Hillside Media Training

The prime minister’s Unleashing Aspirations all-party report, released tomorrow, has apparently come up with the unastounding conclusion that  journalism has become an exclusive middle class profession.

Should we be surprised? A resounding NO echoes through the former annals of Fleet Street and every local newspaper newsroom.

With the demise of local papers, as blogged here, gone are the days when you could blag your way in at 16 and write your way up – backed with the training credentials of doing a  2 year block release course at a designated college with the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) whose Proficiency Test was the only way to get ahead in the news game.

There were five such colleges in my time round the country and if you’d won a place on their full year entry course for which you had to have A levels and pass a challenging interview process, you knew you were on your way. I actually turned down a place at university because I’d been given one of these coveted places,  because I believed it was my passport into a highly competitive industry.

Sadly now, with papers closing, the only way in to journalism, it seems, is if you have a degree – and that still is very much a middle class preoccupation. So lo! It has become more and more a middle class job. 

We seem to have forgotten the whole power of learning on the job via apprecticeships and indentures, as my training programme was called when I joined my first paper on leaving Harlow Technical college with my first NCTJ requisistes. I had to complete 3 years of indentures and pass my finals – the Proficieny Test (equivalent now of a degree) to be a fully fledged senior journalist and then be free if I wanted to find another job. Until then I was tied – or indentured to that paper.

I often talk on how it was such a wonderful training ground. I learned so much working day to day on the job and then having that training backed with classroom support. Those who hadn’t done the full year pre-entry course worked the same way but did block-release courses whereby they’d return to college more frequently to complete the formal learning exercises.

It didn’t matter what your background, your education or family purse you could get a job on your own merit, and boy, you had to prove yourself, and work your way up. You didn’t need a degree, unless you wanted to break into the likes of the BBC and broadcast in general. And then it was very much a case of being white and Oxbridge to even open the White City door.

I bet even now if you want to break into the Beeb, who will soon have complete control of local journalism through its local webnews sites, you will need a degree – that will push the realms of being a journalist from a working class background further away.

Again as I’ve written here before we need to watch the death knell of local journalism – not just because its loss will have a frightening impact on local democracy but also because the local paper provided a fair, open and thorough training ground for healthy journalism all through the ranks.

The fact that you are reading this means you probably trawl the internet for much of your news.  If you are under 40 when was the last time you bought a national newspaper, actually put your hands in your pocket and dished out the 30p to 90p cover price rather than grab the freebie Metro at the local station?

And when was the last time you actually bought a copy of your local paper? Regional media is in a deep crisis and that spells a  huge problem for democracy. The double whammy of the current recession, resulting in falling ad revenues, and the ginormous impact of internet news is killing off one of democracy’s greatest watchdogs.

Newspapers across the globe are crashing and burning. America’s third oldest paper the Phildelphia Enquirer has filed for Chapter 11 and in the UK  60 regional titles have stopped their presses this year, resulting in more than 10 percent of the workforce being made redundant in the past six months.

People who’ve heard me talk enjoy learning about my first day as a junior on a local paper. I run through what can be a typical day: first up was an ‘extremely good’ murder from morning police calls, then a fire in Woolies in the High Street. After lunch it was a dose of Magistrates Court, reporting on everything from theft of a plastic toy car to serious sexual assault (I’d never come across the word ‘incest’ before), then a photostory of extremely large onions at the local farming show, wrapping up the day with the regular spot at the planning committee of the local district council.

It was fabulous training ground. At the age of 19 I learned many lessons and made many mistakes but more importantly I realised one very fundamental aspect, that all those bodies knew they would be reported on. They knew that their decisions or actions would be given coverage and that the local people would be able to see and read about it. The local journo’s presence, even a very junior one, kept them on their toes, even more so if that local journo sold the story to the nationals, the route that takes most news around the world.

Without the journalist sitting in court who will know how much magistrates have fined someone or who’s been sent down to prison? How will we be able to assess if this is fair or safe? How would stories like the recent police ‘waterboarding’ brutality of suspects in Enfield come to light? Who would know if a local council is allowing some monstrosity to be built by a beautiful nature park?

Your local newspaper is your local champion. Regional radio and TV do not have the same space or time, or staff to play with. In fact ITN is struggling to maintain its local commitment with most regional stations being shut down. [More of that in a later blog.]

Local radio in fairness is fulfilling much of the vacant role as your local watchdog, thanks to phone-ins and greater involvement from those listening.

Citizen journalism is on the growth especially with timely photos and videos of key events – but, sorry to all you fervent bloggers, you have not been trained, you are not edited by a fleet of subs who check over your copy to ensure its sane, legal, entertaining and unbiased.

The BBC is rapidly hoping to fill the slot with local pages – aimed at small communities, a move which is of great concern for businesses like the Daily Mail’s parent company, Associated Newspapers as it owns much of the regional press. It sees this as the state’s news body eating away at its commercial heart.

The project could be an interesting new voice on the local block  but it raises many questions. Who will be doing the reporting? Who will moderate for libel, accuracy etc? Who will decide content..or impartiality? The BBC trades heavily on its status as our guardian of impartiality but as it gains in power – its separate concern BBC Enterprises is a huge global commercial outfit – how will this last?

As you can see there many grey areas which we should all be questioning as part of the new Digital Britain. This is not just about losing the local chip wrapper- and this is not just about losing your local voice. This is a fundamental chip away at our nationwide democracy and in these increasingly state monitored times, is something we should all be fighting to maintain.