Saturday 9 May 2020

Always a journo

Kylie reckons I'm "ever in journalist mode". Which is surely an awful thing to be, but she might be right. After all, I spent six years as a journalist, so some of the journalist culture must have rubbed off on me, like it or not.

Jenny thinks there's still a bit of the journalist in me. I like inventing spoof tabloid headlines ("Refund joy for tearful Belfast couple"), and I do tend to over-react to a dramatic piece of news.

But despite the residual journalistic quirks, I'm still very critical of journalism and the way it distorts, trivialises and sensationalises important issues. I've never regretted leaving journalism for bookselling, even though many people thought I was crazy.

Apart from anything else, journalism nowadays is hard work. Long hours, low salaries, unpaid internships, constant redundancies. It's a far cry from the well-paid, leisurely, drunken activity it was in the sixties.

But I've never properly explained why I left journalism. Just a few of the reasons:
  • So often it never gets to the heart of an issue. It trots out a few basic facts and seldom digs deeper or asks awkward questions.
  • It spreads rumours and gossip about celebrities and public figures, much of it malicious and untrue.
  • It encourages prejudice of all kinds - racism, sexism, xenophobia, hatred of welfare "scroungers" etc.
  • It turns minor incidents into huge controversies (famous actress has wardrobe malfunction)
  • It's hypocritical. For example, it laments climate breakdown, but welcomes consumerism and long-distance travel.
  • It runs with every fad and fashion, however absurd or irresponsible or pointless.
In the end I just felt uncomfortable as a journalist. There were so many dubious practices I simply couldn't buy into. Bookselling by comparison suited me down to the ground. All I had to do was sell interesting books to interesting people. Nothing uncomfortable there. It kept me happy for 23 highly enjoyable years.

But I still admire a clever tabloid headline.

37 comments:

  1. Modern journalists seem to be interested in only trying to illicit an extreme emotional response in me

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    1. John: That's another thing some of them do. They want you either to be angry and outraged about something, or filled with phoney excitement.

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    2. Nick and John, are you saying you don't have agency over your own thinking, prudent judgment and how you react?

      U

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  2. I despair at ever finding a newspaper which practices real journalism.

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    1. Fly: I know. Even the ones that claim to be serious newspapers are often full of the same froth and fluff as the more popular ones.

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  3. As so often you concentrate on the negative.

    Let's leave local papers aside. Anyone can knit a story about "man bites dog". Let's leave the gutter press aside. Your local curtain twitcher will provide you with the lastest neighbourhood gossip - true or not.

    Despite your notions as listed there is amazing journalism out there. Anyway, what's journalism? You have the front wo/men out there (literally at the front), the investigative journalists (cant' get tougher than when a paper doesn't even wish to put your name to a story in order to protect you and your family); then there is the softer end of columnists (not that they can't be as sharp as new knives or as blunt as old ones), opinion pieces, the fillers, the jesters and jokers and fluff. Indeed, sometimes, extremely well written and amusing fluff.

    If you were a journalist (whatever that means) you'd know that you can't brush a whole industry with the same comb.

    U

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    1. Ursula: Well, obviously there's a journalistic spectrum between the hard-headed investigative reporters at one end and the trashy gossip columnists at the other. But the former are definitely in the minority.

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  4. I imagine that newspapers and magazines are merely there to pander to their readership these days (what's left of it). Give the people what they want to hear and all that.

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    1. Bijoux: Very much so. And the readers seem to lap up the frivolous nonsense as much as the genuinely informative stuff.

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  5. We spend a lot of money each year for good journalism. For us it's well worth it.

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    1. Also Trump wouldn't spend so much time ranting about journalists if they were all writing about trivia. We need good investigative reporting to counter corruption and government idiocies.

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    2. Jean: If only good journalism was the norm and not the exception. And yes, Trump hates the journalists who actually tell you the truth and not pro-Trump propaganda.

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    3. Good journalism costs money and most people aren't willing to pay for it even if they are interested. We spend over $1,500 a year for solid information.

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    4. Jean: There aren't many newspapers here that are based on solid investigative reporting. The Financial Times maybe. That's about it.

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    5. I salute you, Cheerful Monk, for money wisely spent.

      U

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    6. Nick, your reply to CM (… there aren't many … the FT maybe … That's about it"). How on earth would you be able to verify/prove such an outrageous claim? And, whoever YOUR "sources", presumably you also speak for the NON-English press?

      Seriously, Nick, if only you weren't given to exaggerating beyond the believable I'd be able to take you more seriously.

      U

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    7. Ursula: You obviously take me very seriously. Which is why you've made so many comments.

