Students
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008At the risk of sounding like Victor Meldrew, I despair of what’s happening to university students with aspirations of becoming journalists.
Trudged up to Durham this week to give a talk about getting a job in journalism. Eight hours in the car on the A1 for an hour’s talking – and just two of those who attended seemed curious enough to ask any questions.
In fact, Durham is one of the better universities for these talks. (Last year, more than 100 turned up for my talk.)
Allegedly, 60 per cent of all students want jobs in the media, but I’ve had as few as 12 turn up on these sessions.
Might be I’m a boring ol’ fart to listen to, but surely they should at least wander through the door when a talk is called something like: The Inside Line: Find Out The Truth About Getting a Media Job.
If all these students really want jobs in the media, and I’ve already told them that a key skill for a journalist is curiosity, wouldn’t you expect them to have a question or two at the end?
Increasingly, we are taking fewer and fewer people straight out of university for our postgrad magazine course. Those who have been in work for a couple of years, or who have spent some time writing to ads in The Guardian and never even getting a reply, are much better material.
They have started to realise that it’s a cruel world. Heat and Q, it turns out, aren’t actually so devastated by a 2:2 in media studies, they immediately create a vacancy for someone whose main qualification is that they like going to the cinema.
Goodness, there’s that Meldrew tendency creeping up on me again. Eight hours on the A1 listening to Tom Waits does strange things to a man. But where’s the passion to do the best job in the world? Not in enough students, I’ll tell you that.