Left to right: Kit, Vince, Cathy
I am sure this will come across as the rantings of a grumpy old man with a chip on his shoulder. Which is fine, because that’s what it is.
Sitting in the newsroom of a weekly B2B title, looking around at the baby-faced buggers tapping away at their keyboards, I can’t help but feel concerned for the future of journalism.
They are a good bunch – most of them can ask the right questions and string a sentence together – but, almost to a man (see, I said I was old), they are white, middle class and university educated. And that’s the problem.
While it is true that British journalism has never been representative of the country’s racial mix, when I entered the business – more than 20 years ago – it did at least represent a range of social classes.
Money was tight in my family when I was growing up and, as far as my parents were concerned, university was something people with money did. I left school at 16 and became a reporter at 17.
That first, smoke-filled newsroom was populated by colourful characters including a sports editor who could have been the inspiration for Life on Mars’ foul-mouthed Gene Hunt; a rough-diamond reporter who grew up in the toughest part of town and was a talented boxer; an editor who was a country gent. Even a couple of graduates.
The key thing is that there was a range of experience, outlook and background: between us we were a fair representation of the social spectrum of Britain in the 80s.
Twenty years later, journalism has become dominated by the university-educated middle classes. It is virtually impossible to get started in the business without a degree, and junior staff are paid so poorly that many cannot afford to take a job in journalism without some form of financial support – financial support that only the privileged have access to.
There is the risk of journalism becoming a bland business dominated by a narrow range of values – lacking the clash of backgrounds and opinion that can make a newsroom such a fascinating place. But there is a more serious issue.
The background of journalists probably doesn’t matter too much in B2B media – where most of the people reporters talk to will be middle class and university-educated themselves. But what about the regional or national press, where journalists will often be expected to understand and accurately report the hopes and fears of people very different to themselves?
If journalism is not representative of the British, can it represent what is happening in Britain?
Vince Bamford was bitten by a radioactive type ruler as a teenager, rendering him incapable of any form of employment outside a newsroom. In those rare moments when he isn’t sitting in front of a computer screen he likes to play with his kids, kittens or plastic cars that turn into robots.