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  6. Good journalism is expensive. I totaled up what I spend just on the WSJ and NYT, and sighed, and agreed to spend more money on another subscription.

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    1. Yes! The price of the WSJ was a shocker but we get the print version as well as the digital and Andy reads almost all of it, so we signed on again for two years. I also subscribe to the digital NYT, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and (at least temporarily) the Los Angeles Times. We get The Economist both print and digital, The Atlantic, and a few others. It's worth it to know some people still respect facts.

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    2. Jean: The NYT is far better than most UK newspapers. More serious reporting, less of the fashionable trivia. Unfortunately it has a paywall so I don't read it regularly.

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    3. Joanne: It's increasingly the case here in the UK that the good-quality newspapers have online paywalls. And even some of the sloppier ones.

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  7. I can relate to your reasons for quitting journalism. In all walks of life, if one is uncomfortable doing what one is doing for a living, best is to quit and find something more suitable for his temperament. I did it.

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    1. Ramana: I'm always amazed at the number of people who stay in jobs that rub them up the wrong way, rather than looking for something more satisfying.

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  8. Oh I bet there are a lot of dubious practices that you could spend a lot of time telling us about.

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    1. Mary: A lot of them are common knowledge of course. Like journalists hacking into celebrities' phones, or making up "plausible" quotes, or inventing affairs or punch-ups or mental health problems.

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  9. I was referring only to your distant style of writing, like a constant bid for objectivity or uninvolvement

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    1. Kylie: That surprises me. I'm usually very involved in what I'm writing about, otherwise I wouldn't bother to write about it at all. I only try to be "objective" if I'm aware there are very different views on a subject and I want to acknowledge the spread of opinion.

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  10. Well, there's journalism and then there's journalism, in my view. I think it may be more difficult to be a conscientious journalist now, likely not very well-paid either, but I believe we have some good ones and I would rue the day without them. Certainly, serious journalists have a hard row to hoe now, under assault to the degree of endangering freedom I fear. Having to reduce topics to brief stories and sound bites as so many people expect today with their short attention spans certainly handicaps distributing full information. They're certainly under major attack as is truth. I'm concerned the decline of journalists via a medium in which local news is disseminated throughout local communities is going to deprive residents of knowing what's going on, possibly failing to reveal problem local government officials activities and actions that should be revealed.

    What matters for you is that you found in bookselling what really gave you satisfaction, and that's important in everyone's life for happiness. I don't know what kind of journalism in which you engaged but there is a dark side to everything and every sort of business. At least that's what I concluded in a variety of work I did in domestic labor, business, banking, tv entertainment, education, heallh care.

    The celebrity worship that I've seen develop into obscene proportions in my lifetime is covered in a form of journalism all its own -- so much tabloid that never appealed to me except on a most limited superficial level. Maybe if people paid as much attention to government and officials as they do to celebrity lives, they might have acted to lessen the odds our country would decline as it has even before this virus.

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    1. Joared: I was a local newspaper journalist. I agree that local newspapers are needed to hold local government officers to account. I don't think the newspapers I worked for did enough of that kind of democratic monitoring, and planning officials in particular got away with murder.

      The obsessive worship of celebrities is extraordinary. Do people not realise that many celebrities are nothing like as appealing in their private lives? A lot of them are terrible bullies and narcissists who treat their staff like skivvies. But people are duped by the carefully-contrived public image.

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    2. They're just people I think. They all pull their pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us. Some I've known did tend toward egocentricity, partly to survive in the business, also I saw insecurity, but then like the rest of our population some that could be good friends, others that might not for some.

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    3. Joared: True, journalists come in many varieties, and a fair number are serious and conscientious reporters who do their best to get to the bottom of their subject. A shame about all the mindless hacks trailing behind them....

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  11. It's a lot about selling advertising space these days, isn't it?
    I wish I wouldn't click on the click bait!
    Sx

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    1. Ms Scarlet: Indeed, advertising is the major source of revenue, and journalists have to watch they aren't writing something that the advertisers will take exception to.

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  12. I think there is still some excellent journalism out there, but you have to be discerning about what you read. Still, if it wasn't a good fit, how great that you found something that was!

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    1. Agent: You have to be very discerning. You have to wade through an awful lot of dross to find the serious good-quality journalism.

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  13. It sounds like you definitely made the right choice for yourself. I think there are probably people who thrive on that kind of work, but it doesn't sound like you're one of them. Different jobs just seem to suit different personalities better than others. I've had a few people tell me they would HATE my current job, but it's the job I've loved the most, and the one I'd like to stay in until I retire. So different paths for different people.

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    1. Danielle: As you say, bookselling just suited me much better than journalism. No need for all the sensationalist hysteria when all you're doing is selling books.

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