch. I’m not exaggerating when I say my earnings will fall by at least 50 per cent in 2009.

I got an inkling of just how bad things are when I was offered a column recently by a major Fleet Street newspaper. They wanted me to write 500 words a week on the OpEd page — prime real estate by any measure.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘How much?’

‘A hundred and fifty a week.’

I almost dropped the phone. To give you an idea of how bad this is, it is less than I received for a piece of similar length for the same paper over 20 years ago. Indeed, it is less than you would get for a column in the Independent on Sunday which, until recently, was the worst-paying paper on Fleet Street. The executive who made the offer explained that rates had been ‘slashed’ and that several of the paper’s weekly columnists are paid less than this — and for all I know that is true.

Presumably, the reason I was offered the column is because the paper in question has just fired an existing columnist — one of hundreds to be put out to grass in 2008. When one of Fleet Street’s best columnists was given his marching orders recently, he took it in good part. ‘Keith Waterhouse once said that, as a freelance, you are like a busker outside cinemas — if one commissionaire moves you on, you just go and play outside another,’ he said. ‘I think this is a good rule to work by.’

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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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